He swiveled to see behind him, feeling the balmy summer night all around him - and saw nothing.
The needles of some conifer. Nothing flying about. Nothing crawling on them.
All right then. It must have been a conifer needle. But it certainly did hurt. And the pain got worse with time, not better.
A suicidal bee? Damon felt the back of his neck carefully. No venom sack, no stinger. Just a tiny squishy lump that hurt.
A moment later his attention was called back to the window.
He wasn't sure exactly what was going on but he could feel the sudden buzzing of Power around the sleeping Caroline, like a high-tension wire. Several days ago, it had drawn him to this place, but once
he'd arrived he couldn't seem to find the source.
The clock ticked 4:40 and beeped an alarm. Caroline woke and swatted it across the room.
Lucky girl, Damon thought, with wicked appreciation. If I were a rogue human instead of a vampire, then your virtue - presuming you've any left - might be in danger. Fortunately for you, I had to give up all that sort of thing nearly half a millennium ago.
Damon flashed a smile at nothing in particular, held it for a twentieth of a second, and then turned it off, his black eyes going cold. He looked back into the open window.
Yes...he'd always felt that his idiot younger brother Stefan didn't appreciate Caroline Forbes enough. There was no doubt that the girl was worth looking at: long, golden-brown limbs, a shapely body, and bronze-colored hair that fell around her face in waves. And then there was her mind. Naturally skewed, vengeful, spiteful. Delicious. For instance, if he wasn't mistaken, she was working with little voodoo dolls on her desk in there.
Terrific.
Damon liked to see the creative arts at work.
The alien Power still buzzed, and still he couldn't get a fix on it. Was it inside - in thegirl ? Surely not.
Caroline was hastily grabbing for what looked like a handful of silken green cobwebs. She stripped her T-shirt off and - almost too fast for the vampire eye to see - had herself dressed in lingerie that made her look like a jungle princess. She stared intently at her own reflection in a stand-alone full-length mirror.
Now, whatcan you be waiting for, little girl? Damon wondered.
Well - he might as well keep a low profile. There was a dark flutter, one ebony feather fell to the ground, and then there was nothing but an exceptionally large crow sitting in the tree.
Damon watched intently from one bright bird-eye as Caroline moved forward suddenly as if she'd gotten an electric jolt, lips parted, her gaze on what seemed to be her own reflection.
Then she smiled at it in greeting.
Damon could pinpoint the source of Power now. It was inside the mirror. Not in the samedimension as the mirror, certainly, but contained inside it.
Caroline was behaving - oddly. She tossed back her long bronze hair so that it fell in magnificent disarray down her back; she wet her lips and smiled as if at a lover. When she spoke, Damon could hear her quite clearly.
"Thank you. But you're late today."
There was still no one but her in the bedroom, and Damon could hear no answer. But the lips of the Caroline in the mirror were not moving in synch with the real girl's lips.
Bravo! he thought, always willing to appreciate a new trick on humans. Well done, whoever you are!
Lip-reading the mirror girl's words, he caught something aboutsorry . Andlovely .
Damon cocked his head.
Caroline's reflection was saying, "...you don'thave to...after today."
The real Caroline answered huskily. "But what if I can't fool them?"
And the reflection: "...have help. Don't worry, rest easy..."
"Okay. And nobody will get, like,fatally hurt, right? I mean, we're not talking about death - forhumans ."
The reflection: "Why should we...?"
Damon smiled inwardly. How many times had he heard exchanges likethat before? As a spider himself, he knew: First you got your fly into the parlor; then you reassured her; and before she knew it, you could have anything from her, until you didn'tneed her any longer.
And then - his black eyes glittered - it was time for a new fly.
Now Caroline's hands were writhing in her lap. "Just as long as you really - you know. What you promised. You really mean it about loving me?"
"...trust me. I'll take care of you - and your enemies, too. I've already begun..."
Suddenly Caroline stretched, and it was a stretch that boys at Robert E. Lee High School would have paid to watch. "That's what I want to see," she said. "I'm justso sick of hearing about Elena this, Stefan that...and now it's going to start all over."
Caroline broke off abruptly, as if someone had hung up on her on the phone and she'd only just realized it. For a moment her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. Then, slowly, she relaxed. Her eyes remained on the mirror, and one hand lifted until it was resting lightly on her stomach. She stared at it and slowly her features seemed to soften, to melt into an expression of apprehension and anxiety.
But Damon hadn't taken his eyes off the mirror for an instant. Normal mirror, normal mirror, normal mirror - l¨¤ era! Just at the last moment, as Caroline turned away, a flash of red.
Flames?
Now, whatcould be going on? he thought lazily, fluttering as he transformed from a sleek crow back into a drop-dead gorgeous young man lounging in a high branch of the tree. Certainly the mirror-creature wasn't from around Fell's Church. But it sounded as if it meant to make trouble for his brother, and a fragile, beautiful smile touched Damon's lips for a second.
There was nothing he loved more than to watch self-righteous, sanctimonious, I'm-better-than-you-cos-I-don't-drink-human-blood Stefan get in trouble.
The teenagers of Fell's Church - and some of the adults - regarded the tale of Stefan Salvatore and their local beauty Elena Gilbert as a modern Romeo-and-Juliet story. She had given her life to save his when they'd both been captured by a maniac, and afterward he had died of a broken heart. There were even whispers that Stefan had been notquite human...but something else. A demon lover that Elena had died to redeem.