"Hair in tiny curls all over your forehead, cloak that covers everything from neck to toes, lipstick like..." He stared again. His mouth twitched as if he were being compelled to fit it to hers.
"And it's time to go!" Elena caroled, hastily getting into the carriage. She felt very happy, although she understood why freed slaves would never wear anything like a bracelet again.
She was still happy when they reached the Shi no Shi - that large building that seemed to combine a prison with a training facility for gladiators.
And she was still happy as the guards at the large Shi no Shi checkpoint let them into the building without showing any signs of ill feeling. But then, it was hard to say if the cloak had any effect on them. They were demons: sullen, mauve-skinned, bullock-steady.
She noticed something that was at first a shock and then a river of hope inside her. The front lobby of the building had a door in one side that was like the door in the side of the depot/slaveshop: always kept shut; strange symbols above; people walking up to it in different costumes and announcing a destination before turning the key and opening the door.
In other words: a dimensional door. Right here in Stefan's prison. God alone knew how many guards would be after them if they tried to use it, but it was something to keep in mind.
The guards on the lower floors of the Shi no Shi building, in what was most definitely a dungeon, had clear and obnoxious reactions to Elena and her party. They were some smaller species of demon - imps, maybe, Elena thought - and they gave the visitors a hard time over everything. Damon had to bribe them to be allowed in to the area where Stefan's cell was, to go in alone, without one guard per visitor, and to allow Elena, a slave, to go in to see a free vampire.
And even when Damon had given them a small fortune to get past these obstacles, they sniggered and made harsh guttural gurglings in their throats. Elena didn't trust them.
She was correct.
At a corridor where Elena knew from her out of body experiences they should have turned left, instead they went straight through. They passed another set of guards, who almost collapsed from sniggering.
Oh - God - are they taking us to see Stefan's dead body? Elena wondered suddenly. Then it was Sage who really helped her. He put out a large arm and bodily held her up, until she found her legs again.
They went on walking, deeper into what was a filthy and stinking stone-floored dungeon now. Then abruptly they turned right.
Elena's heart raced on before them. It was saying wrong, wrong, wrong, even before they got to the last cell in the line. The cell was completely different from Stefan's old cell. It was surrounded, not by bars, but by a sort of curlicued chicken wire that was lined with sharp spikes. No way to hand in a bottle of Black Magic. No way to get the bottle top in position to pour into a waiting mouth on the other side. No room, even, to get a finger or the mouth of a canteen through for the cellmate to suck. And the cell itself wasn't filthy, but it was bare of everything except a supine Stefan. No food, no water, no bed to hide anything in, no straw. Just Stefan.
Elena screamed and had no idea if she screamed words or just a formless sound of anguish. She threw herself into the cell - or tried to. Her hands grabbed onto curls of steel as sharp as razor that caused blood to well up instantly wherever they touched, and then Damon, who had the fastest reactions, was pulling her back.
And then he just pushed past her and stared. He stared open-mouthed at his younger brother - a gray-faced, skeletal, barely breathing young man, who looked like a child lost in his rumpled, stained, threadbare prison uniform. Damon raised a hand, as if he'd forgotten the barrier already - and Stefan flinched. Stefan seemed not to know or recognize any of them. He peered more closely at the drops of blood left on the razor-sharp fencing where Elena had grasped it, sniffed, and then, as if something had penetrated the fog of his bafflement, looked around dully. Stefan looked up at Damon, whose cloak had fallen, and then, like a baby's, Stefan's gaze wandered on.
Damon made a choking sound and turned and, knocking anyone in his way aside, ran the other way down the corner. If he was hoping that enough guards would follow him that his allies could get Stefan out, he was wrong. A few followed, like monkeys, calling out insults. The rest stayed put, behind Sage.
Meanwhile, Elena's mind was churning and churning out plans. Finally she turned to Sage. "Use all the money we have plus this," she said, and she reached under her cloak for her canary diamond necklace - over two dozen thumb-sized gems - "and call to me if we need more. Get me half an hour with him. Twenty minutes, then!" - as Sage began to shake his head. "Stall them, somehow; get me at least twenty minutes. I'll think of something if it kills me."
After a moment Sage looked her in the eyes and nodded. "I will."
Then Elena looked at Dr. Meggar pleadingly. Did he have something - did something exist - that would help?
Dr. Meggar's eyebrows went down, then their inner sides went up. It was a look of grief, of despair. But then he frowned and whispered, "There's something new - an injection that's said to help in dire cases. I could try it."
Elena did her best not to fall at his feet. "Please! Please try it! Please!"
"It won't help beyond a couple of days - "
"It won't need to! We'll get him out by then!"
"All right." Sage had by now herded all the guards away, saying, "I'm a dealer in gems and there's something you all should see."
Dr. Meggar opened his bag and took out of it a syringe. "Wooden needle," he said with a wan smile as he filled it with a clear red liquid from a vial. Elena had taken another syringe and she examined it eagerly as Dr. Meggar coaxed Stefan by imitation to put his arm up to the bars. At last Stefan did as Dr. Meggar wished - only to jump away with a cry of pain as a syringe was plunged into his arm and stinging liquid injected.