The next morning Holly was surprised that Jess was still tired, as when she had been fast asleep when Holly came to bed later. Jess went along with it, but she found it a bit strange and wondered if Holly had been influenced.
Mel had joined them for breakfast, the three of them discussing question time excitedly. Mel had told her friend last night about the Quoth theory and the girl wanted to change her question. "She said she was going to ask what Stefan thought of the fact that nearly all the girls like Damon."
"Can you even do that?" Jess asked, Mel just shrugged.
"What was her question before?" asked Holly,
"If they were alive today, what career would they have chosen?"
"I'd change the wording a bit. It seems a bit disrespectful, but it's a good question. The other one is downright rude." Holly smothered her plate in ketchup out of anger, then swore as she had to scrape some off. "Do you think they'll go for her?" asked Mel
"Yes. So you know last night when I was talking to Damon in the ballroom? Well he was saying that there are three other girls here who are doing history degrees and all of them have made it a point to know all there is to know about the Italian Renaissance, just so they can impress Damon. Thing is, they're only doing it to impress him and it's not working, so if she starts being rude he'll, metaphorically speaking, bite her head off."
"Yeah, what happened last night? You went to the loo and when you came back you looked a bit on edge."
"Oh, yeah. Stefan saw Damon talking to me and wanted to know why he singled me out to talk to, he didn't trust him. I came back from the loo and they were having a "discussion" about it outside the ballroom, they had to stop so I could get in."
"Mind if I join you? I seem to be the third wheel at the minute." They looked up to see Elena standing there.
"Sure!" said Mel, "the more the merrier!" Jess felt horrible, as though she'd been caught talking about her behind her back.
"So did you guys have fun last night?" She started buttering her toast, not looking at anyone in particular. "Yeah, it was good. Jess, you missed out on all the fun. Bonnie started to communicate with Edward, the hotels' ghost and he was telling us about some of the scandals he's seen."
"Oh that's a shame, I've had such a busy week trying to make sure everything's done before I came here, I think it just caught up with me last night."
"I hope you're going to be okay for today though. We don't want you falling asleep on us" chirped in Elena meaningfully.
"I'm fine. I'm a student, I'm used to it."
"So, have any of you seen the news this morning? The London Library has found some books that are meant to have been lost hundreds of years ago. One of them is an early version of Hamlet by Thomas Kyd, not Shakespeare, so they think he copied it and turned it into his own work." Jess was beginning to suspect that she was about to get told off for something. "Wow!" Said Holly, "how comes they just turned up like that? I mean surely they must know what books they have."
"It's a really old library apparently, looks like something out of ghostbusters" Elena explained as Jess smiled into her coffee. "Stefan said no one actually started cataloguing stuff until recently, so they're still cataloguing all the books."
"How many books do they have?" asked Mel, astonished
"Thousands, and they lend about 95% of them. But you have to pay for membership. The ones they found today need some work done to them and I doubt they'll be available to loan, as people will want to study them. They've got a lost Shakespeare and a book that's mentioned in the Oxford English Dictionary that no one knew what happened to."
"Wow! Two lost books!" Mel was impressed.
"Is that it?" Jess and Elena locked gazes.
"What do you mean 'is that it'? That's amazing!" said Holly.
"I thought the way Elena was talking that there'd be more books, that was all. Probably just my overactive imagination," she looked at Elena trying to communicate that if she was a book missing from the three they saw last night, then she didn't take any. Elena nodded very slightly at her.
"Well they were found on shelves this morning by a librarian putting some books back in the section where they have the novels- that is, the first edition novels like Jane Austen. They're saying no one really checks them out which is why they didn't find them, but they're examining the library in the hopes that more will turn up, so I'm sure they will. I just think it's so exciting."
"That is pretty cool. I bet the British Library are spitting feathers," grinned Jess.
"I would be too if I was meant to have a copy of every book ever published and then two turn up in another library that I will never have. Oh! Shoot! I have to run and get ready. See you guys there!"
