ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
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ዘመኑ ባፈራው የቴክኖሎጂ ግብአት በመጠቀም ለህብረተሰባችን ስራ ለሁሉም በሚል ግብ የተሻለ የስራ አማራጭ፣ ለተሻለ ኑሮ፣ ለተሻለ የገበያ ትስስር ፣ ለተቀናጀ የገበያ ተደራሽነት ገዥን ከደንበኛ የማስተሳሰሪያ የቴክኖሎጂ አማራጭ ይዘን መተናል በሁሉም የስራ መስክ በሁሉም የስራ እርከን ስራ ለሚገኙ ባለሙያዎች እና ድርጅቶች የስራ አጋጣሚን መፍጠር
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SECOND PERIOD.
PUBLICITY AND PROGRESS.
1839 has generally been accepted as the year of the birth of Practical Photography, but that may now be considered an error. It was, however, the Year of Publicity, and the progress that followed with such marvellous rapidity may be freely received as an adversely eloquent comment on the principles of secrecy and restriction, in any art or science, like photography, which requires the varied suggestions of numerous minds and many years of experiment in different directions before it can be brought to a state of workable certainty and artistic and commercial applicability. Had Reade concealed his success and the nature of his accelerator, Talbot might have been bungling on with modifications of the experiments of Wedgwood and Davy to this day; and had Daguerre not sold the secret of his iodine vapour as a sensitiser, and his accidentally discovered property of mercury as a developer, he might never have got beyond the vapoury images he produced. As it was, Daguerre did little or nothing to improve his process and make it yield the extremely vigorous and beautiful results it did in after years. As in Mr. Reade’s case with the Calotype process, Daguerre threw the ball and others caught it. Daguerre’s advertised improvements of his process were lamentable failures and roundabout ways to obtain sensitive amalgams—exceedingly [28] ingenious, but excessively bungling and impractical. To make the plates more sensitive to light, and, as Daguerre said, obtain pictures of objects in motion and animated scenes, he suggested that the silver plate should first be cleaned and polished in the usual way, then to deposit successively layers of mercury, and gold, and platinum. But the process was so tedious, unworkable, and unsatisfactory, no one ever attempted to employ it either commercially or scientifically. In publishing his first process, with its working details, Daguerre appears to have surrendered all that he knew, and to have been incapable of carrying his discovery to a higher degree of advancement. Without Mr. Goddard’s bromine accelerator and M. Fizeau’s chloride of gold fixer and invigorator, the Daguerreotype would never have been either a commercial success or a permanent production.
1840 was almost as important a period in the annals of photography as the year of its enunciation, and to the two valuable improvements and one interesting importation, the Daguerreotype process was indebted for its success all over the world; and photography, even as it is practised now, is probably indebted for its present state of advancement to Mr. John Frederick Goddard, who applied bromine, as an accelerator, to the Daguerreotype process this year. In the early part of the Daguerreotype period it was so insensitive there was very little prospect of being able to take portraits with it through a lens. To meet this difficulty Mr. Wolcott, an American optician, constructed a reflecting camera and brought it to London. It was an ingenious contrivance, but did not fully answer the expectations of the inventor. It certainly did not require such a long exposure with this camera as when the rays from the image or sitter passed through a lens; but, as the sensitised plate was placed between the sitter and the reflector, the picture was necessarily small, and neither very sharp nor satisfactory. This was a mechanical contrivance to shorten the time of exposure, which [29] partially succeeded, but it was chemistry, and not mechanics, that effected the desirable result. Both Mr. Goddard and M. Antoine F. J. Claudet, of London, employed chlorine as a means of increasing the sensitiveness of the iodised silver plate, but it was not sufficiently accelerative to meet the requirements of the Daguerreotype process. Subsequently Mr. Goddard discovered that the vapour of bromine, added to that of iodine, imparted an extraordinary degree of sensitiveness to the prepared plate, and reduced the time of sitting from minutes to seconds. The addition of the fumes of bromine to those of iodine formed a compound of bromo-iodide of silver on the surface of the Daguerreotype plate, and not only increased the sensitiveness, but added to the strength and beauty of the resulting picture, and M. Fizeau’s method of precipitating a film of gold over the whole surface of the plate still further increased the brilliancy of the picture and ensured its permanency. I have many Daguerreotypes in my possession now that were made over forty years ago, and they are as brilliant and perfect as they were on the day they were taken. I fear no one can say the same for any of Fox Talbot’s early prints, or even more recent examples of silver printing.
