The Hunters: Moonsong Chapter Eleven

Coffee, my dear? Professor Campbel James, Elena reminded her ego asked. At her nod, he bounced to his feet and bustled over to the tiny coffeemaker perched on top of a teetering plug of papers.He brought her a cup of coffee, creamed and sugared, and temperedtled garbage down happily in his chair, gazing across his crowded desk at her with an expression of innocent enjoyment. I think I have some cookies, he offered. Not homemade, only when theyre reasonably tasty. No? Elena shook her head politely and sipped her coffee.Its very good, she said, and smiled at him.It had been a few geezerhood since she had told Stefan and Damon she needed to take a break from them. After a much-needed sob session with Bonnie and Meredith, she had done her best to be normal going to class, having luncheon with her friends, keeping up a brave mask. Part of this attempt at normality was approaching to Jamess office hours, so that she could hear more approximately her parents. make up though they couldnt be there to comfort her, whistle of the towning about them offered some solace.My God James cried out. You have Elizabeths face, and therefore, when you smile, Thomass dimple comes right out. Just the same as his on only one side. It gave him a certain raffish charm.Elena wondered if she should thank James. He was complimenting her, in a way, but the compliments were authoritative y enjoin toward her parents, and it felt a little presumptuous to be grateful for them.She settled for saying, Im glad you think I look like my parents. I remember sentiment when I was little that they were very elegant. She shrugged. I guess al little kids think their parents are beautiful.Well, your mother certainly was, James said. But its not hardly your looks. Your voice sounds like hers, and the comments you made in class this week reminded me of things your father would have said. He was very observant. He delved into his desk drawers and, after a rubbish of rummaging, pul ed out a tin of butter cookies. Sure you wont have one? Ah, Well. He chose one for himself and took a bite. Yes, as I was saying, Elizabeth was extremely lovely. I wouldnt have cal ed Thomas lovely, but he had charm. Maybe thats how he managed to win Elizabeths heart in the end.Oh. Elena stirred her coffee absently. She dated other guys, then? It was ridiculous, but she had kind of imagined her parents as always being together.James chuckled. She was quite the heartbreaker. I imagine you are, too, dear.Elena thought unhappily of Stefans soft, dismayed green eyes. She had never cute to hurt him. And Matt, who she had dated in high school and who had quietly gone on loving her. He hadnt fal en in love, or even been real y interested in, anyone else since then. Heartbreaker, yeah.James was watching her with bright, inquisitive eyes.Not a happy heartbreaker, then? he said softly. Elena glanced at him in surprise, and he set his coffee cup down with a little clink. He straightened up. Elizabeth Morrow, he said in a brisk businesslike voice, was a freshman when I met her. She was always making things, particularly amazing sets and costumes she designed for the theater department. Your father and I were both sophomores at the time we were in the same brotherhoodernity, and close friends and he couldnt stop talking about this amazing lady friend. Once I got to know her, I was sucked into her orbit, too. He smiled. Thomas and I each had something special about us I was academical y gifted, and Thomas could talk anyone into anything. But we were both cultural barbarians.Elizabeth taught us about art, about theater, about the world beyond the smal Southern towns where wed pornographic up. James ate another cookie, absentmindedly licking sugar off his fingers, then sighed deeply. I thought wed be friends forever, he said. But we went in polar directions in the end.Why? Elena asked. Did something happen? His bright eyes shifted away from hers. Of course not, he said dismissive ly. Just life, I suppose. But whenever I walk down the third-floor corridor, I cant help stopping to look at the photograph of us. He gave a self-conscious laugh, patting his stomach. Mostly vanity, I suppose. I recognize my unsalted self more easily than I do the fat old man I see in the mirror now.What are you talking about? Elena asked, confused.The third-floor corridor?Jamess speak made a round O of surprise. Of course, you dont know al the col ege traditions except. The long corridor on the third floor of this building has pictures from al the different periods of Dalcrests history. Including a nice photo of your parents and yours truly.Il have to check it out, Elena said, feeling a little excited. She hadnt seen many pictures of her parents from before they were married. There was a tap on the door, and a smal girl with wish-washes peeked in. Oh, Im sorry, she said, and started to withdraw.No, no, my dear, James said jovial y, getting to his feet. Elena and I were just cha tting about old friends. You and I need to have a serious talk about your senior thesis as soon as possible. Come in, come in. He gave Elena an absurd little half bow. Elena, wel have to continue this discourse later.Of course, Elena said, and rose, shaking Jamess offered hand.Speaking of old friends, he said casual y as she turned