The War of Roses Read online

  When she finished, Elena was finally able to take a deep breath and she saw that everyone around the table was doing the same.

  “Now for the atlas,” Elena said with brittle cheer.

  “Good,” Bonnie managed to say, although she was obviously having trouble sitting up straight.

  “I think only one or two pages for the moment,” Mrs. Flowers put in quickly. “Spiritual powers are like any other ability. At some point you simply do too much too quickly and they run out.”

  “Well . . . I suppose I could use a little nap,” Bonnie admitted. “Especially since we know that he’s not being tortured in hell somewhere and we need to get him out right away.”

  “Exactly,” Stefan said.

  “I mean, there’s not much rush . . . if he’s just been . . . reincarnated as some . . . somebody’s unborn baby . . .”

  Elena glanced at Stefan. He smiled at her with his eyes only, and she smiled back the same way.

  Bonnie had melted like a candle. She was slumped with her cheek pillowed on her crooked arm, which was on the table. In a moment she was breathing slowly and regularly, asleep as soundly as a baby in its cradle.

  Stefan looked at Mrs. Flowers and Elena, his eyebrows up to ask if he should carry Bonnie to a bedroom. Elena found herself shaking her head and watching Mrs. Flowers do the same. Bonnie looked consummately comfortable—like an exhausted little kitten, Elena thought with a rush of tenderness.

  Amid the tenderness, there was a tiny thread of concern. Elena didn’t want to examine it, but she couldn’t help it. It was a worry that Bonnie cared too much about Damon; that somehow she was inevitably going to get hurt.

  Or . . . maybe that I’m going to get hurt, Elena admitted truthfully. It astonished her sometimes, that Bonnie could be so much of a woman, so much more forgiving and—well, mature—than Elena was. Wasn’t it Bonnie who truly deserved, who truly had proven herself worthy of . . .

  Elena turned away sharply, startled and annoyed to feel a prickling in her eyes. She reached blindly for Stefan, who, as always, was quick to console her with strong arms and soft kisses on her hair, and without asking what she was unhappy about.

  Mrs. Flowers was tiptoeing out of the kitchen. Elena and Stefan followed, holding hands.

  “She’ll sleep for a few hours,” the old woman said when they were in the foyer of the boardinghouse. “She’ll wake up stiff, but much refreshed, and then we can begin with the atlas.”

  Stefan nodded. “Thank you for all your help,” he said. Then, more slowly, with a glance at Elena: “Do you have any more of that vellum? Because I think I could make a map of the entryway to the Nether World—not that there would be much to put on it. A lot of snow. Some rocks; some cliffs. That Silver Lake where Elena got hypothermia and nearly died. That ridiculous suspension bridge—”

  “Where Elena got terrified and nearly died,” Elena contributed wryly because Stefan would never say it. “A trail and then that cavern and the Gatehouse of the Seven Treasures, where all those doors were,” she finished.

  In a distant place Damon stirred. He had been too enthralled by this moving-picture-with-an-open-window-on-Elena’s-soul to react in any way, with pity or with pleasure. But now, suddenly, emotion returned to him.

  I’m saved, he thought. Now they just have to list where they went after the Gatehouse. It’s only logical. I’m rescued. Hooray.

  He should have known better. His little brother wasn’t known for his logical thinking, and Elena was exhausted, physically and mentally.

  “And that’s it,” Stefan said. “If you happen to have the vellum.”

  I’m not saved after all, Damon thought. I’m doomed. Alas. Woe is me.

  “Of course, my dear boy,” Mrs. Flowers said to Stefan, leading the way into a second-floor bedroom. “The vellum is here, in the closet with the rest of the art supplies. I used it because it was the biggest thing I had to draw on.”

  In the closet of what Elena had always thought of as “the dull blue room” was a collection to intrigue any amateur artist. Pastels, charcoals for quick sketching, tins of water-colors, boxes of oil paints, a palate, a container of clean brushes, blank canvases, half-finished pictures, and various sizes of poster-board were all neatly arranged and dust-free. Tucked in a corner was a thick roll of vellum.

