Now, she looked around their makeshift headquarters for the night. Alaric's desk had been cleared, and he was bent over a rough map of the school. Meredith leaned in beside him, her dark hair sweeping his sleeve. Matt and Bonnie were out mingling with the dancegoers in the parking lot, and Stefan and Damon were prowling the perimeter of the school grounds. They were going to take turns.
"You'd better stay inside," Alaric had told Elena. "All we need is for somebody to see you and start chasing you with a stake."
"I've been walking around town all week," Elena said, amused. "If I don't want to be seen, you don't see me." But she agreed to stay in the history room and coordinate.
It's like a castle, she thought as she watched Alaric plot out the positions of sheriff's officers and other men on the map. And we're defending it. Me and my loyal knights.
The round, flat-faced clock on the wall ticked the minutes by. Elena watched it as she let people in the door and let them out again. She poured hot coffee out of a Thermos for those who wanted it. She listened to the reports come in.
"Everything's quiet on the north side of the school."
"Caroline just got crowned snow queen. Big surprise."
"Some rowdy kids in the parking lot-the sheriff just rounded them up..."
Midnight came and went.
"Maybe we were wrong," Stefan said an hour or so later. It was the first time they'd all been inside together since the beginning of the evening.
"Maybe it's happening somewhere else," said Bonnie, emptying out a boot and peering into it.
"There's no way to know where it's going to happen," Elena said firmly. "But we weren't wrong about it happening."
"Maybe," said Alaric thoughtfully, "there is a way. To find out where it's going to happen, I mean." As heads raised questioningly, he said, "We need a precognition."
All eyes turned to Bonnie.
"Oh, no," Bonnie said. "I'm through with all that. I hate it."
"It's a great gift-" began Alaric.
"It's a great big pain. Look, you don't understand. The ordinary predictions are bad enough. It seems like most of the time I'm finding out things I don't want to know. But getting taken over-that's awful. And afterward I don't even remember what I've said. It's horrible."
know. But getting taken over-that's awful. And afterward I don't even remember what I've said. It's horrible."
Bonnie sighed. "It's what happened to me in the church," she said patiently. "I can do other kinds of predictions, like divining with water or reading palms"-she glanced at Elena, and then away-"and stuff like that. But then there are times when -someone-takes me over and just uses me to talk for them. It's like having somebody else in my body."
"Like in the graveyard, when you said there was something there waiting for me," said Elena. "Or when you warned me not to go near the bridge. Or when you came to dinner and said that Death, my death, was in the house." She looked automatically around at Damon, who returned her gaze impassively. Still, that had been wrong, she thought. Damon hadn't been her death. So what had the prophecy meant? For just an instant something glimmered in her mind, but before she could get a grasp on it, Meredith interrupted.
"It's like another voice that speaks through Bonnie," Meredith explained to Alaric. "She even looks different. Maybe you weren't close enough in the church to see."
"But why didn't you tell me about this?" Alaric was excited. "This could be important. This-entity-whatever it is-could give us vital information. It could clear up the mystery of the Other Power, or at least give us a clue how to fight it."
Bonnie was shaking her head. "No. It isn't something I can just whistle up, and it doesn't answer questions. It just happens to me. And I hate it."
"You mean you can't think of anything that tends to set it off? Anything that's led to it happening before?"
Elena and Meredith, who knew very well what could set it off, looked at each other. Elena bit the inside of her cheek. It was Bonnie's choice. It had to be Bonnie's choice.
Bonnie, who was holding her head in her hands, shot a sideways glance through red curls at Elena. Then she shut her eyes and moaned.
"Candles," she said.
"What?"
"Candles. A candle flame might do it. I can't be sure, you understand; I'm not promising anything-"
"Somebody go ransack the science lab," said Alaric.
It was a scene reminiscent of the day Alaric had come to school, when he'd asked them all to put their chairs in a circle. Elena looked at the circle of faces lit eerily from below by the candle's flame. There was Matt, with his jaw set. Beside him, Meredith, her dark lashes throwing shadows upward. And Alaric, leaning forward in his eagerness. Then Damon, light and shadow dancing over the planes of his face.
And Stefan, high cheekbones looking too sharply defined to Elena's eyes. And finally, Bonnie, looking fragile and pale even in the golden light of the candle.
"I'm just going to look into the candle," Bonnie said, her voice quivering slightly. "And not think of anything. I'm going to try to-leave myself open to it." She began to breathe deeply, gazing into the candle flame.
And then it happened, just as it had before. Bonnie's face smoothed out, all expression draining away. Her eyes went blank as the stone cherub's in the graveyard.
She didn't say a word.
That was when Elena realized they hadn't agreed on what to ask. She groped through her mind to find a question before Bonnie lost contact. "Where can we find the Other Power?" she said, just as Alaric blurted out, "Who are you?" Their voices mingled, their questions intertwining.