Another important event of this year was the importation of the first photographic lens, camera, &c., into England. These articles were brought from Paris by Sir Hussey Vivian, present M.P. for Glamorganshire (1889). It was the first lot of such articles that the Custom House officers had seen, and they were at a loss to know how to classify it. Finally they passed it under the general head of Optical Instruments. Sir Hussey told me this, himself, several years before he was made a baronet. What changes fifty years have wrought even in the duties of Custom House officers, for the imports and exports of photographic apparatus and materials must now amount to many thousands per annum!
Having described the conditions and state of progress photography [30] had attained at the time of my first contact with it, I think I may now enter into greater details, and relate my own personal experiences from this period right up to the end of its jubilee celebration.
I was just fourteen years old when photography was made practicable by the publication of the two processes, one by Daguerre, and the other by Fox Talbot, and when I heard or read of the wonderful discovery I was fired with a desire to obtain a sight of these “sun-pictures,” but the fire was kept smouldering for some time before my desire was gratified. Nothing travelled very fast in those days. Railroads had not long been started, and were not very extensively developed. Telegraphy, by electricity, was almost unknown, and I was a fixture, having just been apprenticed to an engraving firm hundreds of miles from London. But at last I caught sight of one of those marvellous drawings made by the sun in the window of the Post Office of my native town. It was a small Daguerreotype which had been sent there along with a notice that a licence to practise the “art” could be obtained of the patentee. I forget now what amount the patentee demanded for a licence, but I know that at the time referred to it was so far beyond my means and hopes that I never entertained the idea of becoming a licencee. I believe some one in the neighbourhood bought a licence, but either could not or did not make use of it commercially.
Some time after that, a Miss Wigley, from London, came to the town to practise Daguerreotyping, but she did not remain long, and could not, I think, have made a profitable visit. If so, it could scarcely be wondered at, for the sun-pictures of that period were such thin, shimmering reflections, and distortions of the human face divine, that very few people were impressed either by the process or the newest wonder of the world. At that early period of photography, the plates were so insensitive, the sittings so long, and the conditions so terrible, it was not [31] easy to induce anyone either to undergo the ordeal of sitting, or to pay the sum of twenty-one shillings for a very small and unsatisfactory portrait. In the infancy of the Daguerreotype process, the sitters were all placed out-of-doors, in direct sunshine, which naturally made them screw up or shut their eyes, and every feature glistened, and was painfully revealed. Many amusing stories have been told about the trials, mishaps, and disappointments attending those long and painful sittings, but the best that ever came to my knowledge was the following. In the earliest of the forties, a young lady went a considerable distance, in Yorkshire, to sit to an itinerant Daguerreotypist for her portrait, and, being limited for time, could only give one sitting. She was placed before the camera, the slide drawn, lens uncapped, and requested to sit there until the Daguerreotypist returned. He went away, probably to put his “mercury box” in order, or to have a smoke, for it was irksome—both to sitter and operator—to sit or stand doing nothing during those necessarily long exposures. When the operator returned, after an absence of fifteen or twenty minutes, the lady was sitting where he left her, and appeared glad to be relieved from her constrained position. She departed, and he proceeded with the development of the picture. The plate was examined from time to time, in the usual way, but there was no appearance of the lady. The ground, the wall, and the chair whereon she sat, were all visible, but the image of the lady was not; and the operator was completely puzzled, if not alarmed. He left the lady sitting, and found her sitting when he returned, so he was quite unable to account for her mysterious non-appearance in the picture. The mystery was, however, explained in a few days, when the lady called for her portrait, for she admitted that she got up and walked about as soon as he left her, and only sat down again when she heard him returning. The necessity of remaining before the camera was not recognised by that sitter. I afterwards reversed that result myself by focussing [32] the chair, drawing the slide, uncapping the lens, sitting down, and rising leisurely to cap the lens again, and obtained a good portrait without showing a ghost of the chair or anything else. The foregoing is evidence of the insensitiveness of the plates at that early period of the practice of photography; but that state of inertion did not continue long, for as soon as the accelerating properties of bromine became generally known, the time of sitting was greatly reduced, and good Daguerreotype views were obtained by simply uncapping the lens as quickly as possible. I have taken excellent views in that manner myself in England, and, when in America, I obtained instantaneous views of Niagara Falls and other places quite as rapidly and as perfect as any instantaneous views made on gelatine dry plates, one of which I have copied and enlarged to 12 by 10 inches, and may possibly reproduce the small copy in these pages.
