Stella shook her head. "We didn't call." She turned to Selina. "Did we?" she asked. Selina shook her head too. "We didn't. Rose did. I told you that this morning."

"Oh," Stella blinked. "You think I would have remembered that. Was I hung over when you told me? Because I never remember anything I'm told when I'm hung over."

"I'm sure you were sober," Selina insisted.

"Can I come in?" asked the figure at the window. "Do you mind?"

"I don't see what's stopping you," Selina said to him. "It's not like this is a human dwelling place."

"I guess you're right," he said. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"Habit, maybe?" Selina suggested.

He shrugged. "I'll be by the front door in a few minutes. You'll have to let me in." He then shifted around so that his legs were out the window and jumped.

"Is he going to be all right?" Selina asked, starting forward in alarm before Stella put a restraining hand on her arm. "Of course he is," she said easily. "He does that all the time. It's one of his favorite tricks."

Selina stared wonderingly at the empty window for one more moment before allowing Stella to propel her down the stairs to the front door. They arrived just as Stella's husband began knocking. When she opened the door, he strode in with a grin on his face. "Looks like I won," he said.

"We weren't racing," Stella said. "Besides, Selina was worrying about you, and that delayed us."

"You were worrying about me?" Stella's husband asked Selina.

"Of course she was," Stella said. "She saw you jumping out a window like that and she thought you were plunging to your doom."

He put a hand on Selina's shoulder. "Don't worry about it; I do it all the time. Very few things can kill me anymore."

Selina smiled and nodded. "That's good. It's great to see you again, Mr. Smith."

He blinked and then gave her a slight smile, just one corner of his mouth up. "You remember that? I hoped you would."

"What are you talking about?" Stella asked Selina.

"Well," Selina said, "come into the living room and I'll tell you."

She led them into the living room, sitting on the couch while Stella and her husband shared the loveseat. Stella looked at her inquistively before answering. "He used to live near us," she said finally. "When I was small."

"Really?" Stella asked. "That's a surprise."

"Why?" he asked, looking affronted, his dark eyes blazing. "Stella, what are you trying say?"

"Goodness," Stella said quickly. "I wasn't trying to say anything. It's just that you've always had a taste for the finer things and for the most part, this town doesn't offer many."

"I admit it wasn't the most comfortable period of my life," he said. "But I did it because I felt I had something to make up for."

"Can I ask what?" Selina prompted.

"Well," he sighed. "It has to do with Andria; at the beginning of the sixteenth century, she was young, about sixteen and she'd just gotten married. I'd been watching her before that, just liike Stella and I had decided; she'd watch over Gianni and his descendants, and I'd take Andria and hers. Anyway, after she got married, I relaxed a little, stopped keeping such a vigilant eye because I thought that since she was married, nothing bad would happen to her."

"But something did happen, didn't it?" Selina pressed.

"Yes," he nodded. "I came back one day to look for her and she was gone. I asked her husband, and he said that she'd been kidnapped by a band of roving beggars and that he'd been waiting for a ransom note, but none had come. He was just sick about it."

"And so were you, I bet," Stella said, putting her arms around him.

He nodded. "I left and returned a week later. I saw Andria was back, but something was wrong. Her expression was vacant and she wouldn't speak to anybody, except in single syllable words. And at night, she would thrash and cry out in her sleep."

"Like I did when I was little and having those terrible nightmares about...her?" Stella asked.

He nodded. "Yes, it was very much like that. I watched her go through that torture for a couple of nights, and then, on the third night-"

"You went into her mind, didn't you?" Stella said in a high voice. "What did you see?"

He put a hand on her arm. "Nothing I'd want you to know about," he said. "It was all pretty awful."

Stella groaned and punched him in the arm. "Damn it, Damon!" she burst out. "Tell me the truth! Somebody should. I don't care about how bad it is, I just want to know what happened to my baby!"

His gaze hardened. "No," he said, putting his hands firmly on her shoulders. "I'm absolutely serious about this, Stella. It's not something you want to know about. If you want to feel guilt, think about the miserable failure that is Junior one and Junior two."

