Phantom

7

When the light at last faded, Bonnie could at last open her eyes. She was in her bedroom, lying on her bed, and Meredith was there too. The headache that was building felt like needles pricking her eye balls. Although the most of the brightness had faded, she preferred that crimson darkness of her lids. It was easier to pretend that it had all been just a dream if she could not see. If she hadn't felt so sore, and raw, she might have been able to convince herself, but instead the throbbing down-below only seemed to punctuate the reality of it all. She was no longer wondering how she had never seen this coming, but wondering how she could ever turn back the clocks. At least if she had seen this coming her heart wouldn't be shattered like so many pieces of glass.

A woman not much older than she sat in a plastic garden chair, her eyes moving across the page she read in the heavy black book. Her dark hair fell about her in waves, as dark as ever, but her olive skin was noticeably more pale than it had been before. "Meredith?" she said softly, her voice barely substantial enough to be heard. The other girl held up a finger to indicate that she wait just a second, while she presumably finished what she was reading.

Meredith's face lifted from the book and she smiled with pleasure at seeing Bonnie awake. When Damon, or rather the phantom that inhabited his body, had tried to stop the magic before it had had time to work, and that brilliant light had engulfed them, it had knocked all four of them out. Now Damon was missing, and god-only-knew what state he would be in when she caught up with him. She didn't even have to think about it before she made her decision, "Bonnie," she responded, her most no-crap voice, and it was as commanding as it ever had been before, "we're going to have to preform an exorcism – well, you are since you're the only one who can wield this kind of magic."

Bonnie had a terrible feeling in her gut about what she would say next, a horrible, hollow feeling. "But—but—but you have the stave! Can't you use that!" she cried out in indignation, "What can I do? I can't fix this!" That, she was sure of, as sure as she had been that Damon would have killed her. She watched as Meredith tapped the cracked paper of the page she had open in her lap as if it were mesmerizing. Bonnie had been staring at the elegant finger when the vision came and she saw Damon laying on the ground with a stake through his chest. "No!" she screamed.

Meredith's brows drew together in confusion. She had spent hours, ever since recovering Bonnie, searching for the right spell. There were little post-its marking a few spells that seemed as if they dealt with possession, but they were all too vague about their purpose for her to make up her mind as to which one they should use – hence the reason she had marked so many spells for Bonnie to decide upon. Though she had no real desire to bring the real Damon back alive, she knew how it would devastate her friend to lose him all the same. She would ask why later, because right now it was unimportant. "What is it Bonnie?" she said as a tingle of fear rolled sluggishly down her spine at the expression upon Bonnie's face. "What did you see?" she asked calmly.

"Damon!" she burst out, "Where is he!"

"I don't... Bonnie, is there something going on that I don't know about?"

"Where is he?" she said, begging Meredith to tell her with her eyes and the hands she gripped her with, knowing that she only had a little time. Visions of the future were usually useful, but the latest sight she had had was everything but. How could she think now with her imagination conjuring up images of Damon's apparent closeness to death relentlessly? This was one of the few times that Bonnie had ever seen Meredith look uncertain.

Meredith caught her bottom lip between her teeth and began to chew at it thoughtfully, as if deciding if one course of action was worse than the other. She wondered in the silence that had fallen if she should tell Bonnie where Damon was being kept and allow her to go to him, or keep her mouth shut and do what Stefan told her to do – keep Bonnie away from the cellar. Her instincts were probably right, that she should listen to the centuries-old vampire, but who was she to stand in the way of true love? She sighed in exasperation. "Stefan is keeping him chained up with silver, it's the only way he could keep Damon from killing you."

"What is Stefan doing to him?" Bonnie asked with an unaccustomed fierceness in her voice.

"Um, I think he's trying to banish whatever monster is inside his brother..."

Bonnie's face lit up with a kind of hope that resonated what she must be feeling inside that it was like looking at an open Bonnie-book. "So, you believe me? You believe that it's not Damon in that body, not the real Damon?" She didn't know why, but Meredith's thoughts on the matter seemed more important than her own. Maybe it was because Meredith spent so much of her time thinking, knew so much about everything it seemed, but the faith she had in the tall dark one was faultless. "You're not going to call me stupid again, are you?"

There was a rattle of chains and a howl from below. Stefan was hissing something, it seemed, to Damon but with only human hearing Bonnie could not hear the words.

"This spell," Meredith said after the pause, deciding that she did not really need to answer the question, "is for an exorcism."