From under the dust ruffle, she watched Aunt Judith's stocking feet come into the room. She pressed her face into the floorboards, not breathing.
"Margaret! What are you doing up? Come on, let's get you back in bed," Aunt Judith's voice said, and then the bed creaked with Margaret's weight and Elena heard the noises of Aunt Judith's fussing with the covers. "Your hands are freezing. What on earth is the window doing open?"
"And now there's snow all over the floor. I can't believe this... Don't you open it up again, do you hear me?" A little more bustling and the stocking feet went out again. The door shut.
Elena squirmed out.
"Good girl," she whispered as Margaret sat up. "I'm proud of you. Now tomorrow you tell Aunt Judith that you have to give your kitty away. Tell her it scared you. I know you don't want to"-she put up a hand to stop the wail that was gathering on Margaret's lips-"but you have to. Because I'm telling you that kitty will hurt you if you keep it. You don't want to get hurt, do you?"
"No," said Margaret, her blue eyes filling. "But-"
"And you don't want the kitty to hurt Aunt Judith, either, do you? You tell Aunt Judith you can't have a kitten or a puppy or even a bird until-well, for a while. Don't tell her that I said so; that's still our secret. Tell her you're scared because of what happened with the dogs at church." It was better, Elena reasoned grimly, to give the little girl nightmares than to have a nightmare play out in this bedroom.
Margaret's mouth drooped sadly. "Okay."
"I'm sorry, sweetie." Elena sat down and hugged her. "But that's the way it has to be."
"You're cold," Margaret said. Then she looked up into Elena's face. "Are you an angel?"
"Uh... not exactly." Just the opposite, Elena thought ironically.
"Aunt Judith said you went to be with Mommy and Daddy. Did you see them yet?"
"I-it's sort of hard to explain, Margaret. I haven't seen them yet, no. And I'm not an angel, but I'm going to be like your guardian angel anyway, all right? I'll watch over you, even when you can't see me. Okay?"
"Okay." Margaret played with her fingers. "Does that mean you can't live here anymore?"
Elena looked around the pink-and-white bedroom, at the stuffed animals on the shelves and the little writing desk and the rocking horse that had once been hers in the corner. "That's what it means," she said softly.
"When they said you went to be with Mommy and Daddy, I said I wanted to go, too."
Elena blinked hard. "Oh, baby. It's not time for you to go, so you can't. And Aunt Judith loves you very much, and she'd be lonely without you."
Margaret nodded, her eyelids drooping. But as Elena eased her down and pulled the bedspread over her, Margaret asked one more question. "But don't you love me?"
Oh, stupid, stupid, Elena thought, forging through the banked snow to the other side of Maple Street. She'd missed her chance to ask Margaret whether Robert had been at dinner. It was too late now.
Robert. Her eyes narrowed suddenly. At the church, Robert had been outside and then the dogs had gone mad. And tonight Margaret's kitten had gone feral-just a little while after Robert's car had pulled out of the driveway.
Robert has a lot to answer for, she thought.
But melancholy was pulling at her, tugging her thoughts away. Her mind kept returning to the bright house she'd just left, going over the things she'd never see again. All her clothes and knickknacks and jewelry-what would Aunt Judith do with them? I don't own anything anymore, she thought. I'm a pauper.
Elena?
With relief, Elena recognized the mental voice and the distinctive shadow at the end of the street. She hurried toward Stefan, who took his hands out of his jacket pockets and held hers to warm them.
"Meredith told me where you'd gone."
"I went home," Elena said. That was all she could say, but as she leaned against him for comfort, she knew that he understood.
"Let's find someplace we can sit down," he said, and stopped in frustration. All the places they used to go were either too dangerous or closed to Elena. The police still had Stefan's car.
Eventually they just went to the high school where they could sit under the overhang of a roof and watch the snow sift down. Elena told him what had happened in Margaret's room.
"I'm going to have Meredith and Bonnie spread it around town that cats can attack, too. People should know that. And I think somebody ought to be watching Robert," she concluded.
"We'll tail him," Stefan said, and she couldn't help smiling.