what happened?"
"She was hysterical," Matt said. "Really hysterical; she wasn't making any sense. She kept babbling about eyes and dark mist and not being able to run-which is why the doctor thinks maybe it was some sort of hallucination. But as far as anyone can make out, the facts are that she and Dick Carter were in the ruined church by the cemetery at about midnight, and that something came in and attacked her there."
Bonnie added, "It didn't attack Dick, which at least shows it had, some taste. The police found him passed out on the church floor, and he doesn't remember a thing."
But Elena scarcely heard the last words. Something had gone terribly wrong with Stefan. She couldn't tell how she knew it, but she knew. He had stiffened as Matt finished speaking, and now, though he hadn't moved, she felt as if a great distance was separating them, as if she and he were on opposite sides of a rifting, cracking floe of ice.
He said, in the terribly controlled voice she had heard before in his room, "In the church, Matt?"
"Yes, in the ruined church," Matt said.
"And you're sure she said it was midnight?"
"She couldn't be positive, but it must have been sometime around then. We found her not long after. Why?"
Stefan said nothing. Elena could feel the gulf between them widening. "Stefan," she whispered. Then, aloud, she said desperately, "Stefan, what is it?"
He shook his head. Don't shut me out, she thought, but he wouldn't even look at her. "Will she live?" he asked abruptly.
"The doctor said there was nothing much wrong with her," Matt said. "Nobody's even suggested she might die."
Stefan's nod was abrupt; then he turned to Elena. "I've got to go," he said. "You're safe now."
She caught his hand as he turned away. "Of course I'm safe," she said. "Because of you."
"Yes," he said. But there was no response in his eyes. They were shielded, dull.
"Call me tomorrow." She squeezed his hand, trying to convey what she felt under the scrutiny of all those watching eyes. She willed him to understand.
He looked down at their hands with no expression at all, then, slowly, back up at her. And then, at last, he returned the pressure of her fingers. "Yes, Elena," he whispered, his eyes clinging to hers. The next minute he was gone.
She took a deep breath and turned back to the crowded room. Aunt Judith was still hovering, her gaze fixed on what could be seen of Elena's torn dress underneath the cloak.
"Elena," she said, "whathappened ?" And her eyes went to the door through which Stefan had just left.
A sort of hysterical laughter surged up in Elena's throat, and she choked it back. "Stefan didn't do it," she said. "Stefan saved me." She felt her face harden, and she looked at the police officer behind Aunt Judith. "It was Tyler, Tyler Smallwood..."
Chapter Nine
She was not the reincarnation of Katherine.
Driving back to the boarding house in the faint lavender hush before dawn, Stefan thought about that.
He'd said as much to her, and it was true, but he was only now realizing how long he'd been working toward that conclusion. He'd been aware of Elena's every breath and move for weeks, and he'd catalogued every difference.
Her hair was a shade or two paler than Katherine's, and her eyebrows and lashes were darker. Katherine's had been almost silvery. And she was taller than Katherine by a good handspan. She moved with greater freedom, too; the girls of this age were more comfortable with their bodies.
Even her eyes, those eyes that had transfixed him with the shock of recognition that first day, were not really the same. Katherine's eyes had usually been wide with childlike wonder, or else cast down as was proper for a young girl of the late fifteenth century. But Elena's eyes met you straight on, looked at you steadily and without flinching. And sometimes they narrowed with determination or challenge in a way Katherine's never had.
In grace and beauty and sheer fascination, they were alike. But where Katherine had been a white kitten, Elena was a snow-white tigress.
As he drove past the silhouettes of maple trees, Stefan cringed from the memory that sprang up suddenly. He would not think about that, he would not let himself... but the images were already unreeling before him. It was as if the journal had fallen open