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"Dear Diary,

I’ rather than writing in cursive, because that way I have more control

What am I terrified of, you ask? And when I say "of Damon"you don’t believe the answer, not if you’d seen the two of us a few days ago But to understand, you have to know a few facts

Have you ever heard the phrase "Al bets are off"?

It , can happen So that even soives them back their money Because a wild card has entered the situation You can’t even figure the odds to take a bet

That’s where I a in ertips in fear

Al bets are off

You can see how shaky even o in to see hiht annoy Da this right What I should be saying is that we’re back: Damon and Meredith and Bonnie and ain, with a star ball - and Stefan

Stefan was tricked into going there by Shinichi and Misao, the brother and sister kitsune, or evil fox-spirits, who told hiet the curse of being a vaain

They lied

All they did was leave hiht, no warmthuntil he was at the point of death

But Dareed to lead us to try to find hiin to describe the Dark Di is that we finally found Stefan, and that by then we’d found the Twin Fox key we needed to release him But - he was a skeleton, poor boy We carried him out of the prison on his pallet, which later Matt burned; it was so infested with creepy-crawlies But that night we gave him a bath and put him to bedand then we fed him Yes, with our blood All the hu poultices for where his poor bones were al out of his skin

They had starved him to that point! I could kill Thes Powers - if only I could use thes of Destruction, but I have no idea how to suot to see how Stefan blossoave his that weren’t on his chart, and I’d have to be an idiot not to know that my blood is different from other people’s -

it’s ood)

And so Stefan recovered enough that the nexthe was able to walk downstairs to thank Mrs Flowers for her potions!

The rest of us, though - all the humans - were totally exhausted We didn’t even think about what had happened to the bouquet, because we didn’t know it had anything special in it We’d gotten it just as ere leaving the Dark Dimension, from a kind white kitsune who’d been in the cell across froed a jailbreak He was so beautiful! I never knew a kitsune could be kind But he had given Stefan these flowers

Anyway, thatDamon was up Of course, he couldn’t contribute any of his own blood, but I honestly think he would have, if he could That was the way he was back then

And that’s why I don’t understand how I can feel the fear I feel no can you be terrified of someone who’s kissed you and kissed youand called you his darling and his sweetheart and his princess? And who has laughed with you with his eyes dancing with htened, and told you there was nothing to be afraid of, not while he was there? So?

Someone who has protected you, no matter what the cost to himself, for days on end?

I know Damon I know his faults, but I also knohat he’s like inside And he’s not what he wants people to think he is

He’s not cold, or arrogant, or cruel Those are fa?ades he puts on to cover himself, like clothes

The problem is that I’ht now he’s all e and become all of the to say is, thatonly Damon was really awake He was the only one who saw the bouquet

And one of the things Daical wards frole pitch-black rose in the center Da to find a black rose for years, just to admire it, I think

But when he saw this one he smelled itand boom! The rose disappeared!

And suddenly he was sick and dizzy and he couldn’t s and all his other senses were dulled as well That hen Sage - oh, I haven’t even eous hunk of a vaood friend to all of us - told his

Humans have to breathe that way, you see

I don’t kno long it took Da anyone could do about it

The black rose had been for Stefan; and it would have given hiain But when Daic on him

That’s when I saw him look at me and lump me in with the rest of my species - a species he’s come to hate and scorn