was all I asked," Damon said, still mildly, but locking gazes with the golden eyes for another long moment. Then he shrugged and turned away, eyeing the moon that could be seen between swirling clouds on the horizon.
"We've got hours before the ceremony yet," Shinichi said, behind him. "We're hardly going to be late."
"We'd better not," Damon murmured. "Caroline can do an awfully good impression of that pierced girl in hysterics when people are late."
As a matter of fact, the moon was riding high in the sky as Caroline drove her mother's car to the porch of the boardinghouse. She was wearing an evening dress that looked as if it had been painted on her, in her favorite colors of bronze and green. Shinichi looked at Misao, who giggled with one hand covering her mouth and looked down.
Damon walked Caroline up the porch steps to the front door and said, "This way to the good seats."
There was some bewilderment as people got themselves sorted out. Damon spoke cheerfully to Kristin and Tami and Ava: "The peanut gallery for you three, I'm afraid. That means you sit on the ground. But if you're good, I'll let you come sit up with us the next time."
The others followed him with more or less exclamation, but it was Caroline who looked annoyed, saying, "Why do we want to goinside ? I thought they were supposed to beoutside ."
"Closest seats not in danger," Damon said briefly. "We can get the best view from up there. Royal box seats, come on, now."
The fox twins and the human girl followed him, switching on lights in the darkened house all the way up to the widow's walk on the roof.
"And now where are they?" Caroline said, peering down.
"They'll be here any minute," Shinichi said, with a glance that was both puzzled and reproving. It said: Who does this girl think she is? He didn't spout any poetry.
"And Elena? She'll be here, too?"
Shinichi didn't answer that at all, and Misao just giggled. But Damon put his lips close to Caroline's ear and whispered.
After that, Caroline's eyes shone green as a cat's. And the smile on her lips was the one of a cat who has just put its paw on the canary.
Chapter 36
Elena had been waiting in her tree.
It wasn't, as a matter of fact, all that different from her six months in the spirit world, where she had spent most of her time watching other people, and waiting, and watching them some more. Those months had taught her a patient alertness that would have astounded anyone who knew the old, wildfire Elena.
Of course, the old, wildfire Elena was still inside her, too, and occasionally it rebelled. As far as she could see, nothing was happening in the dark boardinghouse. Only the moon seemed to move, creeping slowly higher into the sky.
Damon said this Shinichi had a thing about 4:44 in the morning or evening, she thought. Maybe this Black Magic was working to a different schedule than any she'd heard of.
In any case, it was for Stefan. And as soon as she thought that she knew that she would wait here for days, if that's what it took. She could certainly wait until daybreak, when no self-respecting Black Magic-worker would ever thing of beginning a ceremony.
And, in the end, what she was waiting for came to rest right below her feet.
First came the figures, walking sedately out of the Old Wood and toward the gravel pathways of the boardinghouse. They weren't hard to identify, even at long range. One was Damon, who had aje ne sais quois about him that Elena couldn't miss at a quarter of a mile - and then again there was his aura, which was a very good facsimile of his old aura: that unreadable, un-breachable ball of black stone. Avery good imitation, in fact. Actually, it was almost exactly like the one...
It was then, Elena later realized, that she felt her very first qualm.
But right now she was so caught up in the moment that she brushed the uneasy thought away. The one with the deep gray aura with crimson flashes would be Shinichi, she guessed. And the one with the same aura as the possessed girls: a sort of muddy color slashed with orange must be the twin sister Misao.
Only those two, Shinichi and Misao, were holding hands, even occasionally nuzzling each other - as Elena could see as they came up close to the boardinghouse. They certainly weren't acting