The Vampire Diaries: The Salvation, Unspoken(11)

Meredith swallowed hard and closed her eyes. I have to fix this, she thought desperately.



The ball slid neatly into the pins, knocking them all down in a perfect strike. “Wooo!” Jasmine whooped. “I am the champion!” Her long dark curls flew out around her as she spun, arms raised in a victory pose.

“Yes, you’re completely awesome,” Matt said, rolling his eyes. “I’m still winning, though.”

“How can that be possible?” Jasmine said with mock surprise, looking up at the scoreboard over the lane. “Are you cheating?”

Matt laughed. “How could I be cheating?” he asked. “I roll the ball, the ball knocks down the pins, the computer counts how many I knocked down. I’ve gotten five strikes and you’ve gotten one. Don’t be a sore loser.”

Jasmine raised an eyebrow at him. “Everyone you know is magic. Bonnie or Elena would spell a scoreboard for you any time.”

“I repeat. Sore. Loser,” Matt said, smiling at her, admiring the flush of her cheeks and her wide, bright eyes. Her curls flew loose and wild around her shoulders, and Matt just wanted to bury his face in them, breathe in the mint-and-citrus scent of her shampoo.

Instead, he stepped closer and brushed his hand against hers. It occurred to him suddenly that, despite every terrible thing that had happened lately, he was happy. He couldn’t help feeling guilty. Stefan had been his friend, his comrade-in-arms, and now he was dead.

What kept him from feeling guiltier, though, was that Stefan would have wanted him to be happy. Stefan had approved of Jasmine. “A very nice girl,” Stefan had called her once, raising a glass and giving Matt that faint, privately amused smile he saved for his more human moments.

And wasn’t it Matt’s turn to find love, finally? He’d spent so long hopelessly infatuated with Elena, and then he’d fallen for poor, doomed Chloe.

After the bleakness of Chloe’s death, Jasmine had been like a gift: funny, smart, and beautiful. And she loved Matt back.

A month ago, he’d had to let her know about the true darkness beneath the logical, serene place that had always been her reality. His worst fear had come true: Jasmine had run away from him.

But she had come back. Because she loved him, and because she wanted to help fight that darkness. Now she was able to joke about the supernatural craziness that suffused his life, and he felt closer to her than ever.

The crash of bowling pins in the next lane brought Matt out of his thoughts and he smiled at Jasmine, brushing a long curl away from her face.

“I love you,” he told her, his eyes steady on hers.

Jasmine’s face brightened with pleasure, and she reached up to catch his hand, her warm fingers entwining with his. “I love you, too,” she said. “I’m all in now. No more secrets.” She looked determined, her mouth firmly set. She meant it.

Jasmine’s ball rattled in the ball return, and Matt slid an arm around her waist as she reached for it. “I’ll share one secret now,” he said, dropping a kiss on the back of her neck. “The secret of my athletic skill. Let me show you my moves, lady.” He slid his hand down to hers to help support the ball and moved in closer.

“Oldest line in the book,” Jasmine said, leaning back against him, smirking, her serious tone abandoned. Her hair was soft against his cheek. “Go ahead, show me everything.”





“Meredith, call me,” Elena said. She clicked off the phone, dropping it onto the passenger seat beside her. It had been a couple of days since she’d been able to reach Meredith. Of course her friend was busy—between law school and patrolling for vampires, she was always busy—but she usually kept in close contact with Elena. They worked together, Elena thought, and it was bewildering to have Meredith drop out of touch.

Elena’s palm itched suddenly, and she rubbed it against the steering wheel as she drove.

Without warning, a cool chill, like a trickle of cold water, ran down her back. Elena jerked, automatically pressing down on the gas pedal. There was someone following her, she was certain. Her eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror.

A dark SUV crept up closely behind her. She couldn’t make out the driver’s face.

Elena let her eyes shift, using her Guardian Power to search for nearby auras, and blinked in surprise. The aura of whoever was driving was pure white, spreading out around the SUV in a great cloud of light. Beautiful, really, but not human. Not vampire or werewolf either.

And it was aggravatingly familiar. No wonder the figure-eight-shaped scar on her hand had itched—the cut Mylea had given her was probably some sort of homing device. It would be like the Guardians to mark Elena in a way that made her easy to track.