Mel looked at her watch, "it's quarter to nine, we'd better get ready as well."
The girls rushed upstairs and made sure they looked okay, went to the loo and got their books ready. They got to the panel room a bit early, so did everyone else. Those that brought books were comparing editions and covers, they were all cooing over each other's books and where they bought them that they didn't see the very people they were there for until they walked in and joined the group.
An embarrassed silence fell over the group, everyone including Jess were blushing at getting caught out like school girls caught ogling over a celeb in underwear by their teacher. "I bet my brother £50 that that at least fifteen of you would turn this into a book club and that you would want us to sign your books. Hands up if you have books that you'd like us to sign at some point today," Damon grinned.
Jess was the first to put her hand up, "me," she said. Other people followed her lead and reluctantly put their hands up. Stefan counted them and then went up to the stage where Bonnie, Elena, Matt and Meredith were waiting and laughing at how embarrassed everyone was.
"I have a better idea. Let's have a competition, the winner gets the fifty pounds I was going to give to my brother," he smirked. "After everyone's asked their questions we'll split you in groups of five and one group of four. Decide amongst you who you think asked the best question, but don't nominate yourself. I'll get the finalists up here and everyone including us can vote for their favourite and as I said, the winner gets the fifty pounds. What do you thin Damon?"
"I think things are about to get interesting. You're on."
The book club scrambled back to their seats, "I hope they don't make us stand up!" whispered Mel. Suddenly everyone around her turned around and shushed her furiously which made her sit right back in her seat. "Don't give them ideas!" whispered Holly, with everyone around her murmuring in agreement.
Meredith stood up and tapped the mic for silence. "Okay, so I've been put in charge of who goes first to make it fair, but I'm going to shake things up. I have a list here of all the questions you submitted, so I'm going to read them off the list one by one, just raise your hand if this is your question."
"First question is, what's the best thing since sliced bread?"
Matt went first, "Playstation. The Call of Duty series is amazing." Bonnie chose chocolate, Elena and Meredith couldn't decide.
"Ferraris. There's nothing like driving at over 100 miles an hour in driving rain down the motorway with nothing else around. It takes all of your skill and strength to hold the car together, it's very exhilarating," said Damon.
"It's not something that you should be doing if you're not a vampire though." Reminded Stefan "For me, the best thing since sliced bread is Elena." There was a collective aww from the audience and a rolling of eyes from Damon.
"Okay, next question to Stefan and Damon. Have either of you read fanfiction?" Holly and Jess looked at each other in panic and from the uncomfortable silence you could tell that most of the audience were groaning inwardly. "Whos' is that one?" asked Stefan, a boy put his hand up "do you write fan fiction?" he nodded.
"What's your name on the site?" asked Damon,
"Night Demon."
"Slash!" whispered Holly.
"Well I might one day, but as yet no. Damon?"
"Oh I've read a few actually, a couple of yours which weren't really my thing, but there are a couple of authors that have got some reasonably good stories, although one author hasn't written anything for a few years. Shall I name them?" Stefan and Damon laughed as half the audience seemed to sink lower in their seats, some people were all for it. "Please god no," whispered Holly.
"Don't be mean Damon. We don't have time anyway if we want to get through all the questions." Elena started to motion to Meredith to read out the next question, but Damon wasn't done. "That's too bad, because if Melissa Salvatore were here I'd like to thank her for her lovely story where Elena and I go on a big adventure killing evil werewolves and I heroically save her life and my brother owes me a great debt because of it." Stefan snorted in amusement, Elena rolled her eyes and Bonnie looked a tad annoyed. The girl who was obviously Melissa went a bit pink and got a bit excited.
"And the next question is.." Damon interrupted Meredith with an apology.
"I wanted to say as well that's it's a shame that Shadow's kiss stopped writing, there was a particularly good one about Bonnie reading through her old diary, but I'm not going to spoil the ending of that one." Jess wanted the ground to swallow her up, she could feel herself going red, Holly and Mel were sniggering besides her and Stefan was giving her the I might have known it was you look.