  Stefan took three pieces, while Elena quickly chose a calligraphy kit with ink that looked as if it were still liquid and also a set of colored pencils.

  “Maybe we could use the dining room table as a flat surface to draw on—if we’re careful,” Stefan suggested, and Mrs. Flowers smiled.

  “What a good idea, my dear. Please do use it. Meanwhile, I think I might go to my own room for quick catnap.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Flowers. You certainly deserve it,” Elena said. “Stefan, could you grab some books to use to pin down the corners of the vellum so they don’t roll up?”

  Stefan hastened to the bookcase (every room in Mrs. Flowers’s house had at least one) and returned with four chunky volumes.

  “What? Oh, no!” Elena exclaimed, staring at the title on the jacketless spine of one of the books. She began to laugh helplessly, and after a moment Stefan and Mrs. Flowers joined in.

  The top hardback Stefan was holding was a very old-fashioned school geography text, practically dust-free and plainly labeled.

  * * *

  Three days after the discovery of the geography book and the drawing of the entrance to the Nether World, Elena sat with her head on her hand. Mrs. Flowers was pouring herbal tea with a look of forced cheer on her face, and Stefan was leaning back in his chair with his eyes shut. Bonnie was slumped across the crowded kitchen table, the quartz crystal necklace lying abandoned near the atlas.

  “It’s no good,” she said huskily. “Or maybe I’m no good. But it’s not working.”

  Elena had seldom in her life felt absolute futility, with no hope of a plan A or B. Now, she had an uneasy feeling that this was a record-breaking new instance.

  Bonnie had been doing almost nothing but dousing for four long days and three nights. She had gone through Stefan’s atlas and Mrs. Flowers’s old geography text page by page. She had even gone through a modern atlas that Meredith had ordered from Amazon.com and had rush-shipped to the boardinghouse once she had found out what they were doing. Meredith and Matt had visited several times in the last few days to encourage and support Bonnie, but at night it always wound up with this same group of four sitting around the kitchen table.

  “Of course it has nothing to do with you,” Elena said sharply to Bonnie. “How can you even think you’re no good?” She noticed that the more anxious she felt, the sharper her voice got.

  “Then it’s even worse,” Bonnie whispered. “It means he isn’t out there . . . anywhere, in any form. He’s just . . . gone. I mean, we always knew that was a possibility, didn’t we, Mrs. Flowers? You said that—Damon’s—soul could be drifting through the aether, or it could have . . . simply disappeared.” She looked up, her doe eyes enormous, begging to be told that she was wrong. Elena also noted the way she hesitated before speaking Damon’s name aloud.

  “I wish,” Mrs. Flowers said slowly, her voice fluttery with an anxiety she could no longer hide, “that dear Mama would be more helpful. She keeps repeating the same thing, about the young witch trying her powers. And I must say that there’s no other candidate for the young witch,” she told Bonnie with the shadow of a worried smile. “You’ve been doing very well, dear child. If I had ever thought that I could do better or guide you in any way, I should have told you.”

  Stefan opened his eyes. “She’s right, Bonnie, you’ve done a wonderful job.” He sat up and leaned forward. “I’ve seen your aura while you’re doing this. It’s brilliant. You’re using a remarkable amount of Power, and you’ve been patient and careful, too. But, Mrs. Flowers, what does Grandmama say about all this?”

  Mrs. Flowers sighed. All at once, she looked both frail and old. Fancy Mrs. Flowers looking old, Elena thought, st
artled.

  “Grandmama’s in a teasing mood. She’s given me a . . . disturbing quote from a poem by Robert Service. I’m not sure what it really means—or if she means what it says, since she’s quite definitely an example of immortal life herself, as a ghost. Would you like to hear the quote?”

  Glances all around. At last Elena spoke for all three of the listeners. “Yes. I think we have to.”

  Mrs. Flowers nodded and spoke quietly. “‘Yea, life's immortal, swift it flows—alike in reptile and in rose—but as it comes, so too it goes . . .’” Mrs. Flowers stopped and sighed. “And that’s all she’ll say.”

  A hush fell upon the three hearers. We certainly weren’t expecting it to be as bad as like that, Elena thought. Stefan’s green eyes were wide, and Bonnie’s face looked deathly pale.

