Free The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Nightfall by L. J. Smith Page A

Stefan. Yes, they were welcome. They went downstairs and picked up Matt.
    At the boardinghouse, Elena didn’t repeat the kissing ritual of the previous day—to Matt’s obviousdisappointment. But she was delighted with the new clothes, although not for any reason that the old Elena would have been. Floating three feet off the floor, she kept holding them to her face and taking deep, happy sniffs, and then beaming at Meredith, although when Bonnie picked up a T-shirt, she couldn’t smell anything but the fabric softener they’d used. Not even Meredith’s Beach cologne.
    “I’m sorry,” Stefan said helplessly as Elena went into a sudden sneezing fit, cuddling a sky-blue top in her arms as if it were a kitten. But his face was tender, and Meredith, while looking slightly embarrassed, reassured him that it was nice to be so appreciated.
    “She can tell where they come from,” Stefan explained. “She won’t wear anything that’s come from a sweatshop.”
    “I only buy from places listed on the Sweatshop-Free Clothing website,” Meredith said simply. “Bonnie and I have something to tell you,” she added. While she recounted Bonnie’s late-night prophecy, Bonnie took Elena into the bathroom and helped her change into the shorts, which fit, and the sky-blue top, which almost fit, being just a little long.
    The color set off Elena’s tangled but still glorious hair perfectly, but when Bonnie tried to get her to look in the hand mirror that she had brought—the old mirror’s shards had all been cleared away—Elena seemed as confused as a puppy held up to see its own reflection. Bonnie keptholding the mirror in front of her face, and Elena kept popping out on one side or another from behind it, like a baby playing peek-a-boo. Bonnie had to be satisfied with a good brushing out of the tangles in that golden mass, which Stefan clearly didn’t know how to handle. When Elena’s hair was finally silky and smooth, Bonnie proudly took her out to be shown off.
    And was promptly sorry. The other three were in deep, and it looked like grim, conversation. Reluctantly, Bonnie let go of Elena who immediately flew—literally—into Stefan’s lap, and joined them herself.
    “Of course we understand,” Meredith was saying. “Even before Caroline went off her rocker, what other choice was there, ultimately? But—”
    “What ‘what other choice is there’?” Bonnie said, as she sat down on Stefan’s bed beside him. “What are you guys talking about?”
    There was a long pause, and then Meredith got up to put an arm around Bonnie. “We were talking about why Stefan and Elena need to leave Fell’s Church—need to go far away.”
    At first Bonnie didn’t react—she knew she should be feeling something, but she was too deep in shock to access what it was. When words came to her, the only thing she could hear herself saying stupidly was, “Go away ? Why?”
    “You saw why—here, yesterday,” Meredith said, her dark eyes filled with pain, her face for once showing theuncontrollable anguish she must be feeling. But for the moment, no anguish meant anything to Bonnie but her own.
    And it was coming now, like an avalanche burying her in red-hot snow. In ice that burned. Somehow she struggled out of it long enough to say, “Caroline won’t do anything. She signed a vow. She knows that to break it—especially when—when you-know-who signed it, too…”
    Meredith must have told Stefan about the crow, because he sighed and shook his head, gently fending off Elena, who was trying to look up into his face. Clearly she sensed the unhappiness in the group, but just as clearly she couldn’t really understand what was causing it.
    “The last person I want around Caroline is my brother.” Stefan pushed his dark hair out of his eyes irritably, as if he had been reminded of how much they looked alike. “And I don’t think Meredith’s threat about the sorority sisters is going to work, either. She’s too far gone into