long legs as if she didn't want her feet to touch Stefan's floorboards. Oddly, though, she was carrying her high heels.
"I came back in to get my sunglasses," she said, still in that trembling voice. "And I heard enough to know now what my so-called ¡®friends' think of me."
"No, you didn't," Meredith said, as rapidly eloquent as Bonnie was stunned mute. "You heard some very angry people letting off steam after you'd just insulted them."
"Besides," Bonnie said, suddenly able to speak again, "admit it, Caroline - youhoped you'd hear something. That's why you took off your shoes. You were right behind the door, listening, weren't you?"
Stefan shut his eyes. "This is my fault. I should have - "
"No, you shouldn't," Meredith said to him, and to Caroline she added, "And if you can tell me one word we said that isn't true, or was exaggerated - except maybe for what Bonnie said, and Bonnie is...just being Bonnie. Anyway, if you can point to one word of what the rest of us said that isn't true,I'll beg your pardon."
Caroline wasn't listening. Caroline was twitching. She had a facial tic, and her lovely face was convulsed, dark red, with fury.
"Oh, you'regoing to beg my pardon all right," she said, wheeling to point her long-nailed forefinger at each of them. "You'reall going to be sorry. And if you try that - that witchcraft-vampire type thing on me again," she said to Stefan, "I have friends - real friends - who'd like to know about it."
"Caroline, just this afternoon you signed a contract - "
"Oh, who gives a damn?"
Stefan stood up. It was dark now inside the small room with its dusty window, and Stefan's shadow was thrown before him by the bedside lamp. Bonnie looked at it and then poked Meredith, as the hairs tingled on her arms and neck. The shadow was surprisingly dark and surprisingly tall. Caroline's shadow was weak, transparent, and short - an imitation shadow beside Stefan's very real one.
The thunderstorm feeling was back. Bonnie was shaking now; trying not to, but unable to stop the shivering that had come on as if she had been thrown into icy water. It was a cold that had gotten directly into her bones and was ripping layer after layer of heat off them like some greedy giant, and now she was beginning to shakehard....
Something was happening to Caroline in the darkness - something was coming from her - or comingfor her - or maybe both. In any case, it was all around her now, and all around Bonnie, too, and the tension was so thick that Bonnie felt choked, her heart pounding. Beside her, Meredith - practical, level-headed Meredith - stirred uneasily.
"What - ?" Meredith began in a whisper.
Suddenly, as if it had all been exquisitely choreographed by the things in the dark - the door to Stefan's room slammed shut...the lamp, an ordinary electric one, went off...the ancient rolled-up shutter over the window came rattling down, dropping the room into sudden and complete darkness.
And Caroline screamed. It was an awful sound - raw, as if it had been stripped like meat from Caroline's backbone and yanked out of her throat.
Bonnie screamed, too. She couldn't help it, although her scream sounded too faint and too breathless, like an echo, not the coloratura job that Caroline had done. Thank God that at least Caroline wasn't screaming any longer. Bonnie was able to stop the new scream building in her own throat, even though her shaking was worse than ever. Meredith had an arm around her tightly, but then, as the darkness and the silence went on and Bonnie's shaking only continued, Meredith got up and heartlessly passed her to Matt, who seemed astonished and embarrassed, but tried awkwardly to hold her.
"It's not as dark once your eyes get used to it," he said. His voice was creaky, as if he needed a drink of water. But it was the best thing that he could have said, because of all things in the world to fear, Bonnie was most afraid of the dark. There werethings in it, things that only she saw. She managed, despite the terrible shaking, to stand with his support - and then she gasped, and heard Matt gasp, too.
Elena was glowing. Not only that, but the glow extended out behind her and far to either side of her in a pair of what were beautifully defined, and undeniablythere...wings.
"She h-has wings," Bonnie whispered, the stutter caused by her shaking rather