In 1845 I came into direct contact with photography for the first time. It was in that year that an Irishman named McGhee came into the neighbourhood to practise the Daguerreotype process. He was not a licencee, but no one appeared to interfere with him, nor serve him with an injunction, for he carried on his little portrait business for a considerable time without molestation. The patentee was either very indifferent to his vested interests, or did not consider these intruders worth going to law with, for there were many raids across the borders by camera men in those early days. Several circumstances combined to facilitate the inroads of Scotch operators into the northern counties of England. Firstly, the patent laws of England did not extend to Scotland at that time, so there was a far greater number of Daguerreotypists in Edinburgh and other Scotch towns in the early days of photography than in any part of England, and many of them made frequent incursions into the forbidden land without troubling themselves about obtaining a licence, but somehow they never remained long at a time; they were either afraid of consequences, or did not meet [33] with patronage sufficient to induce them to continue their sojourns beyond a few of the summer weeks. For many years most of the early Daguerreotypists were birds of passage, frequently on the wing. Among the earliest settlers in London, were Mr. Beard (patentee), Mr. Claudet, and Mr. J. E. Mayall—the latter is still alive, 1889—and in Edinburgh, Messrs. Ross and Thompson, Mr. Howie, Mr. Poppawitz, and Mr. Tunny—the latter was a Calotypist—with most of whom it was my good fortune to become personally acquainted in after years.
Secondly, a great deal of ill-feeling and annoyance were caused by the incomprehensible and somewhat underhanded way in which the English patent was obtained, and these feelings induced many to poach on photographic preserves, and even to defy injunctions; and, while lawsuits were pending, it was not uncommon for non-licencees to practise the new art with the impunity and feelings common to smugglers. Mr. Beard, the English patentee, brought many actions at law against infringers of his patent rights, the most memorable of which was that where Mr. Egerton, 1, Temple Street, Whitefriars, the first dealer in photographic materials, and agent for Voightlander’s lenses in London, was the defendant. During that trial it came out in evidence that the patentee had earned as much as forty thousand pounds in one year by taking portraits and fees from licencees. Though the judgment of the Court was adverse to Mr. Egerton, it did not improve the patentee’s moral right to his claim, for the trial only made it all the more public that the French Government had allowed M. Daguerre six thousand francs (£240), and M. Isidore Niépce four thousand francs (£160) per annum, on condition that their discoveries should be published, and made free to all the world. This trial did not in any way improve Mr. Beard’s financial position, for eventually he became a bankrupt, and his establishments in King William Street, London Bridge, and the Polytechnic Institute, in Regent Street, were extinguished. [34] Mr. Beard, who was the first to practise Daguerreotyping commercially in this country, was originally a coal merchant. I think Mr. Claudet practised the process in London without becoming a licencee, either through previous knowledge, or some private arrangement made with Daguerre before the patent was granted to Mr. Beard. It was while photography was clouded with this atmosphere of dissatisfaction and litigation, that I made my first practical acquaintance with it in the following manner:—
Being anxious to obtain possession of one of those marvellous sun-pictures, and hoping to get an idea of the manner in which they were produced, I paid a visit, one sunny morning, to Mr. McGhee, the Daguerreotypist, dressed in my best, with clean shirt, and stiff stand-up collar, as worn in those days. I was a very young man then, and rather particular about the set of my shirt collar, so you may readily judge of my horror when, after making the financial arrangements to the satisfaction of Mr. McGhee, he requested me to put on a blue cotton quasi clean “dickey,” with a limp collar, that had evidently done similar duty many times before. You may be sure I protested, and inquired the reason why I should cover up my white shirt front with such an objectionable article. I was told if I did not put it on my shirt