Damon licked a trace of blood carefully from the back of his hand and smiled at Katherine. They'd come across a couple walking through the woods just after dawn and fed together, and now it was midmorning, sunlight streaming down through the trees and casting black and golden shadows on the path. Damon felt full and content, ready to go home and sleep away the brightest of the daylight hours. A slight unease crossed his mind as he remembered the expression of panic on his victim's face, and he pushed it away: he was a vampire; this was what he was supposed to do.
Dabbing delicately at the corners of her mouth, Katherine cocked her head at him, as dainty and quizzical as a little songbird. "Why didn't you kill yours?" she asked.
Shrugging defensively, Damon slipped his sunglasses out of his pocket and over his eyes. He wasn't, to be completely honest, sure why he hadn't killed the girl this morning, or why he hadn't killed any of his victims since the blond jogger he'd hunted down more than a week before. He could remember how good the kill had felt, the rush as her life passed into him, but he wasn't eager to repeat the experience, not when the lingering aftertaste was guilt. He didn't want to feel anything for them; he wanted to take the blood and go. If that meant letting them live, that was fine with Damon.
Shielded behind the sunglasses, he said none of this, but merely smirked at Katherine and asked, "Why didn't you?"
"Oh, we're all keeping a low profile. Too many deaths and this campus will panic again. Klaus wants to keep the humans happy and easy to hunt while he finishes off your girl and her friends." Katherine eyed Damon as she smoothed her long golden hair, and he kept his expression carefully blank. Whatever Katherine wanted from him, she wasn't going to get it by bringing up Elena.
"Of course," Damon said, and added, "You know, you came back from death much saner and more practical, my dear." Katherine dimpled at him, and mock-curtsied gracefully.
They walked peacefully together, listening to the chirps and calls of sparrows, finches, and robins overhead. The quick rattle of a woodpecker drilling a tree sounded a little way away, and Damon could hear the rustle and patter of small, furry creatures in the undergrowth. He stretched luxuriously, thinking of his bed.
"So," Katherine said, breaking the comfortable silence between them. "Elena." She said it again, stretching the syllables of the word out as if she was tasting them: "E-ley-na."
"What about her?" Damon asked. His voice was careless, but he felt an uncomfortable heat at the back of his neck.
Katherine fixed him knowingly with her jewel-blue gaze, and Damon frowned at her behind his sunglasses.
"Tell me about her," she said softly, her expression coaxing. "I want to know."