07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

ealized he was taking you hostage. Please don’t blame yourself, Meredith.”
“I should have tried to warn you. I just never expected Bonnie to come running out and
grab him,” Meredith said. Her dark gray eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Elena squeezed her hand,
sick in the pit of her stomach herself.
“You certainly couldn’t be expected to fight off Damon,” Stefan said flatly. “Human or
vampire—he’s trained; he knows moves that you could never counter. You can’t blame yourself.”
Elena was thinking the same thing. She was worried about Damon’s disappearance—and
terrified for Bonnie. Yet at another level of her mind she was wondering at the lacerations on
Meredith’s palm that she was trying to warm. The strangest thing was that the wounds appeared to
have been treated—rubbed slick with lotion. But she wasn’t going to bother Meredith about it at a
time like this. Especially when it was really Elena’s own fault. She was the one who had enticed
Stefan the night before. Oh, they had been deep, all right—deep in each other’s minds.
“Anyway, it’s Bonnie’s fault if it’s anyone’s,” Stefan said regretfully. “But now I’m
worried about her. Damon’s not going to be inclined to watch out for her if he didn’t want her to
come.”
Meredith bowed her head. “It’s my fault if she gets hurt.”
Elena chewed her lower lip. There was something wrong. Something about Meredith,
that Meredith wasn’t telling her. Her hands were really damaged, and Elena couldn’t figure out how
they could have gotten that way.
Almost as if she knew what Elena was thinking, Meredith slipped her hand out of Elena’s
and looked at it. Looked at both her palms, side by side. They were equally scratched and torn.
Meredith bent her dark head farther, almost doubling over where she sat. Then she
straightened, throwing back her head like someone who had made a decision. She said, “There’s
something I have to tell you—”
“Wait,” Stefan whispered, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Listen. There’s a car coming.”
Elena listened. In a moment she heard it too. “They’re coming to the boardinghouse,” she
said, puzzled.
“It’s so early,” Meredith said. “Which means—”
“It has to be the police after Matt,” Stefan finished. “I’d better go in and wake him up.
I’ll put him in the root cellar.”
Elena quickly corked the star ball with its meager ounces of fluid. “He can take this with
him,” she was beginning, when Meredith suddenly ran to the opposite side of the Gate. She picked up
a long, slender object that Elena couldn’t recognize, even with Power channeled to her eyes. She saw
Stefan blink and stare at it.
“This needs to go in the root cellar too,” Meredith said. “And there are probably earth
tracks coming out of the cellar, and blood in the kitchen. Two places.”
“Blood?” Elena began, furious with Damon, but then she shook her head and refocused.
In the light of dawn, she could see a police car, cruising like some great white shark toward the
house.
“Let’s go,” Elena said. “Go, go, go!”
They all dashed back to the boardinghouse, crouching to stay low to the ground as they
did it. As they went, Elena hissed, “Stefan, you’ve got to Influence them if you can. Meredith, you try
to clean up the soil and blood. I’ll get Matt; he’s less likely to punch me when I tell him he has to
hide.”
They hastened to their appointed duties. In the middle of it all, Mrs. Flowers appeared,