front would be solarized, and come out blue or dirty, whereas if I put on the blue “dickey” my shirt front would appear white and clean. What “solarized” meant, I did not know, nor was it further explained, but, as I very naturally wished to appear with a clean shirt front, I submitted to the indignity, and put on the limp and questionably clean “dickey.” While the Daguerreotypist was engaged with some mysterious manipulations in a cupboard or closet, I brushed my hair, and contemplated my singular appearance in the mirror somewhat ruefully. O, ye sitters and operators of to-day! congratulate yourselves on the changes and advantages that have been wrought in the [35] practice of photography since then. When Mr. McGhee appeared again with something like two wooden books in his hand, he requested me to follow him into the garden; which was only a back yard. At the foot of the garden, and against a brick wall with a piece of grey cloth nailed over it, I was requested to sit down on an old chair; then he placed before me an instrument which looked like a very ugly theodolite on a tripod stand—that was my first sight of a camera—and, after putting his head under a black cloth, told me to look at a mark on the other side of the garden, without winking or moving till he said “done.” How long I sat I don’t know, but it seemed an awfully long time, and I have no doubt it was, for I know that I used to ask people to sit five and ten minutes, afterwards. The sittings over, I was requested to re-enter the house, and then I thought I would see something of the process; but no. Again Mr. McGhee went into the mysterious chamber, and shut the door quickly. In a little time he returned and told me that the sittings were satisfactory—he had taken two—and that he would finish and deliver them next day. Then I left without obtaining the ghost of an idea of the modus operandi of producing portraits by the sun, beyond the fact that a camera had been placed before me. Next day the portraits were delivered according to promise, but I confess I was somewhat disappointed at getting so little for my money. It was a very small picture that could not be seen in every light, and not particularly like myself, but a scowling-looking individual, with a limp collar, and rather dirty-looking face. Whatever would mashers have said or done, if they had gone to be photographed in those days of photographic darkness? I was, however, somewhat consoled by the thought that I, at last, possessed one of those wonderful sun-pictures, though I was ignorant of the means of production.
Soon after having my portrait taken, Mr. McGhee disappeared, and there was no one left in the neighbourhood who [36] knew anything of the mysterious manipulations of Daguerreotyping. I had, nevertheless, resolved to possess an apparatus and obtain the necessary information, but there was no one to tell me what to buy, where to buy it, nor what to do with it. At last an old friend of mine who had been on a visit to Edinburgh, had purchased an apparatus and some materials with the view of taking Daguerreotypes himself, but finding that he could not, was willing to sell it to me, though he could not tell me how to use it, beyond showing me an image of the house opposite upon the ground glass of the camera. I believe my friend let me have the apparatus for what it cost him, which was about £15, and it consisted of a quarter-plate portrait lens by Slater, mahogany camera, tripod stand, buff sticks, coating and mercury boxes of the roughest description, a few chemicals and silvered plates, and a rather singular but portable dark room. Of the uses of the chemicals I knew very little, and of their nature nothing which led to very serious consequences, which I shall relate in the proper place. Having obtained possession of this marvellous apparatus, my next ardent aspiration was to make a successful use of it. I distinctly remember, even at this distant date, with what nervous curiosity I examined all the articles when I unpacked them in my father’s house, and with what wonder, not unmixed with apprehension, my father looked upon that display of unknown, and to him apparently nameless and useless toys. “More like a lot of conjuror’s traps than anything else,” he exclaimed, after I had set them all out. And a few days after he told one of my young friends that he thought I had gone out of my mind to take up with that “Daggertype” business; the name itself was a stumbling block in those days, for people called