Elena frowned. It didn’t really sound like Damon to her. The Damon she knew liked clean, modern lines. And he loved luxury. He didn’t stay anywhere long, but the houses and apartments she’d seen Damon live in were rich and elegant. He filled them with every possible comfort but almost nothing personal, nothing he wouldn’t be willing to leave behind. He didn’t court the trimmings of death.
Stefan glanced down at her with a slight, bitter smile. “How well do you know my brother really, Elena? You see what he wants you to see.”
Elena shook her head, but didn’t answer. Stefan had a point. If she really had met Damon just a few weeks ago, how well could she have known him?
Elena’s eyes lingered on the ruined church. It was half-collapsed, most of the roof fallen in. Only three of its walls were standing.
Katherine was underneath there, in the old church’s crypt. She might be watching them at this very moment. There was no trace of fog, no cold wind, no blue-eyed white kitten prowling in the dead grass around the church. If Katherine was there, she was lying low, content to watch for now.
When Stefan turned toward the church, Elena nudged him away. “Let’s look in the mausoleums,” she said.
The grim mausoleums made of granite and iron scattered around the old churchyard. Each housed the bones of a family of original settlers of Fell’s Church. They were dark and forbidding now, overgrown with ivy, their flagstone paths pitted by time. One had the Gilbert name, Elena’s father’s family, but she didn’t know much about the people whose bones laid there, except that one had been a young soldier killed in the Civil War.
Elena and Stefan slipped into an easy routine, working their way clockwise from one mausoleum to the next around the churchyard. Elena would stand lookout while Stefan forced each narrow door.
There was no sign of Damon in the Gilbert mausoleum, only three gray stone coffins and a dusty vase, which must have once been used for flowers. The space inside was claustrophobically narrow, its air stale, and Elena was glad to back out again after one quick look.
Surely if Damon were living here, he would have chosen her family’s mausoleum, as some sort of elaborate tease. Elena stumbled as they moved on to the next small tomb, and Stefan steadied her. “Careful,” he said. “The ground’s uneven.”
Elena cast a glance across to the newer part of the graveyard. “I’m more worried about someone catching us vandalizing graves than I am about tripping,” she said.
Stefan cocked his head, sending Power out around the graveyard. “There’s no one here,” he said. He looked drawn and tired. He probably hadn’t fed recently enough to be able to Influence anyone into forgetting about them if they were caught breaking into the tombs.
Elena stood by the next mausoleum and looked up at the ruins of the church as she listened to the grating noise of Stefan forcing the tomb’s door. At least she had the rest of the vervain in her pocket. If Katherine came out of the catacombs, she wouldn’t be able to Influence Elena.
“There,” Stefan said with satisfaction. Elena stopped staring at the church and jostled her way in beside him.
It was as gray and dusty as the others had been, but the tops of the two tombs inside had been swept clean. On one sat a pile of neatly folded dark clothing. Elena rifled through it: all black, all designer, all clearly expensive. Some of them she had seen Damon wearing. The other tomb held a folded blanket and a thin leather bound book.
Elena picked up the book. It was in Italian, and seemed to be a book of verse. “Stefan, what—” she began. A loud groan of rusted metal interrupted her, and, before she could move, the door to the tomb slammed shut. A huge thud followed, something terribly heavy slamming into the outside of the mausoleum. The small building shook, and Elena screamed, a high, thin noise.
Then there was silence. With the door closed, it was pitch-black inside the tomb. For a moment, Elena could hear nothing but the pounding of her own heart. From the other side of the tomb, Stefan swore.
“Stefan?” Elena asked, her voice rising.
Starting toward Stefan and the tomb’s door, she banged her elbow hard against something in the dark. “Ouch,” she said, and rubbed at it, tears prickling at the back of her eyes.
“Keep still,” Stefan said. She didn’t even hear him coming toward her, but suddenly he was touching her gently, running his hands over her arm.
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” he told her. “You’ll have a bruise, though.”
“Are we stuck in here?” Elena’s voice wavered, despite herself. She was suddenly, terrifyingly aware of the dead all around her. The tomb she stood beside was full of moldering bones.
There was a short pause, and then Stefan spoke, sounding grimmer than before. “Damon’s shut us in. I tried the door, but I can’t force it. There must be something jammed up against it, holding it closed.”
“Oh.” For the first time, Elena noticed how cold it was inside the mausoleum, the cold of a stone place that never felt the sun. She shivered.
“We’ll find a way out of here,” Stefan said, his voice lightening. “Or someone will come.” Suddenly, his hands were around her waist and he lifted her gently. In a second, she was sitting on the cold top of the tomb, and Stefan was beside her, wrapping his jacket around her shoulders.
For a while, they sat in silence. Stefan was reassuringly solid beside her and, after a while, Elena let herself lean slightly against him.
Who would come for them? It was rare that someone came into this part of the cemetery, even rarer after dark, and night was coming. Elena felt a clutch of panic in her chest, and her breath got shorter. She didn’t want to stay here.