Elena drove slowly down one of Dalcrest campus's side streets, looking for a parking place. There was an antiquarian bookstore around the corner, and she knew they had a collection of the medieval poetry Stefan liked. It would be nice to give him a little welcome-home present, she thought, smiling in anticipation.

Suddenly and without warning, her throat constricted and a bolt of panic shot through her. Damon. Somewhere, Damon was in trouble.

She involuntarily jerked the wheel aside and just managed to avoid sideswiping a parked car. His emotions ran through her, much stronger than usual, overwhelming her senses. Anger, and a sharp sense of fear, rage, a sort of adrenaline-fueled exhilaration. Was he fighting? What was going on? Panicked tears rose in her eyes-her own, she thought, not Damon's-and she blinked them back.

She needed to go home. She had to get to Stefan, let him know something was wrong. Taking a deep breath and trying to calm down, Elena took a sharp right and headed back toward the highway.

The road was clear ahead of her. Pushing Damon's emotions away, she risked fumbling in her purse for her phone. It was evening right now in Italy, where Damon had been the last time she had heard from him. But he could be anywhere, really. He traveled from country to country the way most people crossed streets.

Just as her hand closed around the phone, another flash of emotion from Damon broke through-fury, followed by a feeling of cold calculation. Whatever was happening to Damon, he was plotting a way to get through it. It made her feel a little better. If Damon was good at anything, it was surviving.

Elena quickly punched Damon's number into the phone, but it went straight to voice mail.

"It's me," she said to the electronic silence, the full distance between her and Damon stretching into infinity. "I felt something from you all of a sudden, something bad. Are you okay? Please call me."

As she ended the call, she pushed down hard on the gas pedal, the tires squealing as the car jumped forward. Stefan would know what to do. Suddenly she was desperate to get home to him, to his comforting arms and his always-practical mind.

She pushed her foot down on the gas again, and this time, the pedal sank unresistingly to the floor of the car. Jerking, the car sped faster, much faster than Elena had expected.

Instinctively, she hit the brake, but nothing happened. Trees and telephone poles whipped past in a blur of green and brown.

Tightening her grip on the wheel until her hands ached, Elena slammed down on the brake again. The car didn't slow, but the wheel began to vibrate in her hands, small tremors at first, becoming faster and faster. Her heart raced, and a tiny panicked whine came from Elena's throat.

The car was beginning to drift across the highway, and another car swerved around her, honking loudly. She yanked on the wheel, trying to get back into her own lane, but it only spun uselessly under her hands.

"Come on, come on," Elena whimpered, pleading with the car, or the universe. "Please, no."

This is it, she thought with a blank feeling of wonder. After everything that had happened, after all she'd survived, she was going to die here, in an out-of-control car on a bright, sunny afternoon.

Something huge and dark rose up in front of her. I'm sorry, Stefan, she thought, and then everything went black.

"Elena? Elena?" A faint, unfamiliar voice was calling to her through the darkness. Elena twitched with irritation. She didn't want to talk to anyone; she wanted to sleep. Her head hurt and her chest ached terribly. Was she sick?

"Elena!" A pounding noise, somebody banging near her head.

With a huge effort, Elena managed to drag open her eyes. Everything was blurry and white, too close, and she pushed at the whiteness, trying to shove it away. It shifted under her hands with a rustling of fabric, and slowly the world came back into focus.

The white stuff was an air bag, she realized, and it filled the space in front of her. I must have hit something, Elena thought dazedly, and raised her hand to the pain in her head. Her fingers came away bright red, wet with blood. There was an aching, bruised feeling in her chest, and she scrabbled at her seat belt, smearing the blood across her shirt.

A wave of panic washed over her. She could have died.

"Elena!" the voice snapped at her again, and she jumped.

A guy a few years older than she was, with short dark hair and heavy brows, stood just outside her window, rattling her door handle. "Elena!" he said sharply. "Hurry! You have to get out of the car."

The intensity in his voice had Elena reaching automatically for the door handle, but then she drew back her hand. "Who are you?" she said warily through the glass. "How do you know my name?"

"There's no time to explain. Please just trust me. I'm on your side." His hazel eyes were steady, pleading with her. "You have to get out of the car."

Something in his voice made her hurry to unfasten her seat belt and open the car door. But before she could say anything, he locked onto her arm and dragged her down the side of the road, away from her car.

"What are you doing?" Elena exclaimed, trying to dig in her heels and pull away. "Let go of me!" It was broad daylight. "Help!" she screamed, her voice shrill in her own ears, but no help came. She glanced around wildly, but there were no other cars in sight. The guy's hand was like an iron band around her wrist, yanking her on.

She was drawing her breath in to scream for help again-surely there must be someone within earshot-when her captor came to a halt and let go of her.

"Okay," he said, resting his hands on his knees and taking in great gulps of air. "This ought to be far enough."

"What the hell do you think-" Elena began hotly.

And that was when her car exploded.

It went up in a great orange ball of flame and an ear-crunching boom, just like in the movies. A heavy cloud of oily black smoke rose from the flames.

Elena's body felt numb. Her stomach rolled with nausea as she blinked in shock at the dark smoke, the hungry flames.

She'd felt so safe as a Guardian. She didn't have to worry about getting old, or getting sick, or dying at the hands of vampires, or demons, or werewolves, or any other kind of supernatural being. All she'd had to worry about, Elena had thought, were very human causes of death-a knife, a gun, strangulation.

A car exploding in the street, with her inside.

Her mother had died in a car accident, even though she had been a Guardian, even though she'd been hundreds of years old at least, and Elena wondered why she had never really considered the same thing happening to her. She wrapped her arms around herself, unable to tear her gaze away from the burning car.

The dark-haired guy was standing next to her, watching the fire with a mildly intrigued expression, as if it were a TV show or science experiment. He was only about Elena's own height but had well-muscled arms and shoulders, like an athlete. "I'm Jack," he said, seeming to feel Elena's gaze on him. She automatically gathered her Power and used it to see his aura, which seemed warm and brown, sincere.

"That's not supposed to happen," she said, and flushed, because the words sounded stupid to her own ears. "I mean, I read an article about movie cliches, and a lot of it was about how cars almost never explode. Certainly not just from running into a tree." As she spoke, she felt her heart steady. If they could talk logically about the why and the how, maybe she wouldn't have to think about the what. The fact that she could have been gone forever, never see Stefan or Damon again.

"It was a telephone pole," Jack said drily, and then the corners of his mouth turned up in a sudden and unexpected smile. It changed his whole face. He looked friendly and open, and Elena knew her earlier instinct to trust him had been the right one.

She tried to take a step and stumbled, feeling suddenly sick. Jack hurried forward to steady her, concern etched on his face.

"We need to get you home," he said, his hand under her arm, supporting her. "And you're right. This doesn't just happen." They both turned to look back at the steadily burning car.

"I don't understand," she mumbled. She felt like she might laugh, or scream. Possibly she had a concussion, because nothing seemed to be making any sense.

Jack wiped his hand across his face in a quick, nervous gesture. "Elena," he said, "this was no accident."