punished."And even though her voice was sweet as pecan pie, Bonnie somehow knew that the harsh voice in the night shouting at them to find a pal et and stay on it, had been this same woman.
And now there was a strong hand under her chin and Bonnie couldn't keep it from forcing her head up, or from covering her mouth when she screamed.
In front of her, with the delicate pointed ears of a fox, and the long sweeping black tail of a fox but otherwise looking human, looking like a regular guy wearing jeans and a sweater, was Shinichi. And in his golden eyes she could see, twisting and turning, a little scarlet flame that just matched the red on the tip of his tail and the hair that fel across his forehead.
Shinichi. He was here. Of course he could travel through the dimensions; he Stillhad a ful star bal that none of Elena's group had ever found as well as those magical keys Elena had told Bonnie about. Bonnie remembered the horrible night when trees, actual trees, had turned into something that could understand and obey him. About how four of them each grabbed one of her arms and legs and pul ed, as if they were planning to pul her apart. She could feel tears leaking out behind her shut eyelids.
And the Old Wood. He'd control ed every aspect of it, every creeper to trip you, every tree to fal in front of your car. Until Elena had blasted al but that one thicket of the Old Wood, it had been ful of terrifying insect-like creatures Stefan cal ed malach.
But now Bonnie's hands were behind her back and she heard something fasten with a very final-sounding click.
No...oh, please no...
But her hands were definitely fixed in place. And then someone - an ogre or a vampire - picked her up as the lovely woman gave Shinichi a smal key off a key ring ful of identical keys. Shinichi handed this to a big ogre whose fingers were so large that they eclipsed it. And then Bonnie, who was screaming, was quickly whisked up four flights of stairs and a heavy door thunked shut behind her. The ogre carrying her fol owed Shinichi, whose sleek scarlet-tipped tail swung jauntily from a hole in his jeans, back and forth, back and forth. Bonnie thought: That's satisfaction. He thinks he's won this already.
But unless Damon real y had forgotten her completely, he would hurt Shinichi for this. Maybe he would kil him. It was an oddly comforting thought. It was even ro -
No, it's not romantic, you nitwit! You have to find a way to get out of this mess! Death is not romantic, it's horrible!
They had reached the final doors at the end of the hal .
Shinichi turned right and walked al the way down a long corridor. There the ogre used the key to open a door.
The room had an adjustable overhead gaslight. It was dim but Shinichi said, "Can we have a little il umination, please?"in a false polite voice, and the other ogre hurried and turned the light up to interrogation-lamp-in-your-face level.
The room was a sort of bedroom-den combination, the kind you'd get at a decent hotel. It had a couch and some chairs on the upper level. There was a window, closed, on the left side of the room. There was also a window on the right side of the room, where al the other rooms should be in a line.
This window had no curtains or blinds that could be drawn and it reflected Bonnie's pale face back at her. She knew at once what it was, a two-way mirror, so that people in the room behind it could see into this room but not be seen. The couch and chairs were positioned to face it.
Beyond the sitting room, off to her left, was the bed. It wasn't a very fancy bed, just white covers that looked pink, because there was a real window on that side that was almost in a line with the sun, sitting as it always was, on the horizon. Right now, Bonnie hated it more than ever before because it turned every light-colored object in the room pink, rose, or outright red. The bow at her own bodice was deep pink now.
She was going to die saturated with the color of blood.
Something on some deeper level told her that her mind was thinking of such things as distractions, that even