  Now what? Elena wondered. She sought for something comforting to offer, something hopeful, but her mind was a blank.

  Bonnie broke the lengthening silence by saying in a barely audible voice, “There’s something I’ve wanted to ask from the beginning. You talked about a soul drifting in the æther then. What is the æther, anyway?”

  “I think it’s everywhere, now that the Higgs boson was discovered,” Stefan said after a moment. “It used to mean the space in between worlds.”

  “So his soul . . . could be just floating around anywhere?” Now Bonnie’s face looked pinched. “What would that be like?”

  “I don’t know, Bonnie. I really don’t. Elena, are you all right?” Stefan asked.

  Think. Think. We’ve looked everywhere—every place we went, every place we can even think of, except the Celestial Court and we know that Damon didn’t go there. What are we missing? We’re missing something.

  I won’t let you be dead and gone, she thought toward Damon. I won’t let you be floating in space. . . .

  But other lines of poetry were flashing through her mind. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: and this same flower that smiles today tomorrow will be dying. Robert Herrick. A flower unplucked is but left to the falling, and nothing is gained by not gathering roses. . . . Robert Frost. Three Roberts in a row, and all of them warning that roses were short-lived . . .

  But not souls, Elena thought more fiercely than ever. Damon, you have an immortal soul—I’ve seen it! I’ll find it somehow!

  What am I missing?

  The others were talking in quiet voices, but Elena’s concentration blocked them out. She found herself glaring at the globe from Stefan’s room, at the beautiful but useless lapis lazuli oceans and the impractical continents of smoky quartz, black opal, chalcedony and malachite; at the jade green islands and the moonstone and abalone snows of the polar ice caps.

  Something . . . something was nagging at her.

  She found herself staring at the base of the globe and then at the ice caps once more. The base was round and sturdy, the color of steel. Base . . . abalone. Base . . . moonstone. Moonstone. Moonstone . . .

  Moon stone.

  Moon . . .

  Elena drew in her breath suddenly. No, that couldn’t be it. That was insane. Impossible. Too easy. It was just . . .

  She reached forward, startling the others, and grabbed the globe, picking it up with both hands. Then she put it down again and took the atlas and moved it to a clear area of the kitchen table. She picked up the books that were holding open the vellum page that had the path to the Nether World scrawled on it.

  “Elena, what are you doing?” Stefan’s green eyes were intent.

  Elena shook her head. She rolled up the vellum page together with the page that represented the Dark Dimension. There was a blank piece of vellum underneath. Elena fixed the blank vellum in place with books at the corners.

  Then she set the globe squarely in the middle.

  “What? What?” Bonnie almost wailed. “That globe is no good, Elena, you know that—”

  “I need a pen,” Elena murmured, fumbling in the messenger pouch she carried now instead of a purse. She’d taken it off when she’d first arrived this morning and it now rested on the kitchen table next to Bonnie’s. “I have an idea.” She found a pen.

  “What are you—talking about?” Bonnie had to sniffle in the middle of the sentence. “That globe—whatever you’re thinking—it’s just impossible to work with, and . . .”

  Elena shook her head. Using the pen, she traced a large circle on the white paper by going around the base of the globe with the pen.

  Then she took the gemstone globe and put it on the floor. She marked an X approximately in the middle of the circle she’d traced.

  Bonnie looked at the stark circle on the paper in front of her in bewilderment. “What’s that even supposed to be?” she demanded as Elena sat down again.

  “It’s half of the Nether World moon,” Elena said. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest and throat and fingertips. “It’s blank because the Tree is gone, but that X is for Damon’s body. I remember that there were pools of water in several places, but I can’t draw them and I don’t think they matter.” She dared to look at Mrs. Flowers as she said this, and she realized that she was flushed with emotion.

  Mrs. Flowers was looking pensive. She murmured, “I’ll get us some fresh tea,” and fluttered off.

  Elena’s eyes went to Stefan’s. He was looking more than thoughtful. He was looking startled and shocked—electrified, even.

  “But that’s the one place we know that—he—isn’t,” Bonnie argued, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Just try it,” Elena said, looking at Stefan again.

