Nobody was going to lie to Elena Gilbert and get away with it.
Elena marched along the path to the library, indignation keeping her head high and her steps sharp. So James thought he could pretend he didn't remember anything about those V-shaped pins? The way his eyes had skipped away from hers, the faint flush of pink in his plump cheeks, everything about him had shouted that there was something there, some secret about him and her parents that he didn't want to tel her.
If he wasn't going to tel her, she would find out for herself. The library seemed like a logical place to start.
"Elena," a voice cal ed, and she stopped. She had been so focused on her mission that she had almost walked right by Damon, leaning against a tree outside the library. He smiled up at her with an innocently inquiring expression, his long legs stretched in front of him.
"What are you doing here?" she said abruptly. It was so weird, just seeing him here in the daylight on campus, like he was part of one picture superimposed upon another. He didn't belong in this part of her life, not unless she brought him in herself.
"Enjoying the sunshine," Damon said dryly. "And the scenery." The wave of his hand encompassed the trees and buildings of the campus as Wellas a flock of pretty girls giggling on the other side of the path. "What are you doing here?"
"I go to this school," Elena said. "So it's not weird for me to be hanging around the library. See my point?" Damon laughed. "You've discovered my secret, Elena," he said, getting to his feet. "I was here hoping to see you.
Or one of your little friends. I get so lonely, you know, even your Mutt would be a welcome distraction."
"Real y?" she asked.
He shot her a look, his dark eyes amused. "Of course I always want to see you, princess. But I'm here for another reason. I'm supposed to be looking into the disappearances, remember? So I have to spend some time on the campus."
"Oh. Okay." Elena considered her options. Official y, she shouldn't be hanging around Damon at al . The terms of her breakup - or just break, she corrected herself - with Stefan were that she wasn't going to see either of the Salvatore brothers, not until they worked out their own issues and this thing between the three of them had time to cool off. But she'd already violated that by letting Damon sleep on the floor of her room, a much bigger deal than going to the library together.
"And what are you up to?" Damon asked her. "Anything I can assist with?"
Real y, a trip to the library ought to be innocent enough.
Elena made up her mind. She and Damon were supposed to be friends, after al . "I'm trying to find out some information about my parents," she said. "Want to help?"
"Certainly, my lovely," Damon said, and took her hand.
Elena felt a slight frisson of unease. But his fingers were reassuringly firm in hers, and she pushed her hesitation away.
The ancient tennis-shoed librarian in charge of the archive room explained how to search the database of school records and got Elena and Damon set up in the corner on a computer.
"Ugh," Damon said, poking disdainful y at a key. "I don't mind computers, but books and pictures ought to be real, not on a machine."
"But this way everyone can see them," Elena said patiently. She'd had this kind of conversation with Stefan before. The Salvatore brothers might look col ege-aged, but there were some things about the modern world they just couldn't seem to get their heads around.
Elena clicked on the photo section of the database and typed in her mother's name, Elizabeth Morrow.
"Look, there are a bunch of pictures." She scanned through them, looking for the one that she had seen hanging in the hal . She saw a lot of cast and crew pictures from various theatrical productions. James had told her that her mother was a star on the design side, but it looked like she was in some productions, too. In one, Elena's mother was dancing, her head flung back, her hair going everywhere.
"She looks like you." Damon was contemplating the picture, his head tilted to one side, dark eyes intent. "Softer here, though, around the mouth" - one long finger gestured - "and her face is more innocent than yours." His mouth twisted teasingly, and he shot a sidelong glance at Elena.
"A nicer girl than you, I'd guess."
"I'm nice," Elena said, hurt, and quickly clicked on to find the picture she was looking for.
"You're too clever to be nice, Elena," Damon said, but Elena was barely listening.
"Here we are," she said. The photograph was just as she remembered it: James and her parents under a tree, eager and impossibly young. Elena zoomed in on the image, focusing on the pin on her father's shirt. Definitely a V. It was blue, a deep dark blue, she could see that now, the same shade as the lapis lazuli rings Damon and Stefan wore to protect themselves from sunlight.
