Chapter 6 : Cemetery Games
The truck was cold when we climbed in. I'd left the windows down, and the night air had seeped into everything—the seats, the steering wheel, the CD case wedged between the gear shift and the cup holder.
Vicki buckled her seatbelt without being asked. Her eyes were swollen, makeup destroyed. She looked younger than seventeen. Fragile in a way that made my chest ache.
I started the engine.
"Where are we going?" Her voice was rough.
"Home."
"Matt—"
"Home. We can talk there."
She didn't argue.
The drive was quiet. I focused on the road, the familiar turns, the way the streetlights made shadows dance across the windshield. Vicki stared out the passenger window at nothing.
The CD case caught my eye again. I'd noticed it earlier, but hadn't processed it—Kelly Donovan's handwriting on the case, a faded tracklist that included songs from the late nineties.
Mom's favorite album. Left behind like everything else.
I didn't touch it.
The trailer materialized out of the darkness. Porch light on—I'd left it that way—and the familiar rust stains visible even in the dim illumination. Home, for whatever that word was worth.
Vicki was out of the truck before I'd fully stopped. She headed for the door, then paused, looking back.
"I'm not—" She stopped. Started again. "It's not that bad, Matt. What I'm doing."
"It's bad enough."
"I can handle it."
"You can't." I climbed out, closed my door carefully. "Nobody can. That's the whole point of addiction—it makes you think you're in control right up until you're not."
Her jaw tightened. "You don't know what it's like."
I know you're dead in four months if something doesn't change.
I couldn't say that. Couldn't explain the weight of watching someone's tragedy unfold while knowing the script.
"I know Mom left," I said instead. "I know Dad's worse. I know you're hurting, and the pills make the hurting stop, and that feels like the only thing that works."
Vicki's eyes widened.
"But it's not working." I stepped closer. "You're not getting better, you're just getting number. And numb isn't the same as okay."
Silence.
A dog barked somewhere in the trailer park. A car passed on the road, headlights sweeping across the gravel lot.
"When did you get so..." Vicki trailed off.
Old? Tired? Desperate?
"I just don't want to lose you," I said. "That's all."
She stared at me for a long moment. Then she walked inside.
I followed.
The trailer was exactly as we'd left it—dishes in the sink, empty bottle on the counter, the accumulated debris of two teenagers barely keeping things together. Vicki went straight to her room. The door closed. A moment later, music started playing—something loud and angry that vibrated through the thin walls.
I stood in the kitchen and breathed.
Progress. Maybe.
She'd listened. She'd cried. She'd come home instead of staying out all night. It wasn't a cure, but it was something.
The cooler under my bed held 450 milliliters of my blood, chilling against borrowed ice. The phlebotomy kit was locked in its box. My phone showed three texts from Tyler asking about tomorrow's training and one from Elena checking in.
I answered them all—short, casual, normal—then made myself dinner.
Eggs and toast. Simple. The eggs stuck to the pan because I'd forgotten to spray it first, and the toast came out darker than I wanted. I ate it anyway, standing at the counter, watching the night through the kitchen window.
Small failures. Minor setbacks.
Something doesn't work first try.
I scraped the pan clean, washed it, dried it, put it away. The routine was soothing—mechanical actions that didn't require thought. By the time I finished, Vicki's music had softened to something less aggressive.
I knocked on her door.
"What?"
"Dinner's ready. If you want some."
Pause. "I already ate."
A lie, probably. But I wasn't going to force it.
"Okay. Goodnight, Vicki."
No response. But I heard her shift on the bed, moving closer to the door.
I went to my room.
The blood bag in the cooler was still cold, the ice barely melted. Tomorrow morning, I'd test it—see if stored blood responded to my control the same way fresh blood did. If it worked, I could start building a real supply. If it didn't, I'd need to adjust my strategy.
The phlebotomy kit would let me draw more blood later in the week. The training with Tyler would keep me physically sharp. The Grill would provide intelligence on the Founding Families.
Vervain. The word surfaced in my memory. Sheriff Forbes had mentioned it casually—a supply that existed, that the Founding Families protected. I needed to find it. Needed to start protecting the people around me from the vampires that were coming.
My phone showed 11:47 PM.
I set an alarm for 5 AM. That would give me time to train alone before meeting Tyler at six. Time to test the stored blood. Time to prepare.
The cuts on my forearm itched. Healing. Faster than they should—day two, and they were already scabbing over clean. The needle site from this morning was barely visible.
Enhanced healing. One more variable I didn't fully understand.
