head over the weekend, Elena?" He grinned teasingly at her.
Elena lifted a shoulder, thinking of al she had suffered over the weekend. "Something like that."
He held out the rose. "This must be for you."
"Thank you," said Elena, confused. A thorn pricked her finger as she took it by the stem, and she stuck the finger in her mouth to stanch the blood.
"Don't thank me," he said. "It was just sitting on the front steps when I got here. You must have a secret admirer."
Elena frowned. Plenty of boys had admired her through school, and if this had been nine months ago, she could have made a good guess at who would leave her a rose. But now she didn't have a clue.
Matt's battered old Ford sedan pul ed up outside and honked. "I've got to run, Aunt Judith," she said. "They're here. Nice seeing you, Caleb."
Elena's stomach twisted as she walked toward Matt's car. It wasn't just the strangeness of meeting Caleb that was affecting her, she realized, turning the rose's stem absently between her fingers. It was the car itself. Matt's old Ford was the car she had driven off Wickery Bridge back in the winter, panicked and pursued by evil forces. She'd died in this car. The windows had shattered as she hit the creek, and the car had fil ed with icy water. The scratched steering wheel and the dented hood of the car, covered with water, had been the last things she'd seen in that life.
But here the car was - as whole again as she was. Pushing the memory of her death from her mind, she waved at Bonnie, whose eager face was visible through the passenger window. She could forget about al those old tragedies, because now they had never happened. Meredith perched elegantly on the swing on her front porch, pushing herself gently back and forth with one foot. Her strong, tapered fingers were stil ; her dark hair fel smoothly across her shoulders; her expression was as serene as ever.
There was nothing about Meredith that might show how tensely and busily her thoughts were churning, worries and contingency plans whirring away behind her cool facade. She had spent yesterday trying to figure out what the Guardians' spel had changed for her and her family -
particularly her brother, Christian, who Klaus had kidnapped over a decade ago. She stil didn't understand it al , but it was dawning on her that Elena's bargain had more far-reaching consequences than any of them had imagined.
But today her thoughts were occupied with Alaric Saltzman.
Her fingers tapped anxiously against the arm of the swing. Then she schooled herself into stil ness again. Self-discipline was where Meredith found her strength, and if Alaric, her boyfriend - or at least, he had been her boyfriend... actual y her perhaps engaged-to-be-engaged, sort of almost fiance, before he left town - turned out to have changed toward her in the months they'd been apart, wel , no one, not even Alaric, would see how that would hurt her.
Alaric had spent the past several months in Japan, investigating paranormal activity, a dream come true for a doctoral student in parapsychology. His study of the tragic history of Unmei no Shima, the Island of Doom, a smal community where children and parents had turned against one another, had helped Meredith and her friends to understand what the kitsune were doing to Fel 's Church, and how to fight it.
Alaric had been working at Unmei no Shima with Dr. Celia Connor, a forensic pathologist who, despite her ful academic credentials, was the same age as Alaric, only twenty-four. So, clearly, Dr. Connor was bril iant. From his letters and emails, Alaric had been having the time of his life in Japan. And he'd certainly found a lot of interests in common with Dr. Connor. Perhaps more so than with Meredith, who had only just graduated from a smal -town high school, no matter how mature and intel igent she might be.
Meredith gave herself a mental shake and sat up straighter. She was being ridiculous, worrying about Alaric's relationship with his col eague. She was pretty sure she was being ridiculous, anyway. Fairly sure. She gripped the arms of the swing more tightly. She was a vampire hunter. She had a duty to protect her town, and she had, with her friends, protected it wel already. She wasn't just an ordinary teenager, and if she needed to prove that to Alaric again, she was