Free The War of Roses by L. J. Smith Page A

Think.  We’ve looked everywhere—every place we went, every place we can even think of, except the Celestial Court and we know that Damon didn’t go there .  What are we missing?  We’re missing something.
    I won’t let you be dead and gone, she thought toward Damon.  I won’t let you be floating in space. . . .
    But other lines of poetry were flashing through her mind.  Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: and this same flower that smiles today tomorrow will be dying.   Robert Herrick. A flower unplucked is but left to the falling, and nothing is gained by not gathering roses. . . . Robert Frost.  Three Roberts in a row, and all of them warning that roses were short-lived . . .
    But not souls , Elena thought more fiercely than ever.  Damon, you have an immortal soul—I’ve seen it!  I’ll find it somehow!
    What am I missing?
    The others were talking in quiet voices, but Elena’s concentration blocked them out.  She found herself glaring at the globe from Stefan’s room, at the beautiful but useless lapis lazuli oceans and the impractical continents of smoky quartz, black opal, chalcedony and malachite; at the jade green islands and the moonstone and abalone snows of the polar ice caps. 
    Something . . . something was nagging at her.
    She found herself staring at the base of the globe and then at the ice caps once more.  The base was round and sturdy, the color of steel.  Base . . . abalone.  Base . . . moonstone.  Moonstone.  Moonstone . . .
    Moon stone.
    Moon . . .
    Elena drew in her breath suddenly.  No, that couldn’t be it.  That was insane.  Impossible.  Too easy.  It was just . . .
    S he reached forward, startling the others, and grabbed the globe, picking it up with both hands.  Then she put it down again and took the atlas and moved it to a clear area of the kitchen table.  She picked up the books that were holding open the vellum page that had the path to the Nether World scrawled on it.
    “Elena, what are you doing?” Stefan’s green eyes were intent.
    Elena shook her head.  She rolled up the vellum page tog ether with the page that represented the Dark Dimension.  There was a blank piece of vellum underneath.  Elena fixed the blank vellum in place with books at the corners.  
    Then she set the globe squarely in the middle.
    “What?  What?” Bonnie almost wailed.  “That globe is no good, Elena, you know that—”
    “I need a pen,” Elena murmured, fumbling in the messenger pouch she carried now instead of a purse.  She’d taken it off when she’d first arrived this morning and it now rested on the kitchen table next to Bonnie’s.  “I have an idea.”  She found a pen.
    “What are you—talking about?” Bonnie had to sniffle in the middle of the sentence.  “That globe—whatever you’re thinking—it’s just impossible to work with, and . . .”
    Elena shook her head. Using the pen, she traced a large circle on the white paper by going around the base of the globe with the pen.
    Then she took the gemstone globe and put it on the floor.   She marked an X approximately in the middle of the circle she’d traced.
    Bonnie looked at the stark circle on the paper in front of her in bewilderment.  “What’s that even supposed to be?” she demanded as Elena sat down again.
    “It’s half of the Nether World moon,” Elena said.  Her heart was pounding hard in her chest and throat and fingertips.  “It’s blank because the Tree is gone, but that X is for Damon’s body.  I remember that there were pools of water in several places, but I can’t draw them and I don’t think they matter.”  She dared to look at Mrs. Flowers as she said this, and she realized that she was flushed with emotion.
    Mrs. Flowers was looking pensive.  She murmured, “I’ll get us some fresh tea,” and fluttered off.
    Elena’s eyes went to Stefan’s.  He was looking more than thoughtful.  He was looking startled and shocked—electrified,