If he wasn't going to tel her, she would find out for herself. The library seemed like a logical place to start.
"Elena," a voice cal ed, and she stopped. She had been so focused on her mission that she had almost walked right by Damon, leaning against a tree outside the library. He smiled up at her with an innocently inquiring expression, his long legs stretched in front of him.
"What are you doing here?" she said abruptly. It was so weird, just seeing him here in the daylight on campus, like he was part of one picture superimposed upon another. He didn't belong in this part of her life, not unless she brought him in herself.
"Enjoying the sunshine," Damon said dryly. "And the scenery." The wave of his hand encompassed the trees and buildings of the campus as Wellas a flock of pretty girls giggling on the other side of the path. "What are you doing here?"
"I go to this school," Elena said. "So it's not weird for me to be hanging around the library. See my point?" Damon laughed. "You've discovered my secret, Elena," he said, getting to his feet. "I was here hoping to see you.
Or one of your little friends. I get so lonely, you know, even your Mutt would be a welcome distraction."
"Real y?" she asked.
He shot her a look, his dark eyes amused. "Of course I always want to see you, princess. But I'm here for another reason. I'm supposed to be looking into the disappearances, remember? So I have to spend some time on the campus."
"Oh. Okay." Elena considered her options. Official y, she shouldn't be hanging around Damon at al . The terms of her breakup - or just break, she corrected herself - with Stefan were that she wasn't going to see either of the Salvatore brothers, not until they worked out their own issues and this thing between the three of them had time to cool off. But she'd already violated that by letting Damon sleep on the floor of her room, a much bigger deal than going to the library together.
"And what are you up to?" Damon asked her. "Anything I can assist with?"
Real y, a trip to the library ought to be innocent enough.
Elena made up her mind. She and Damon were supposed to be friends, after al . "I'm trying to find out some information about my parents," she said. "Want to help?"
"Certainly, my lovely," Damon said, and took her hand.
Elena felt a slight frisson of unease. But his fingers were reassuringly firm in hers, and she pushed her hesitation away.
The ancient tennis-shoed librarian in charge of the archive room explained how to search the database of school records and got Elena and Damon set up in the corner on a computer.
"Ugh," Damon said, poking disdainful y at a key. "I don't mind computers, but books and pictures ought to be real, not on a machine."
"But this way everyone can see them," Elena said patiently. She'd had this kind of conversation with Stefan before. The Salvatore brothers might look col ege-aged, but there were some things about the modern world they just couldn't seem to get their heads around.
Elena clicked on the photo section of the database and typed in her mother's name, Elizabeth Morrow.
"Look, there are a bunch of pictures." She scanned through them, looking for the one that she had seen hanging in the hal . She saw a lot of cast and crew pictures from various theatrical productions. James had told her that her mother was a star on the design side, but it looked like she was in some productions, too. In one, Elena's mother was dancing, her head flung back, her hair going everywhere.
"She looks like you." Damon was contemplating the picture, his head tilted to one side, dark eyes intent. "Softer here, though, around the mouth" - one long finger gestured - "and her face is more innocent than yours." His mouth twisted teasingly, and he shot a sidelong glance at Elena.
"A nicer girl than you, I'd guess."
"I'm nice," Elena said, hurt, and quickly clicked on to find the picture she was looking for.
"You're too clever to be nice, Elena," Damon said, but Elena was barely listening.
"Here we are," she said. The photograph was just as she remembered it: James and her parents under a tree, eager and impossibly young. Elena zoomed in on the image, focusing on the pin on her father's shirt. Definitely a V. It was blue, a deep dark blue, she could see that now, the same shade as the lapis lazuli rings Damon and Stefan wore to protect themselves from sunlight.
"I've seen one of those pins before," Damon said abruptly. He frowned. "I don't remember where, though. Sorry."
"You've seen it recently?" Elena asked, but Damon just shrugged. "James said my mother made the pins for al of them," she said, zooming closer so that al she could see on the screen was the grainy image of the V. "I don't believe him, though. She didn't make jewelry, that wasn't her kind of thing. And it doesn't look handmade, not unless it was made by someone with an actual jewelry studio.
That's some kind of enameling on the V, I think." She typed V in the search engine, but it came back with nothing. "I wish I knew what it stood for."
With another graceful one-shouldered shrug, Damon reached for the mouse and zoomed in and out on different parts of the picture. Behind them, the librarian thunked a book down, and Elena glanced back at her to find the woman's eyes fixed on them with disconcerting intensity.
Her mouth tightened as her eyes met Elena's, and she looked away, walking a little farther along the aisle. But Elena was left with the creepy feeling that the librarian was stil watching and listening to them.
She turned to whisper something to Damon about it but was caught again by the sheer unexpectedness of him, of him here. He just didn't fit in the drab and ordinary library computer station - it was like finding a wild animal curled up on your desk. Like a dark angel fixing oatmeal in your kitchen.