Stella raised up her arm as if she was going to hit him again. He didn't flinch. He looked her straight in the eye for a moment, his hard gaze never wavering. When Stella realized she wasn't going to get anywhere on her own, she looked at Selina appealingly. "You have a rapport with hm," she said. "Get him to tell me what happened to Andria."

Selina stared at her for a moment. "No," she said, shaking her head. "I'm with Damon on this one. I think it would be best if you didn't press the issue anymore."

"What?" Stella asked, her voice shaking. "I don't believe this. After all we've been through, you're siding with him?"

"Yes, I am." Selina said, her voice hard. "And it surprises me that you're putting me in the middle of all of this. I would have thought that you would have been kind enough, considering all I've been through, to just keep me out of things."

"What do you mean?" Stella asked.

"What do you mean 'what do you mean'?" Selina shrieked, jumping off the couch. "Do I need to repeat everything I told you about at the mall today? About how my father died fighting a war he shouldn't have even had to take part in? How my mother married the biggest jackass in the world and subsequently let Katerina Petrove into our lives? How that same man made my mother so depressed, I found her attempting to slit her wrists no less than four times while I was growing up? Hell, on the day Junior left to go fight for the Confederacy, I put a gun to my temple. If he hadn't shown up to say goodbye at just the right moment, he would have found me slumped over in the chair, my head exploded and my brains all over the floor." Her voice was shaking, and so was her body. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. "I never told Mama about it, you know. Until she came back that is. And do you have any idea how hard it is to tell your mother that you were once so miserable you wanted to be dead?" She put her hands on her hips, glaring at Stella. "Well, do you?" She paused, and when Stella didn't respond, she said quietly, "especially when you know in your heart that some of the misery was your mother's fault. So tell me, Stella. I know that the two of you decided that you were going to watch Gianni's descendants, but I'm going to assume that you're concerned about Andria as well. And I know that even though you don't have any idea what actually went on when Andria was handed over to the magician, you still feel that some of it is your fault. Do you honestly want to add on to the guilt that you feel by hearing in detail what your daughter suffered because you left her and thought only of your own pleasure? Think about that, and make sure you have a definite answer before you press to learn about Andria's fate." She looked at Damon. "And I'd be more grateful to him if I was you, Stella. He's really doing you a favor."

Stella's husband stood up and put a hand on Selina's shoulder. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked her.

"Yeah," she nodded. "I think I just need to go home and lie down."

"Do you want me to drive you back to the boardinghouse?" Stella asked quietly.

"No, thank you," Selina said. "You've done quite enough for me tonight. I'll get home perfectly fine on my own. There was a reason why I asked you to pick up my car on the way back here." And with that, she strode from the room, grabbed a second bottle of red wine from the wine rack and headed out the door. She opened the door to the back seat and put the wine in the pocket right in front of it. Then, she got into the driver's seat, feeling herself begin to tear up again. "Damn Stella," she whispered. "Damn her for making me live some of the worst memories of my life all over again." After wiping a few tears from her eyes on the sleeve of her new black leather jacket, she turned the key in the ignition and the car roared to life. Selina backed slowly out of Stella's driveway, but just as she reached the bottom, it began to rain. Selina began driving, choosing not to turn her wipers on, instead letting sheets of rain cascade down her windshield, blurring her view of the road ahead of her and the other cars on it. Despite this, she managed to go on for quite awhile without crashing into anything. When she reached the road that would lead her back to the boardinghouse, she decided to go past it and take another road instead. She didn't know where it would lead her, but it had to be better than where she was right now. She headed blindly down this new road, the steering wheel moving underneath her fingertips. However, she now felt curiously removed from her body. Her hands were steering and her feet were dealing with the brakes, but she was no longer aware of where she was.