to go, I met a friend of yours, Dr. Celia Connor, just before the semester started. She mentioned that you were coming here.Elena whipped back around, staring at him. He had met Celia? Images fil ed Elenas mind Celia held in Stefans arms as he traveled straightawayer than any human, desperate to return her life Celia fending off the phantom in a room ful of flames. How much did James know? What had Celia told him?James smiled blandly back at her. But wel talk later, he said. After a moment, Elena nodded and stumbled out of his office, her mind racing. The girl who was waiting held the door open for her.In the hal outside, Elena leaned against the wal a nd took stock for a moment. Would Celia have told James about Stefan and Damon being vampires, or anything about Elena herself? Probably not. Celia had become a friend by the end of their battle with the phantom. She would have kept their secrets. Plus, Celia was a very comprehend academic. She wouldnt have told her col eagues anything that might make them think she was crazy, including that she had met actual vampires.Elena shook off the unease she felt from the end of her conversation with James and thought kinda of the picture hed told her about. She climbed the stairs to the third floor to see if she could find it now.It turned out that the third-floor corridor was no problem to find. While the second floor was a snarl of turning passageways and faculty offices subdivided from one another, when she stepped out of the stairWellon the third floor she discovered it was a long hal that ran from one end of the building to the other.In contrast to the gossip of people at work on th e second floor, the third floor seemed abandoned, silent and dim. Closed doors sat at regular intervals along the hal .Elena peered through the glass on one door, only to see an empty room.Al down the hal , between the doors, hung large photographs. Near the stairWell, where she began looking, they seemed like they were from maybe the turn of the century young men in side-combed hair and suits, smiling stiffly girls in high-necked white blouses and long skirts with their hair pul ed up on top of their heads. In one, a row of girls carried garlands of flowers for some forgotten campus occasion.There were photos of boat races and picnics, couples dressed up for dances, team pictures. In one photo, the cast of some student picnic maybe from the 1920s or 30s, the girls with shingled flapper cuts, the guys with funny covers over their shoes laughed hilariously on stage, their mouths frozen open, their hands in the air. A little farther on, a group of young men in army uniforms gazed b ack at her seriously, jaws firmly set, eyes determined.As she moved on down the hal , the photos changed from black-and-white to burnish the clothes got less formal the hairstyles grew longer, then shorter messier, then sleeker. Even though most of the people in the photographs looked happy, something about them made Elena feel sad.Maybe it was how fast time seemed to pass in them al these people had been Elenas age, students like her, with their own fears and joys and heartbreaks, and now they were gone, grown older or even dead.She thought briefly of a bottle tucked deep in her closet at home, containing the water of eternal life shed accidental y stolen from the Guardians. Was that the answer? She pushed the thought away. It wasnt the answer yet she knew that and shed made the very clear choice not to think about that bottle, not to decide anything, not now. She had time, she had more life to live natural y before shed want to ask herself that question.The picture James talked about was close to the far end of the hal . In it, her father, her mother, and James were sitting on the grass infra a tree in the quad. Her parents were leaning forward in eager conversation, and James a much thinner version, his face almost unrecognizable beneath a straggly beard was sitting back and watching them, his expression sharp and amused.Her mother looked amazingly young, her face soft, her eyes wide, her smile big and bright, but she was also somehow exactly the mother Elena remembered. Elenas heart gave a painful but happy throb at the sight of her. Her father was gawkier than the distinguished tonic Elena had known and his pastel-patterned shirt was a fashion disaster of epic proportions but there was an essential dadness to him that made Elena smile.She noticed the pin on his horrific pastel shirt first. She thought it was a smudge, but then, leaning forward, she made out the shape of a smal , dark blue V. Looking at the other figures, she established her moth er and James were wearing the same pins, her mothers half-obscured by a long golden curl fal ing across it.Weird. She tapped her finger slowly against the glass over the photograph, piteous one V and then the others.She would ask James about the pins. Hadnt he mentioned that he and her dad had been in a fraternity? Maybe it had something to do with that. Didnt frat boys pin their girlfriends?Something nudged at the edges of her mind. Shed seen one of these pins somewhere. But she couldnt remember where, so she shrugged it off. Whatever it stood for, it was something she didnt know about her parents, another facet of their lives to be discovered here.She couldnt wait to check off more.