Meredith went back to Roy. He was still lying where Trinity had dropped him, his tall, broad body looking small and broken.
Meredith turned him over gently and checked his pulse. Roy flopped over unresistingly, a dead weight, his throat torn and bloody. How had Solomon's invasion of her body turned Trinity into a vampire? Meredith didn't understand it, but the evidence was right here before her. Trinity was a vampire-and like all the Old Ones, one who had nothing to fear from daylight.
Poor Roy, Meredith thought. Had he been happy to find Trinity, before she turned on him? She placed her hands on his chest and began CPR, pushing in a steady rhythm, lowering her mouth to his to force oxygen into his lungs. Even though she was pretty sure it was pointless, she had to try.
When Stefan and Elena had argued earlier over Trinity's fate, Meredith hadn't known what to think. But now she knew Stefan was right.
Trinity hadn't known who Roy was, hadn't really remembered Meredith. They'd both just been hunters to her, targets Solomon had been aware of all along. The girl who had been their friend, who had hunted beside them, was gone.
Chapter 24
"No matter what happens, we have to try to hang on to normal," Elena said.
Matt nodded. Personally, this was the last thing he wanted to be doing. But it was typical Elena: When things were at their worst, she whistled in the dark. He just wished Elena's way of whistling in the dark didn't include making Matt try on shirts.
"That one looks nice," she went on, giving him a friendly once-over. "I know Jasmine likes green."
Matt stiffened. He hadn't told anyone about what had happened with Jasmine yet. There was too much going on for him to feel like he could bring up his personal life, and he wasn't sure he was ready to talk about it. "We broke up," he said, his voice sounding just as rough and miserable as he felt.
"Oh, no," Elena breathed. "What happened?" Then her face darkened as she answered the question for him. "It's because she finally found out the truth about everything, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Matt said quietly. "She didn't want all that to be part of her life."
"I don't blame her." Elena grimaced. She bent her head and flicked distractedly through some more shirts. "It's terrifying. Remember how you felt when you found out that all of this-vampires and hunters and scary monsters in the dark-is real?" She looked up at Matt questioningly. "If you could do it all again, go back to the way things were before, would you?"
Matt flinched. We could start fresh, he heard Jasmine saying again, remembering how wide and pleading her beautiful eyes had been, and how they'd darkened in disappointment.
"I could never leave you guys in danger," he told Elena, and it was true.
Elena looked up at that. "I know you couldn't," she said, her mouth curling into a sad smile. "But I worry about you sometimes." She pulled two more shirts off the rack and shoved them into his hands. "Try on the blue one first and let me see."
In the dressing room, Matt carefully buttoned the blue shirt and smoothed it down. Elena doesn't need to worry about me, he thought. But how could he ever turn his back on his friends? It went against everything he believed in.
"Gorgeous!" Elena said when he came out in the new shirt. Her voice was cheerful, but her smile looked pasted on, too wide and toothy.
"How about you and Stefan?" Matt asked cautiously. "Today, the two of you seemed ..." Angry. "... at odds."
Elena's smile fell. "He and Jack are out there, trying to track down Trinity," she said, her voice flat. "They asked if I could trace her aura, but I refused. Not unless they're going to try to save her before they kill Solomon." She let out a long, frustrated breath. "Stefan just won't listen. He thinks he's protecting me, but I'm not helpless."
"I know," Matt said gently. "Even before you were a Guardian, you were pretty tough." Elena rewarded him with a more genuine smile, and he went to change shirts again.
When he came out, she had a lock of her silky blond hair twisted around her finger, her face thoughtful. Pushing at the rack of shirts, she said, "Can't Stefan see there's more to the world than me?"
Matt couldn't help the bubble of laughter that rose up in his throat at that. "Sorry," he said, in response to Elena's frown, "but when we were in high school, that's the last thing you would have said."
Elena had the grace to chuckle a little at that. "I wasn't that bad," she replied defensively.
"Well, I always liked you." Matt shrugged. He had more than liked her-beautiful, selfish, determined Elena. He still liked her now, but somewhere along the way, he had finally given up on loving her.
"I've changed," Elena said. "We all have. We grew up. I'm proud of who I am now." She frowned, sticking her chin out stubbornly. "And I cannot let Jack and Stefan kill Trinity without even trying to save her."
"I know, and I'll help if I can." Matt hesitated, not sure whether to say the rest of what he was thinking, and Elena cocked an inquiring eyebrow. "Just ..." He didn't quite know which words to use. "Just don't give up on Stefan, okay? You love each other, and that's ... hard to lose. I don't like seeing you fight." He thought again of Jasmine's eyes when she'd said good-bye, and his chest felt hot and tight.
Something of this must have come through in his words, because Elena looked at him knowingly, terribly sad, her lips pressed together and a deep line between her eyebrows.
To make her smile again, he held up the blue shirt. "And I'm buying the shirt."