the process “dagtype, docktype, and daggertype” more frequently than by its proper name, Daguerreotype. What a contrast now-a-days, when almost every father is an amateur photographer, and encourages both his sons and daughters to become the same. [37] My father was a very good parent, in his way, and encouraged me, to the fullest extent of his means, in the study of music and painting, and even sent me to the Government School of Design, where I studied drawing under W. B. Scott; but the new-fangled method of taking portraits did not harmonise with his conservative and practical notions. One cause of his disapprobation and dissatisfaction was, doubtless, my many failures; in fact, I may say, inability to show him any result. I had acquired an apparatus of the roughest and most primitive construction, but no knowledge of its use or the behaviour of the chemicals employed, beyond the bare numerical order in which they were to be used, and there was no one within a hundred miles of where I lived, that I knew of, who could give me lessons or the slightest hint respecting the process. I had worn out the patience of all my relations and friends in fruitless sittings. I had set fire to my singular dark room, and nearly set fire to the house, by attempting to refill the spirit lamp while alight, and I was ill and suffering from salivation through inhaling the fumes of mercury in my blind, anxious, and enthusiastic endeavours to obtain a sun-picture. It is not long since an eminent photographer told me that I was an enthusiast, but if he had seen me in those days he would, in all probability, have told me that I was mad. Though ill, I was not mad; I was only determined not to be beaten. I was resolved to keep pegging away until I obtained a satisfactory result. My friends laughed at me when I asked them to sit for a trial, and they either refused, or sat with a very bad grace, as if it really were a trial to them; but fancy, fair and kindly readers, what it must have been to me! Finding that my living models fought shy of me and my trials, I then thought of getting a lay figure, and borrowed a large doll—quite as big as a baby—of one of my lady friends. I stuck it up in a garden and pegged away at it for nearly six months. At the end of that time I was able to produce a portrait of the doll with tolerable certainty and success. Then I ventured to [38] ask my friends to sit again, but my process was too slow for life studies, and my live sitters generally moved so much, their portraits were not recognisable. There were no head-rests in those days, at least I did not possess one, or it might have been pleasanter for my sitters and easier for myself. What surprised me very much—and I thought it a singular thing at the time—was my success in copying an engraving of Thorburn’s Miniature of the Queen. I made several good and beautiful copies of that engraving, and sent one to an artist-friend, then in Devonshire, who wrote to say that it was beautiful, and that if he could get a Daguerreotype portrait with the eyes as clear as that, he would sit at once; but all the “Dagtypes” he had hitherto seen had only black holes where the eyes should be. Unfortunately, that was my own experience. I could copy from the flat well enough, but when I went to the round I went wrong. Ultimately I discovered the cause of all that, and found a remedy, but oh! the weary labour and mental worry I underwent before I mastered the difficulties of the most troublesome and uncertain, yet most beautiful and permanent of all the photographic processes that ever was discovered or invented; and now it is a lost art. No one practises it, and I don’t think that there are half-a-dozen men living—myself included—that could at this day go through all the manipulations necessary to produce a good Daguerreotype portrait or picture; yet, when the process was at the height of its popularity, a great number of people pursued it as a profession in all parts of the civilized world, and in the United States of America alone it was estimated in 1854 that there were not less than thirty thousand people making their living as Daguerreans. Few, if any, of the photographers of to-day—whether amateur or professional—know anything of the forms or uses of plates, buffs, lathes, sensitising or developing boxes, gilding stands, or other Daguerreotype appliances; and I am quite certain that there is not a dealer in all England that can furnish at this date a complete set of Daguerreotype apparatus.