A sudden flash of lightning brought her back to awareness with a cruel suddeness. It illuminated the road in front of her and she saw to her horror that she was headed straight into the path of an oncoming semi. Breathing heavily, she used all her strength to turn the car out of the truck's path. She avoided being hit, but the force of the turn was too much for Selina's car. Once she was out of the truck's way, the car skidded on a gravally puddle and flipped three times before landing in a grassy embankment on the side of the road. Selina shut her eyes just before the car turned over, waiting for the moment of impact, for the hot, searing burn of flaming rubber and the sharp, stinging pain of broken glass. When the windshield burst, shards of glass scratched her face. She could feel thin streams of blood running down her cheek. Then, she blacked out.


After what seemed like an eternity, Selina opened her eyes, blinking rapidly. Everything looked so strange. It took her a little while, but she finally realized that the car was flipped over and she was upside down. Everything hurt, especially her head and her face. She felt her cheeks and forehead. There were several scabs in both places. Her hair and clothes were soaked, probably from the heavy rain which was pouring into the car from the large, jagged hole in her windshield, but the water was cool and helped relieve her aches and pains just a little. She pushed some wet hair away from her face, and considered what she could do. First, she tested her seatbelt. Luckily, it wasn't broken. She thought about undoing it, and then realized that gravity would make her pay dearly for that decision. So, she just stayed where she was, reminding herself to keep breathing. Eventually, (she wasn't quite how much later), the rain finally let up. Shifting her position as much as she could, Selina plunged her hand into her jean pocket, grabbing her phone and praying that it still worked. It turned on, but to her dismay, the storm had taken its toll and there wasn't much power left. Praying that Damon had his phone on, she texted crashed my car. Am stuck outside of town, please come help me. Then, she pressed the send button and hoped for the best.


Back at the boardinghouse, Stefan, Elena and Damon were watching television. "It's been awhile since I heard from Selina," Damon said suddenly. "Do you think I should give her a call and see if she's all right? I'm not so sure she drives well in storms."

"That might be a good idea," Stefan agreed. "Just to be sure. And if she mocks you about it later, you can just say you were being a caring husband."

Damon nodded and got up, going into the kitchen, grabbing his phone and turning it on. A text message appeared after the happy turn on music ended. Damon felt his body stiffen. "Oh, my God," he said.

"What?" Stefan said, coming into the kitchen. "Is something wrong?"

"I have to go," Damon said quickly, grabbing his rain coat. "Selina's crashed her car somewhere outside of town and now she's stuck."

"Do you want us to come too?" Stefan called after him.

"No," Damon shook his head. "You stay here. I'm going to call when I find her and I want you to answer it." He shut the door behind him and got into his car, going much faster than he was allowed. He didn't care about any other people that he might crash into. There was something much more important at stake. He kept his phone on in case Selina sent him anymore texts, but got nothing else. He drove around for an hour before he finally spotted her car turned over in an out-of-the-way embankment. He parked on the side of the road, got out, slammed his door and then ran across the road, causing a white van to swerve and the angry driver to give him the finger. He paid no attention. When he reached Selina's car, he got down on the pavement beside it, ignoring water soaking into his jeans, and looked inside to see if Selina was all right. "Lina?" he called. "Sweetheart, are you all right? Where are you?"

"I'm here." The voice was weak, but he finally saw her, belted in and hanging upside down. Her face was obscured by her long curtain of hair. "Thanks for coming."

"Of course I came," he said. "Hang on just a few more minutes and I'll get you out."

It took a little while, but he finally managed to free Selina from both seltbelt and car. "Do you think you can walk?" he asked her once they were clear of the wreck.

"No," she moaned. "Hurts too much. What about the wine?"

"What wine?" he asked.

"Before I left," she gasped, "I took a bottle of wine from Stella's house and put it in the pocket behind the front passenger's seat. Check and see of it's still there." She moaned again.

"Lina," Damon looked at the car. "The car's been destroyed. I'm sure the bottle's shattered."

"Would you just check anyway?" she asked. "It was a good bottle and it would be a shame to waste it."

