07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

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Damon was making his way up the beautiful rose-covered trellis below the window of the
bedchamber of M. le Princess Jessalyn D’Aubigne, a very wealthy, beautiful, and much-admired girl
who had the bluest blood of any vampire in the Dark Dimension, according to the books he’d bought.
In fact, he’d listened to the locals and it was rumored that Sage himself had changed her two years
ago, and had given her this bijoux castle to live in. Delicate gem that it appeared, though, the little
castle had already presented Damon with several problems. There had been that razor-wire fence, on
which he ripped his leather jacket; an unusually dexterous and stubborn guard whom it had really
been a pity to strangle; an inner moat that had almost taken him unawares; and a few dogs that he had
treated with the Saber-tranquilizer routine—using Mrs. Flowers’s sleeping powder, which he’d
brought with him from Earth. It would have been easier to poison them, but Jessalyn was reputed to
have a very soft heart for animals and he needed her for at least three days. That should be long
enough to make him a vampire—if they did nothing else during those days.
Now, as he pulled himself silently up the trellis, he mentally added long rose thorns to
the list of inconveniences. He also rehearsed his first speech to Jessalyn. She had been—was—
would forever be—eighteen. But it was a young eighteen, since she had only two years’ experience at
being a vampire. He comforted himself with this as he climbed silently into a window.
Still silently, moving slowly in case the princess had guardian animals in her
bedchamber, Damon parted layer after layer of filmy, translucent black curtains that kept the bloodred
light of the sun from shining into the chamber. His boots sank into the thick pile of a black rug.
Making it out of the enfolding curtains, Damon saw that the entire chamber was decorated in a simple
theme by a master of contrast. Jet-black and off-black.
He liked it a lot.
There was an enormous bed with more billowing filmy black curtains almost encasing it.
The only way to approach it was from the foot, where the diaphanous curtains were thinner.
Standing there in the cathedral-like silence of the great chamber, Damon looked at the
slight figure under the black silk sheets, among dozens of small throw pillows.
She was a jewel like the castle. Delicate bones. A look of utter innocence as she slept.
An ethereal river of fine, scarlet hair spilling about her. He could see individual hairs straying on the
black sheets. She looked a little like Bonnie.
Damon was pleased.
He pulled out the same knife he had put to Elena’s throat, and just for a moment hesitated
—but no, this was no time to be thinking of Elena’s golden warmth. Everything depended on this