[39] It was in 1849 that I gilded my first picture—a portrait of one of my friends playing a guitar. I possess that picture now, and, after a lapse of forty years, it is as good and bright as it was on the day that it was taken. It was not a first-class production, but I hoped to do better soon, and on the strength of that hope determined to commence business as a professional Daguerreotypist. While I was considering whether I should pitch my tent permanently in my native town, or take to a nomadic kind of life, similar to what other Daguerreotypists were pursuing, I was helped to a decision by the sudden appearance of a respectable and experienced Daguerreotypist who came and built a “glass house”—the first of its kind—in my native town. This somewhat disarranged my plans, but on the whole it was rather opportune and advantageous than otherwise, for it afforded me an unexpected opportunity of gaining a great deal of practical experience on easy terms. The new comer was Mr. George Brown, who had been an “operator” for Mr. Beard, in London, and as he exhibited much finer specimens of the Daguerreotype process than any I had hitherto seen, I engaged myself to assist him for six months at a small salary. I showed him what I had done, and he showed and told me all that he knew in connection with photography, and thus commenced a business relation that ripened into a friendship that endured as long as he lived.
At the end of the six months’ engagement I left Mr. Brown, to commence business on my own account, but as neither of us considered that there was room for two Daguerreotypists in a town with a population of one hundred and twenty thousand, I was driven to adopt the nomadic mode of life peculiar to the itinerant photographer of the period. That was in 1850. Up to that time I had done nothing in Calotype work. Mr. Brown was strictly a Daguerreotypist, but Mr. Parry, at that time a glass dealer and amateur photographer, was working at the Calotype process, but not very successfully, for nearly all his efforts [40] were spoiled by decomposition, which he could not then account for or overcome, but he eventually became one of the best Calotypists in the neighbourhood, and I became the possessor of some of the finest Calotype negatives he ever produced, many of which are still in my possession. Mr. Parry relinquished his glass business, and became a professional photographer soon after the introduction of the collodion process. Another amateur photographer that I met in those early days was a flute player in the orchestra of the theatre. He produced very good Calotype negatives with a single lens, and was very enthusiastic, but extremely reticent on all photographic matters. About this period I made the acquaintance of Mr. J. W. Swan: I had known him for some time previously when he was apprentice and assistant to Mr. Mawson, chemist, in Mosley Street, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Neither Mr. Mawson nor Mr. Swan were known to the photographic world at that time. Mr. Mawson was most popular as a dealer in German yeast, and I think it was not until after Archer published his process that they began to make collodion and deal in photographic materials—at any rate, I did not buy any photographic goods of them until 1852, when I first began to use Mawson’s collodion. In October, 1850, I went to Hexham, about twenty miles west of Newcastle-on-Tyne, to make my first appearance as a professional Daguerreotypist. I rented a sitting-room with a good window and clear view, so as to take “parlour portraits.” I could only take small pictures—two and a half by two inches—for which I charged half a guinea, and was favoured with a few sittings; but it was a slow place, and I left it in a few weeks.
The next move I made was to Seaham Harbour, and there I did a little better business, but the place was too small and the people too poor for me to continue long. Half guineas were not plentiful, even among the tradespeople, and there were very few gentlefolk in the neighbourhood. Some of the townspeople were very kind to me, and invited me to their homes, and [41] although my sojourn was not very profitable, it was very pleasant. I had many pleasant rambles on the sands, and often looked at Seaham Hall and thought of Byron and his matrimonial disappointment in his marriage with Miss Milbank.