Realizing that she wasn't going to let it go, he placed her in the backseat and belted her in, hoping that she would fall asleep. Once she was settled, he went back to the car and checked where she'd indicated. Surely enough, there was a wine bottle placed in the passenger seat back pocket just as she'd said, and by some miracle of nature, it was all in one piece. He picked it up and looked it over. "Italian red," he said to himself. "Excellent. No wonder she didn't want to let it go." He took it back to the car and handed it to Selina who hugged it to her chest and then leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. As soon as he was firmly settled in his own seat, Damon pulled out his phone and dialed the boardinghouse. "I found Selina and we're on our way back," he said. "She's really scraped up and probably should stay in bed tomorrow, but she's been through worse. Can't say the same for her car though. It won't be able to be saved. I guess we'll just have to get her a new one. All right, we'll be back soon." He snapped his phone closed and started the car.


When he arrived back at the boardinghouse, he parked the car, and then got out and went around to the passenger's seat to get Selina. He opened the door and gently pried the wine bottle from her fingers, placing it in the cupholder. Then, he unbuckled her, and, doing his best not to wake her, carried her slowly up to her room, placing her on her bed. Then, he went downstairs to where Stefan and Elena sat waiting. "She looks awful," Elena remarked. "All those scratches and cuts...where do you think they came from?"

"Probably from when the car flipped over and the windshield broke. I bet shards went everywhere." Damon paused. "Listen Elena," he said. "Can I ask you a favor? Selina's clothes are soaked and I really want her to sleep in dry ones. Could you make that happen? Just be careful not to aggravate any of her cuts."

"Sure," she said, heading upstairs. "And don't worry, I'll be careful."

"Thank you," he said.

Elena headed upstairs. When she reached Selina's room, she got Selina to open her eyes long enough so that she was slightly helpful with changing into a warm, dry pair of pajamas. Then, even though she wasn't sure it would work, she drove to the store and grabbed some neosporin to put on Selina's cuts and bruises. She dried her hair and then tucked her in, turning off the light. "Selina's asleep," she announced when she reached the living room. "Do you think somebody should stay the night with her in case she wakes up?"

"I'll do it," Damon said. "You two can go about your business." He headed upstairs, going past the room he and Selina shared to the room she used on her own when they were fighting or one of them was injured. He stood by her bed and gazed down at her. He wanted to touch her so badly, just to let her know that he was glad she was still here, but her cheeks and hands were cut and bruised. Any contact would only hurt her. Sighing, he went back to their room and grabbed a pillow and some blankets. "Goodnight, Lina," he whispered once he got himself settled. He tried to sleep, but finally realized it was useless. He got up, grabbed her desk chair, placed it beside the bed, and waited out the hours until morning.


"Damon?" The sound of her voice brought him back to consciousness.

"Yes?" He said to her. "Do you hurt? Can I get you anything?"

She sat up and groaned. "My head. God, that was some number I did on myself last night."

He nodded. "You crashed you car. Do you remember that?"

"Yes," she said. "I ran into a gravelly puddle and lost control of the car. You came and got me."

"Why did you try and drive home on your own?" he asked. "Why didn't you let Stella drive you? It would have been safer."

Selina growled. "I hate Stella. She was the whole reason I drove off by myself. Remember how I told you that her husband showed up yesterday?"

He nodded.

"Well," Selina continued, pushing up the long sleeves of her white silk nightgown, "the three of us got to talking and eventually, her husband says that he knows exactly what happened to Andria after Katherine had her kidnapped. Well, Stella wants to know, and her husband won't tell her because it's too horrible and he thinks Stella's already carrying around enough guilt as it is, but Stella just kept pushing and pushing and even tried to get me to convince her husband to tell her what happened. And then I sided with him, which made Stella mad, so I pointed out all the bad stuff in my life that I had to tell Mama, and how hard that was, and well...by the end I was so pissed off that I grabbed a bottle of wine and high-tailed it out of there. I just couldn't take it anymore."

Damon frowned. "I think I want to have a talk with her later today. She has some things to answer for."

"Can I come too?" Selina asked. "I mean, after we get me healed up of course. I must look like hell. I can't wait to see the look on your face when you meet her husband for the first time. It's going to be quite the visit."

"Yes," Damon said, his voice hard. "Yes, it is."