into blood exchange. Once might be enough."
"So I'm not a vampire? Now? Not any kind? Are there different kinds?"
Stefan answered seriously. "I've never heard of 'different kinds'of vampires in my life, except for Old Ones. I can tel you that you don't have a vampire's aura. What about your teeth? Can you make your canines sharp? Usual y it's best to test over human flesh. Not your own."
Elena promptly stuck out her arm, wrist vein-side up.
Meredith, eyes closed in concentration, made a great effort, which Elena felt through Stefan. Then Meredith opened her eyes, mouth also open for a dental inspection. Elena stared at her canines. They looked a little bit sharp, but so did anybody's, didn't they?
Careful y Elena reached a fingertip in. She touched one of Meredith's canines.
Tiny pinch.
Startled, Elena pul ed back. She stared at her finger where a very smal drop of blood was well ing up.
Everyone watched it, mesmerized. Then Elena's mouth said without pausing to consult her brain, "You have kitten teeth."
The next moment Meredith had brushed Elena aside and was pacing wildly al around the kitchen. "I won't be one! I won't be! I'm a hunter-slayer, not a vampire! I'l kill myself if I'm a vampire!"She was deadly serious. Elena felt Stefan feeling it, the quick thrust of the stave between her ribs and into the heart. She would go on the Internet to find the right area. Ironwood and white ash piercing her heart, Stilling it forever...sealing off the evil that was Meredith Sulez.
Be calm! Be calm! Stefan's Influence flooded into her.
Meredith was not calm.
"But before that I have to kil my brother."She flung down a photograph on Mrs. Flowers's kitchen table. "It turns out that Klaus or someone has been sending these since Cristian was four - on my real birthday. For years! And in every picture you could see his vampire teeth. Not 'kitten teeth.'And then they stopped coming when I was about ten.
But they had shown him growing up! With pointed teeth! And last year this one came."
Elena leaped for the photo, but it was closer to Stefan and he was faster. He stared in astonishment. "Growing up?"he said. She could feel how shaken he was - and how envious.
No one had given him that option.
Elena looked at the pacing Meredith and around at Stefan.
"But it's impossible, isn't it?"she said. "I thought that if you were bitten, that was it, right? You never got any older - or bigger."
"That's what I thought too. But Klaus was an Old One and who knows what they can do?"Stefan answered.
Damon will be furious when he finds out, Elena told Stefan privately, reaching for the picture even though she'd already seen it through Stefan's eyes. Damon was very bitter about Stefan's height advantage - about anyone's height advantage.
Elena brought the picture to Mrs. Flowers and looked at it with her. It showed an extremely handsome boy, with hair that was just Meredith's dark color. He looked like Meredith in his facial structure and olive skin. He was wearing a motorcycle jacket and gloves, but no helmet, and he was laughing merrily with a ful set of very white teeth. You could easily see that the canines were long and pointed.
Elena looked back and forth from Meredith to the picture.
The only difference she could see was that this boy's eyes seemed lighter. Everything else screamed "twins."
"First I kil him,"Meredith repeated tiredly. "Then I kil myself."She stumbled back to the table and sat, almost knocking over her chair.
Elena hovered near her, snatching two mugs from the table, to prevent Meredith's clumsy arm from sweeping them to the floor.
Meredith...clumsy! Elena had never seen Meredith ungraceful or clumsy before. It was frightening. Was it somehow due to being - at least partly - a vampire? The kitten teeth? Elena turned apprehensive eyes on Stefan, felt Stefan's own bewilderment.
Then both of them, without consultation, turned to look at Mrs.
Flowers. She gave them an apologetic little-old-lady smile.
"Gotta kil ...find him, kil him...first,"Meredith was whispering as her dark head lowered to the table, to the pil ow of her arms. "Find him...where? Grandpa...where? Cristian...my brother..."
Elena listened silently until there was only soft breathing to be heard.
"You drugged her?"she whispered to Mrs. Flowers.
"It was what Ma ma thought best. She's a strong, healthy girl.
It won't harm her to sleep from now through the night.
Because I'm sorry to tel you, but we have another problem right now."
Elena glanced at Stefan, saw fear dawning on his face, and demanded, "What?"Absolutely nothing was coming