From Seaham Harbour I went to Middlesborough, hoping to do more business among a larger population, but it appeared as if I were only going from bad to worse. At that date the population was about thirty thousand, but chiefly people of the working classes, employed at Balchow and Vaughn’s and kindred works. I made portraits of some of the members of Mr. Balchow’s family, Mr. Geordison, and some of the resident Quakers, but altogether I did not do much more than pay expenses. I managed, however, to stay there till the year 1851, when I caught the World’s Fair fever, so I packed up my apparatus and other things I did not require immediately, and sent them to my father’s house, and with a few changes in my carpet-bag, and a little money in my pocket, I started off to see the Great Exhibition in London. I went by way of York and Hull, with the two-fold object of seeing some friends in both places, and to prospect on the business chances they might afford. At York I found Mr. Pumphrey was located, but as he did not appear to be fully occupied with sitters—for I found him trying to take a couple of boys fighting in a back yard—I thought there was not room for another Daguerreotypist in York. In a few days I went to Hull, but even there the ground was preoccupied, so I took the first steamer for London. We sailed on a Saturday night, and after a pleasant voyage arrived at the wharf below London Bridge early on Sunday evening. I put up at the “Yorkshire Grey,” in Thames Street, where I met several people from the North, also on a visit to London to see the Great Exhibition. This being my first visit to London, I was anxious to get a sight of the streets and crowds therein, so, after obtaining some refreshment, I strolled out with one of my fellow passengers [42] to receive my first impressions of the great metropolis. The evening was fine, and, being nearly the longest day, there was light enough to enable me to see the God-forsaken appearance of Thames Street, the dismal aspect of Fish Street Hill, and the gloomy column called “The Monument” that stands there to remind citizens and strangers of the Great Fire of 1666; but I was both amazed and amused with the life and bustle I saw on London Bridge and other places in the immediate neighbourhood, but my eyes and ears soon became fatigued with the sights and sounds of the lively and noisy thoroughfares. After a night’s rest, which was frequently broken by cries of “Stop thief!” and the screams of women, I arose and made an early start for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Of all the wonderful things in that most wonderful exhibition, I was most interested in the photographic exhibits and the beautiful specimens of American Daguerreotypes, both portraits and landscapes, especially the views of Niagara Falls, which made me determine to visit America as soon as ever I could make the necessary arrangements.
While examining and admiring those very beautiful Daguerreotypes, I little thought that I was standing, as it were, between the birth of one process and the death of another; but so it was, for the newly-born collodion process very soon annihilated the Daguerreotype, although the latter process had just reached the zenith of its beauty. In the March number of the Chemist, Archer’s Collodion Process was published, and that was like the announcement of the birth of an infant Hercules, that was destined to slay a beautiful youth whose charms had only arrived at maturity. But there was really a singular and melancholy coincidence in the birth of the Collodion Process and the early death of the Daguerreotype, for Daguerre himself died on July 10th, 1851, so that both Daguerre and his process appeared to receive their death blows in the same year. I don’t [43] suppose that Daguerre died from a shock to his system, caused by the publication of a rival process, for it is not likely that he knew anything about the invention of a process that was destined, in a very few years, to abolish his own—living as he was in the retirement of his native village, and enjoying his well-earned pension.
As Daguerre was the first of the successful discoverers of photography to be summoned by death, I will here give a brief sketch of his life and pursuits prior to his association with Nicéphore Niépce and photography. Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was born at Cormeilles, near Paris, in 1787, of poor and somewhat careless parents, who appear to have bestowed upon him more names than attention. Though they did not endow him with a good education, they had the good sense to observe the bent of his mind and apprentice him to a theatrical scene painter. In that situation he soon made his mark, and his artistic and mechanical abilities, combined with industry, painstaking, and boldness of conception, soon raised him to the front rank of his profession, in which he gained both honour and profit. Like all true artists, he was fond of sketching from nature; and, to save time and secure true proportion, he employed such optical appliances as were then at his command. Some of his biographers say that he, like Fox Talbot, employed the camera lucida; others the camera-obscura; as there is a considerable difference between the two it would be interesting to know which it really was. At any rate it was one of these instruments which gave him the notion and created the desire to secure the views as they were presented by the lens or reflector. Much of his time was devoted to the painting and construction of a diorama which was first exhibited in 1822, and created quite a sensation in Paris. As early as 1824 he commenced his photographic experiments, with very little knowledge on the subject; but with the hope and determination of succeeding, by some means or other, in securing the [44] pictures as Nature painted them on the screen or receiver. Doubtless he was sanguine enough then to hope to be able to obtain colours as well as drawings, but he died without seeing that accomplished, and so will many others. What he did succeed in accomplishing was marvellous, and quite entitled him to all the honour and emolument he received, but he only lived about twelve years after his discovery. He was, however, saved the mortification of seeing his beautiful discovery discarded and cast away in the hey-day of its beauty and perfection.
