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clothes were as natural as his usual jeans.
"We'd better go," he said, equally quiet and serious.
Elena nodded and went with him to the car, but her heart was no longer merely cold; it was ice. He
was further away from her than ever, and she had no idea how to get him back.
Thunder growled overhead as they drove to the high school, and Elena glanced out of the car
window with dull dismay. The cloud cover was thick and dark, although it hadn't actually begun to
rain yet. The air had a charged, electric feel, and the sullen purple thunderheads gave the sky a
nightmarish look. It was a perfect atmosphere for Halloween, menacing and otherworldly, but it woke
only dread in Elena. Since that night at Bonnie's, she'd lost her appreciation for the eerie and uncanny.
Her diary had never turned up, although they'd searched Bonnie's house top to bottom. She still
couldn't believe that it was really gone, and the idea of a stranger reading her most private thoughts
made her feel wild inside. Because, of course, it had been stolen; what other explanation was there?
More than one door had been open that night at the McCullough house; someone could have just
walked in. She wanted to kill whoever had done it.
A vision of dark eyes rose before her. That boy, the boy she'd almost given in to at Bonnie's house,
the boy who'd made her forget Stefan. Was he the one?
She roused herself as they pulled up to the school and forced herself to smile as they made their
way through the halls. The gym was barely organized chaos. In the hour since Elena had left,
everything had changed. Then, the place had been full of seniors: Student Council members, football
players, the Key Club, all putting the finishing touches on props and scenery. Now it was full of
strangers, most of them not even human.
Several zombies turned as Elena came in, their grinning skulls visible through the rotting flesh of
their faces. A grotesquely deformed hunchback limped toward her, along with a corpse with livid
white skin and hollow eyes. From another direction came a werewolf, its snarling muzzle covered
with blood, and a dark and dramatic witch.
Elena realized, with a jolt, that she couldn't recognize half these people in their costumes. Then they
were around her, admiring the ice-blue gown, announcing problems that had developed already. Elena
waved them quiet and turned toward the witch, whose long dark hair flowed down the back of a tightfitting
black dress.
"What is it, Meredith?" she said.
"Coach Lyman's sick," Meredith replied grimly, "so somebody got Tanner to substitute."
"Mr. Tanner?" Elena was horrified.
"Yes, and he's making trouble already. Poor Bonnie's just about had it. You'd better get over there."
Elena sighed and nodded, then made her way along the twisting route of the Haunted House tour. As
she passed through the grisly Torture Chamber and the ghastly Mad Slasher Room, she thought they
had almost built too well. This place was unnerving even in the light.
The Druid Room was near the exit. There, a cardboard Stonehenge had been constructed. But the
pretty little druid priestess who stood among the rather realistic-looking monoliths wearing white
robes and an oak-leaf garland looked ready to burst into tears.
"But you've got to wear the blood," she was saying pleadingly. "It's part of the scene; you're a
sacrifice."
"Wearing these ridiculous robes is bad enough," replied Tanner shortly. "No one informed me I was
going to have to smear syrup all over myself."