"I've seen one of those pins before," Damon said abruptly. He frowned. "I don't remember where, though. Sorry."
"You've seen it recently?" Elena asked, but Damon just shrugged. "James said my mother made the pins for al of them," she said, zooming closer so that al she could see on the screen was the grainy image of the V. "I don't believe him, though. She didn't make jewelry, that wasn't her kind of thing. And it doesn't look handmade, not unless it was made by someone with an actual jewelry studio.
That's some kind of enameling on the V, I think." She typed V in the search engine, but it came back with nothing. "I wish I knew what it stood for."
With another graceful one-shouldered shrug, Damon reached for the mouse and zoomed in and out on different parts of the picture. Behind them, the librarian thunked a book down, and Elena glanced back at her to find the woman's eyes fixed on them with disconcerting intensity.
Her mouth tightened as her eyes met Elena's, and she looked away, walking a little farther along the aisle. But Elena was left with the creepy feeling that the librarian was stil watching and listening to them.
She turned to whisper something to Damon about it but was caught again by the sheer unexpectedness of him, of him here. He just didn't fit in the drab and ordinary library computer station - it was like finding a wild animal curled up on your desk. Like a dark angel fixing oatmeal in your kitchen.
Had she ever seen him under fluorescent lights before?
Something about the lighting brought out the clean paleness of his skin, cast long shadows along his cheekbones, and fel without reflection into the black velvet of his hair and eyes. A couple of buttons on the col ar of his shirt were undone, and Elena found herself almost mesmerized by the subtle shifts of the long muscles in his neck and shoulders.
"What would a Vital Society be?" he asked suddenly, breaking her out of her reverie.
"What?" she asked, confused. "What are you talking about?"
Damon clicked the mouse and shifted the zoom, focusing this time on the notebook in her mother's lap. Her mother's hands - pretty hands, Elena noticed, prettier than her own, which had slightly crooked pinkies - were splayed over the open book, but between the fingers, Elena could read: Vit l Soci y
"I assume that's what it says," Damon said, shrugging.
"Since you're looking for something that starts with V. It could say something else of course. Vital Social y, maybe?
Was your mother a social queen bee like you?" Elena ignored the question. "The Vitale Society," she said slowly. "I always thought it was a myth."
"Leave the Vitale Society alone." The hiss came from behind them, and Elena whipped around.
The librarian seemed curiously impressive framed against the bookshelves despite her tennis shoes and pastel sweater set. Her hawklike face was tense and focused on Elena, her body tal and, Elena felt instinctively, threatening.
"What do you mean?" Elena asked. "Do you know something about them?"
Confronted by a direct question, the woman seemed to shrink from the almost menacing figure she had been a second before to an ordinary, slightly dithering old lady. "I don't know anything," she muttered, frowning. "Al I can say is that it's not safe to mess with the Vitales. Things happen around them. Even if you're careful." She started to wheel her book cart away.
"Wait!" Elena said, half rising. "What kind of things?" What had her parents been involved in? They wouldn't have done anything wrong, would they? Not Elena's parents. But the librarian only walked faster, the wheels of her cart squeaking as she rounded the corner into another aisle.
Damon gave a low laugh. "She won't tel you anything," he said, and Elena glared at him. "She doesn't know anything, or she's too scared to say what she does know."
"That's not helpful, Damon," Elena said tightly. She pressed her fingers against her temples. "What do we do now?"
"We look into the Vitale Society, of course," Damon said. Elena opened her mouth to object, and Damon shushed her, drawing one cool finger over her mouth. His touch was soft on her lips, and she half raised a hand toward them. "Don't worry about what a foolish old woman has to say," he told her. "But if we real y want to find out the secrets of this society of yours, we probably need to look somewhere other than the library."
He got to his feet and held out his hand. "Shal we?" he asked. Elena nodded and took his hand in hers. When it came to finding out secrets, to digging up what people wanted to keep concealed, she knew she could put her faith in Damon.