“So who are you going to marry, Bonnie?” Meredith put in deftly.
“I don’t know. My grandmother told me the ritual for finding out, but I never tried it. Of course” — Bonnie struck a sophisticated pose — “he has to be outrageously rich and totally gorgeous. Like our mysterious dark stranger, for example. Particularly if nobody else wants him.” She cast a wicked glance at Elena.
Elena refused the bait. “What about Tyler Smallwood?” she murmured innocently. “His father’s certainly rich enough.”
“And he’s not bad-looking,” agreed Meredith solemnly. “That is, of course, if you’re an animal lover. All those big white teeth.”
The girls looked at each other and then simultaneously burst into laughter. Bonnie threw a handful of grass at Meredith, who brushed it off and threw a dandelion back at her. Somewhere in the middle of it, Elena realized that she was going to be all right. She was herself again, not lost, not a stranger, but Elena Gilbert, the queen of Robert E. Lee. She pulled the apricot ribbon out of her hair and shook the hair free about her face.
“I’ve decided what to do my oral report on,” she said, watching with narrow eyes as Bonnie finger-combed grass out of her curls.
“What?” said Meredith.
Elena tilted her chin up to gaze at the red and purple sky above the hill. She took a thoughtful breath and let the suspense build for a moment. Then she said coolly, “The Italian Renaissance.”
Bonnie and Meredith stared at her, then looked at each other and burst into whoops of laughter again.
“Aha,” said Meredith when they recovered. “So the tiger returneth.”
Elena gave her a feral grin. Her shaken confidence had returned to her. And though she didn’t understand it herself, she knew one thing: she wasn’t going to let Stefan Salvatore get away alive.
“All right,” she said briskly. “Now, listen, you two. Nobody else can know about this, or I’ll be the laughingstock of the school. And Caroline would just love any excuse to make me look ridiculous. But I do still want him, and I’m going to have him. I don’t know how yet, but I am. Until I come up with a plan, though, we’re going to give him the cold shoulder.”
“Oh, we are?”
“Yes, we are. You can’t have him, Bonnie; he’s mine. And I have to be able to trust you completely.”
“Wait a minute,” said Meredith, a glint in her eye. She unclasped the cloisonne pin from her blouse, then, holding up her thumb, made a quick jab. “Bonnie, give me your hand.”
“Why?” said Bonnie, eyeing the pin suspiciously.
“Because I want to marry you. Why do you think, idiot?”
“But — but — Oh, all right. Ow!”
“Now you, Elena.” Meredith pricked Elena’s thumb efficiently, and then squeezed it to get a drop of blood. “Now,” she continued, looking at the other two with sparkling dark eyes, “we all press our thumbs together and swear. Especially you, Bonnie. Swear to keep this secret and to do whatever Elena asks in relation to Stefan.”
“Look, swearing with blood is dangerous,” Bonnie protested seriously. “It means you have to stick to your oath no matter what happens, no matter what, Meredith.”
“I know,” said Meredith grimly. “That’s why I’m telling you to do it. I remember what happened with Michael Martin.”
Bonnie made a face. “That was years ago, and we broke up right away anyway and — Oh, all right. I’ll swear.” Closing her eyes, she said, “I swear to keep this a secret and to do anything Elena asks about Stefan.”
Meredith repeated the oath. And Elena, staring at the pale shadows of their thumbs joined together in the gathering dusk, took a long breath and said softly, “And I swear not to rest until he belongs to me.”
A gust of cold wind blew through the cemetery, fanning the girls’ hair out and sending dry leaves fluttering on the ground. Bonnie gasped and pulled back, and they all looked around, then giggled nervously.
“It’s dark,” said Elena, surprised.
“We’d better get started home,” Meredith said, refastening her pin as she stood up. Bonnie stood, too, putting the tip of her thumb into her mouth.
“Good-bye,” said Elena softly, facing the headstone. The purple blossom was a blur on the ground. She picked up the apricot ribbon that lay next to it, turned, and nodded to Bonnie and Meredith. “Let’s go.”
Silently, they headed up the hill toward the ruined church. The oath sworn in blood had given them all a solemn feeling, and as they passed the ruined church Bonnie shivered. With the sun down, the temperature had dropped abruptly, and the wind was rising. Each gust sent whispers through the grass and made the ancient oak trees rattle their dangling leaves.
“I’m freezing,” Elena said, pausing for a moment by the black hole that had once been the church door and looking down at the landscape below.
The moon had not yet risen, and she could just make out the old graveyard and Wickery Bridge beyond it. The old graveyard dated from Civil War days, and many of the headstones bore the names of soldiers. It had a wild look to it; brambles and tall weeds grew on the graves, and ivy vines swarmed over crumbling granite. Elena had never liked it.
“It looks different, doesn’t it? In the dark, I mean,” she said unsteadily. She didn’t know how to say what she really meant, that it was not a place for the living.
“We could go the long way,” said Meredith. “But that would mean another twenty minutes of walking.”
“I don’t mind going this way,” said Bonnie, swallowing hard. “I always said I wanted to be buried down there in the old one.”
“Will you stop talking about being buried!” Elena snapped, and she started down the hill. But the farther down the narrow path she got, the more uncomfortable she felt. She slowed until Bonnie and Meredith caught up with her. As they neared the first headstone, her heart began beating fast. She tried to ignore it, but her whole skin was tingling with awareness and the fine hairs on her arms were standing up. Between the gusts of wind, every sound seemed horribly magnified; the crunching of their feet on the leaf-strewn path was deafening.
The ruined church was a black silhouette behind them now. The narrow path led between the lichen-encrusted headstones, many of which stood taller than Meredith. Big enough for something to hide behind, thought Elena uneasily. Some of the tombstones themselves were unnerving, like the one with the cherub that looked like a real baby, except that its head had fallen off and had been carefully placed by its body. The wide granite eyes of the head were blank. Elena couldn’t look away from it, and her heart began to pound.
“Why are we stopping?” said Meredith.
“I just… I’m sorry,” Elena murmured, but when she forced herself to turn she immediately stiffened. “Bonnie?” she said. “Bonnie, what’s wrong?”
Bonnie was staring straight out into the graveyard, her lips parted, her eyes as wide and blank as the stone cherub’s. Fear washed through Elena’s stomach. “Bonnie, stop it. Stop it! It’s not funny.”
Bonnie made no reply.
“Bonnie!” said Meredith. She and Elena looked at each other, and suddenly Elena knew she had to get away. She whirled to start down the path, but a strange voice spoke behind her, and she jerked around.
“Elena,” the voice said. It wasn’t Bonnie’s voice, but it came from Bonnie’s mouth. Pale in the darkness, Bonnie was still staring out into the graveyard. There was no expression on her face at all.
“Elena,” the voice said again, and added, as Bonnie’s head turned toward her, “there’s someone waiting out there for you.”