“Certainly, certainly,” Professor Campbel said cheerful y. “Come to my office hours, and I’l tel you al about our hijinks back in the old days. I’m there every Monday and Friday from three to five, and I’l put out a welcome mat for you. Metaphorical y speaking, of course.
Serve you some of the horrible department coffee.”
“Thank you, Professor Campbel ,” Elena said. “I’d love that.”
“Cal me James,” he said. “It’s nothing at al . Anything I can do to make you feel at home here at Dalcrest.” He cocked his head to one side and looked at her quizzical y, his eyes as bright and curious as a smal animal’s. “After al , as the daughter of Elizabeth and Thomas, you must be a very special girl.”
The big black crow outside the open lecture-room window paced back and forth, clenching and unclenching its powerful talons around the branch on which it was perched.
Damon wanted to transform back into his vampire self, climb through the window, and have a quick but effective interrogation session with that professor.
But Elena wouldn’t like that.
She was so naive, dammit.
Yes, yes, she was his lovely, bril iant, clever princess, but she was ridiculously naive, too; they al were. Damon irritably preened his ruffled feathers back into iridescent sleekness. They were just so young. At this point, Damon was able to look back and say that no one learned anything in life, not for her first hundred years or so. You had to be immortal, real y, to have the time to learn to look out for yourself properly.
Take Elena, gazing so trustful y at her professor. After al she’d been through, al she’d seen, she was so easy to lul into complacency—al the man had to do was dangle the promise of information about her parents in front of her, and she’d happily trot off to meet him in his office whenever he suggested. Sentimental ninny. What could the man possibly tel her that would be of any real importance? Nothing could bring her parents back.
The professor wasn’t a danger, most likely. Damon had probed him with his Power, felt nothing but the flickering of a human mind, no dark surge of answering Power coming from the little man, no swel of disturbing or violent emotion.
But he couldn’t be sure, could he? Damon’s Power couldn’t detect every monster, couldn’t predict every twist of the human heart.
But the real problem here was Elena. She’d forgotten, clearly, that she’d lost al her Power, that the Guardians had stripped her back to being just a vulnerable, fragile mortal girl again. She thought, wrongly, that she could protect herself.
They were al like that. Damon had been infuriated at first to slowly realize that he was starting to feel like al of them were his humans. Not just his lovely Elena and the little redbird, but all of them, the witch Mrs. Flowers and the hunter and that meathead of a boy as wel . Those last two didn’t even like him, but he felt compel ed to keep an eye on them, to prevent them from damaging themselves through their innate stupidity.
Damon wasn’t the one who wanted to be here. No, the
“let’s al join hands and dance off to further our educations together” idea wasn’t his, and he’d treated it with the proper scorn. He wasn’t Stefan. He wasn’t going to waste his time pretending to be one of the mortal children.
But he had found, to his dismay, that he didn’t want to lose them, either.
It was embarrassing. Vampires were not pack animals, not like humans. He wasn’t supposed to care what happened to them. These children should be prey, and nothing more.
But being dead and coming back, fighting the jealousy phantom and letting go of the sick envy and misery that had held him captive ever since he was a human, had changed Damon. With that hard bal of hate gone from the middle of his chest, where it had lived for so long, he found himself feeling lighter. Almost as if he … cared.
Embarrassing or not, it felt surprisingly comfortable, having this connection to the little group of humans. He’d have died—again—rather than admit it aloud, though.
He clacked his beak a few times as Elena said good-bye to her professor and left the classroom. Then Damon spread his wings and flapped down to a tree next to the building’s entrance.
Nearby, a thin young man was posting a flyer with a girl’s picture on another tree, and Damon flew over to get a closer look. Missing Student, the top of the flyer said, and below the picture were details of a nighttime disappearance: no clues, no leads, no evidence, no idea where nineteen-year-old Taylor Harrison might be.
Suspicion of foul play. The promise of a reward from her anxious family for information leading to her safe return.
Damon let out a rough caw. There was something wrong here. He’d known it already—had felt something a little off about this campus as soon as he’d arrived two days ago, although he hadn’t been able to quite put his finger on it. Why else would he have been so worried about his princess?
Elena came out of the building and started across the quad, tucking her long golden hair behind her ears, oblivious to the black crow that swooped from tree to tree above her. Damon was going to find out what was going on here, and he was going to do it before whatever it was touched any of his humans.
Especial y Elena.
8
“Ugh, I don’t think there’s a single thing on the hot-lunch bar I’d ever consider eating,” Elena said to Stefan. “Half the stuff I can’t even identify.” Stefan watched patiently as she passed on to the salad bar.
“This isn’t much better,” she said, lifting a watery spoonful of cottage cheese and letting it slop back into the container for emphasis. “I thought the food at col ege would be more edible than in our high school cafeteria, but apparently I was wrong.”
Stefan made a vague sound of agreement and looked around for a place for them to sit. He wasn’t eating. Human food didn’t have much taste for him now, and he’d used his Power to cal down a dove to his balcony that morning. That had provided enough blood to hold him until the evening, when he would need to hunt again.
Once Elena final y made herself a salad, he led her to the empty table he’d spotted.
She kissed him before she sat down and a shiver of delight ran through him as their minds touched. The familiar link between them slid into place, and he felt Elena’s joy, her contentment at being with him and at their new, nearly normal, lives. Below this, a touch of excitement fizzed through her, and Stefan sent a questioning thought between them, wondering what had happened since they’d seen each other that morning.
Elena broke the kiss and answered his unspoken question.
“Professor Campbel , my history professor, knew my parents when they were in col ege,” she said. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were bright, and Stefan could sense how big this was for her. “He was a real y good friend of theirs. He can tel me stories about them, parts of their lives I never knew before.”
“That’s great,” Stefan said, pleased for her. “How was the class?”
“It was al right,” Elena said, beginning to eat her salad.
“We’re talking about the colonial days for the first couple of weeks.” She looked up, her fork poised in midair. “How about you? What was your philosophy class like?”
“Fine.” Stefan paused. Fine wasn’t real y what he meant. It had been strange to be sitting in a col ege classroom again. He’d attended col ege a few times during his long history, seen the changing fads in education. At first, his classmates had been a select number of wealthy young men, and now there was a more diverse mix of boys and girls. But there was an essential sameness to al those experiences. The professor lecturing, the students either bored or eager. A certain shal owness of thought, a shy ducking away from exposing deeper feelings.
Damon was right. Stefan didn’t belong here; he was just playing a role, again. Kil ing some of his limitless time. But Elena—he looked at her, her shining blue eyes fixed on him