be, he asserted to himself, clenching his fist tightly.
But she also wanted to hold on to the memories of Damon, and to keep that part of her she had shared with him private and pristine, separate from everyone else, even from Stefan.
And she wanted so much more, too: to be the savior of her friends, of her town, of her world. To be loved and admired. To be in control.
And to be a normal girl again. Wel , that normal life she had lived had been destroyed forever when she met Stefan, when he made the choice to let her into his world. He knew it was his fault, al of it, everything that fol owed after that, but he couldn't be sorry that she was with him now. He loved her too much to have any room for regret. She was the center of his world, but at the same time, he knew it wasn't the same for her.
A hole inside him gaped with longing, and he moved restlessly in his chair. His canine teeth lengthened in his mouth. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so... wrong. He couldn't get the image of Caleb out of his head, looking down at them from the top of the cliff, as if checking to see whether whatever violence he'd hoped to cause had come to pass.
"More tea, Stefan?" Mrs. Flowers asked him softly, breaking into his furious thoughts. She was leaning forward over a little table with the teapot, her wide blue eyes watching him from behind her glasses. Her face was so compassionate that he wondered what she could see in him. This elderly, wise woman always seemed to perceive so much more than anyone else; perhaps she could tel how he was feeling now.
He realized she was stil waiting politely for his answer, the teapot suspended in one hand, and he nodded automatical y. "Thank you, Mrs. Flowers," he said, offering forth his cup, which was stil half-ful of cold tea. He didn't real y like the taste of normal human drinks; he hadn't for a long time now, but sometimes drinking them made him fit in, made the others relax a bit more around him. When he didn't eat or drink at al , he could sense Elena's friends prickling, the hairs on the back of their necks rising, as some subconscious voice in them noted that he was not like them, adding it to al the other little differences he couldn't control, and thereby concluding he was wrong.
Mrs. Flowers fil ed his cup and sat back, satisfied. Picking up her knitting - something pink and fluffy - she smiled. "It's so nice to have al you young people gathered together here," she commented. "Such a lovely group of children."
Glancing at the others, Stefan had to wonder whether Mrs. Flowers was being gently sarcastic.
Alaric and Meredith had returned from the hospital, where her injury had been diagnosed as a mild sprain and taped up by the emergency room nurse. Meredith's usual y serene face was tight, probably at least partial y because of the pain and her irritation at knowing she'd have to stay off her foot for a couple of days.
And partial y, Stefan suspected, because of where she was sitting. For some reason, when Alaric had helped her hobble into the living room and over to the couch, he had parked her directly next to Celia.
Stefan didn't consider himself an expert on romance -
after al , he'd lived for hundreds of years and fal en in love only twice, and his romance with Katherine had been a disaster - but even he couldn't miss the tension between Meredith and Celia. He wasn't sure whether Alaric was as oblivious to it as he seemed or whether he was pretending obliviousness in the hope that the situation would blow over. Celia had changed into an elegant white sundress and sat flipping through a journal titled Forensic Anthropology, looking cool and composed. Meredith was, in contrast, unusual y grimy and smudged, her beautiful features and smooth olive skin marred by tiredness and pain. Alaric had taken a chair next to the couch.
Celia, ignoring Meredith, leaned across her toward Alaric.
"I think you might find this interesting," she said to him.
"It's an article on the dental patterns in mummified bodies found on an island quite near Unmei no Shima."
Meredith shot Celia a nasty look. "Oh, yes," she said quietly. "Teeth, how fascinating." Celia's mouth flattened into a