  “I mean his—his poor body might be there, but that’s all!” More tears traced their way down Bonnie’s pale cheeks.

  “Give it a try,” Elena suggested gently.

  “But—”

  Just DO it! thought Damon, startling himself.

  “All right! You don’t have to shout!” Bonnie cried.

  Elena stared at her. Damon could feel her heart beating hard. Strangely, he could also feel his own heart beating. He hadn’t been able to do that before.

  Bonnie picked up the crystal by its gold chain with trembling fingers. She held it up gingerly, positioning the translucent quartz over the bottom of the circle, about an inch from the vellum.

  Stefan leaned forward. Mrs. Flowers came quickly back to the table with a fragrant pot of tea. She put the teapot down without attempting to pour anything into the four cups that sat at four different places on the table.

  Elena leaned forward, her eyes on the quartz crystal.

  “Bonnie, my dear, you might want to name that map. Aloud, I mean: just say what it represents, so that there’s no question about what you’re looking at,” Mrs. Flowers advised.

  Bonnie hesitated. Elena gave her a few seconds and then said, “The circle I drew on this piece of vellum”—she touched it—“is a map of the smallest moon of the Nether World, the one on which the great Tree existed until I destroyed it: root, branch and leaf.”

  Bonnie glanced at her sideways with wide brown eyes. Elena’s voice had been quiet, but not repentant. She wasn’t sorry for destroying the tree. It had already killed Damon and had been in the process of trapping Stefan, Bonnie and herself permanently in a prison of wooden branches when she’d used Wings of Destruction on it.

  Elena thought of something else. “The X on the circle stands for Damon’s body. He was staked to the ground beside the trunk of the Tree.”

  Bonnie was still looking at her. Now Elena looked back steadily, with a tiny, encouraging smile. Below the table her hands were clenched together so hard that her fingernails bit into skin.

  Bonnie focused on the map again, taking a deep breath. She moved the necklace so that it just touched the bottom of the circle, then slowly moved over the white space inside.

  The pendulum was motionless, swinging from side to side a little as Bonnie’s hand shook.

  Mrs. Flowers leaned forward.

  Bonnie moved the crystal toward the left and then traced out
a pattern, a slow sweep of the bottom of the circle. The quartz didn’t respond. She moved up an inch and swept a path going the opposite way.

  She kept doing this, back and forth, inch by inch getting closer to the X. At last she was tracing the circle directly below the mark.

  Elena stopped breathing.

  Bonnie moved the pendulum up and approached the X slowly. Her hand began to tremble badly and the pendulum swung more and more wildly, but not in a circle. She approached the X.

  Damon let his aura flare. He used all the Power he could extract from the droplets around him and his own body. He concentrated on showing the most amount of Power over the largest space possible. Here I am! he thought.

  Bonnie reached the X.

  Elena gasped. Stefan stood abruptly, his chair scraping on the tile floor. Mrs. Flowers’s hand flew to her heart.

  “What’s happening?” Bonnie cried. Elena glanced at her quickly. Bonnie’s eyes were shut. “What’s it doing?” she demanded again.

  “Open your eyes, my dear,” Mrs. Flowers said in a breathless voice. Elena couldn’t have spoken for worlds. Stefan never even looked up from the map, where the pendulum was moving in large steady circles around the X at its center.

  Bonnie opened her eyes. She stared at the quartz crystal as it revolved in neat circles around and around. The circles became ovals as her hand began to shake.

  Elena stood and cupped Bonnie’s hand in both her own, trying to keep it still. But Elena’s hands were none too steady, either. It took Stefan, who put his hands around Elena’s, to make the trembling stop and the ovals go back to circles.

  Bonnie was staring at the crystal in amazement. “I’m not doing it,” she said. “I swear I’m not.”

  “You’re not doing it,” Stefan assured her. “Your hand is still.”

  “But that means—he’s there, where his body is. His spirit is right beside his body!”

  Elena and Stefan exchanged looks. They both glanced at Mrs. Flowers.

  “I think,” Stefan said judiciously, “that that would be too much of a fluke.”