I turned off the light and lay in the dark.
Vicki's music had stopped. The trailer was quiet except for the settling sounds of old metal and the distant hum of the highway.
Ninety-four days until Stefan Salvatore arrived.
Ninety-four days until the vampires came.
I closed my eyes and let exhaustion pull me under. Tomorrow, I'd train. I'd work. I'd watch my sister and plan my strategies and pretend to be a normal teenager worried about normal things.
But tonight, I let myself feel the weight of it.
The responsibility. The fear. The strange, impossible hope that maybe—maybe—I could change things. Save Vicki. Protect Caroline. Keep the people I cared about alive in a world that wanted them dead.
Sleep came slowly.
I didn't dream.
[JEREMY GILBERT — Gilbert House, 12:23 AM]
Elena was still awake.
Jeremy could see the light under her bedroom door as he crept past, shoes in hand, trying not to make the floorboards creak. Aunt Jenna was asleep—he'd checked—but Elena had developed a sixth sense for his late-night returns.
The light didn't flicker. No footsteps. Maybe she was reading, lost in one of her journals, too distracted to notice.
He made it to his room without incident.
The high was fading. That uncomfortable in-between state where the world felt too sharp and his thoughts moved too slow. He sat on the edge of his bed and stared at his phone.
Vicki said tonight.
Except Vicki's brother had showed up. Matt Donovan, normally so easygoing, suddenly radiating protective fury. Jeremy had never seen him like that—eyes cold, voice flat, the kind of anger that didn't need to be loud to be terrifying.
I'm the one who'll find your body if you OD.
The words echoed.
Jeremy thought about his parents. The bridge. The water. Elena, somehow alive when she shouldn't have been, unable to explain why.
He thought about the pills in his backpack. The way they made everything softer, easier, further away.
He thought about Matt's face in the cemetery, lit by distant streetlights, looking at his sister like she was the only thing that mattered in the world.
Must be nice.
Elena loved him. Jeremy knew that. But she was drowning in her own grief, and Aunt Jenna was trying too hard, and everyone kept looking at him like he was a bomb about to go off.
Vicki didn't look at him like that. Vicki looked at him like he was an escape.
Maybe that was the problem.
He pulled out his phone, typed a message to Vicki: You okay?
Three dots appeared. Then: Brother drama. Talk tomorrow?
Sure.
He plugged in his phone, kicked off his shoes, and lay back on the bed.
The ceiling was dark. The house was quiet.
Somewhere in Mystic Falls, Matt Donovan was probably still awake, worrying about his sister. Somewhere, Elena was journaling about feelings she couldn't express out loud.
Jeremy closed his eyes and waited for sleep.
It didn't come for a long time.
[MATT DONOVAN — 12:03 AM]
The light in Vicki's room finally clicked off.
I watched the thin strip of darkness under her door for a full minute, making sure it stayed dark. Then I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
She was home. Safe. For tonight.
Tomorrow would bring new challenges. The blood testing. Tyler's training. Another shift at the Grill. The endless, exhausting work of pretending to be normal while preparing for war.
But right now, my sister was asleep in the next room, and I had ninety-four days to figure out how to save her life.
I pulled out my phone and opened the notes app.
Priorities updated:
Blood testing (tomorrow, 5 AM)Vervain acquisition (Founding Families, Gilbert garden?)Vicki monitoring (daily)Jeremy Gilbert — potential ally or liability?
The last one was new. Jeremy had witnessed something tonight—a version of Matt Donovan he hadn't seen before. That could be useful or dangerous, depending on how he processed it.
I saved the note, then deleted it.
Nothing written. Everything memorized.
The clock showed 12:07 AM.
I should sleep. My body needed rest—blood donation, training, emotional confrontation, all of it adding up to exhaustion.
But sleep felt like surrender. Like admitting that I was still human, still limited, still vulnerable to all the things that had killed the original Matt Donovan's story arc.
You're not him anymore.
I'd died at twenty-eight, worked to death in a job that didn't matter. I'd been given a second chance in a body that wasn't mine, in a world that was about to become very dangerous.
I couldn't waste it.
The alarm was set for 5 AM. Four hours and fifty-three minutes away.
I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
Four months to prepare. Four months to build resources, train abilities, establish alliances. Four months to turn Matt Donovan from a victim into something else.
A survivor.
A protector.
A weapon.
The darkness pressed in. My eyes grew heavy.
Ninety-four days.
I let myself slip into sleep.
Tomorrow, the work continued.
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