After a few weeks sojourn in London, seeing all the sights and revisiting all the Daguerreotype studios, I turned my back on the great city and my footsteps homewards again. As soon as I reached home I unpacked my apparatus and made arrangements for another campaign with the camera at some of the sea-side resorts, with the hope of making up for lost time and money through visiting London.
I had looked at Scarborough and found the Brothers Holroyd located there; at Whitby, Mr. Stonehouse; and I did not like the appearance of Redcar, so I settled upon Tynemouth, and did fairly well for a short season. About the end of October I went on to Carlisle, but a Scotchman had already preceded me there, and I thought one Daguerreotypist was quite enough for so small a place, and pushed on to Penrith, where I settled for the winter and gradually worked up a little connection, and formed some life-long friendships. I was the first Daguerreotypist who had visited the town of Penrith, and while there I made Daguerreotypes of Sir George and Lady Musgrave and family, and some members of the Lonsdale family. It was through the kindness of Miss Lowther that I was induced to go to Whitehaven, but I did not do much business there, so, after a bad winter, I resolved to go to America in the spring, and made arrangements for the voyage immediately. Thinking that I would find better apparatus and appliances in America, I disposed [45] of my “Tent and Kit,” closed up my affairs, bid adieu to my relatives and friends, and departed.
To obtain the benefit and experience of a long sea voyage, I secured a cabin passage in a sailing ship named the Amazon, and sailed from Shields towards the end of April, 1853. We crossed the Tyne bar late in the evening with a fair wind, and sailed away for the Pentland Frith so as to gain the Atlantic by sailing all round the North of Scotland. I was rather upset the first night, but recovered my appetite next morning. We entered the Pentland Frith on the Saturday afternoon, and were running through the Channel splendidly, when the carpenter came to report water in the well—I forget how many feet—but he thought it would not be safe to attempt crossing the Atlantic. I was a little alarmed at this, but the captain took it very coolly, and ordered the ship to be pumped every watch. Being the only passenger, I became a kind of chum and companion to the captain, and as we sat over our grog that night in the cabin our conversation naturally turned upon the condition of the ship, when he remarked that he was disappointed, and that he “expected he had got a sound ship under his feet this time.” These words did not make much impression upon me then, but I had reason to comprehend their meaning afterwards. I was awoke early on the Sunday morning by the noise caused by the working of the pumps, and on going on deck found that we were becalmed, lying off the coast of Caithnesshire, and the water pouring out of the pump-hole in a continuous stream. After breakfast, and while sitting on the taffrail of the quarterdeck along with the captain, waiting for a breeze, I asked him if he intended to cross the Atlantic in such a leaky vessel. He answered “Yes, and the men are all willing.” So I thought if these men were not afraid of the ship foundering, I need not be; but I had reasons afterwards for coming to an opposite conclusion.
Towards evening the breeze sprang up briskly, and away we [46] went, the ship heading W.N.W., as the captain said he wanted to make the northern passage. Next morning we were in a rather rough sea, and a gale of wind blowing. One of the yards was broken with the force of the wind, and the sail and broken yard dangled about the rigging for a considerable time before the sail could be hauled in and the wreckage cleared up. We had several days of bad weather, and one morning when I got up I found the ship heading East. I naturally concluded that we were returning, but the captain said that he had only turned the ship about to enable the men to stop a leak in her bows. The carpenter afterwards told me that the water came in there like a river during the night. Thus we went on through variable weather until at last we sighted two huge icebergs, and then Newfoundland, when the captain informed me that he intended now to coast up to New York. We got out of sight of land occasionally, and one day, after the captain had taken his observations and worked out the ship’s position, he called my attention to the chart, and observed that he intended to sail between an island and the mainland, but as the Channel was subject to strong and variable currents, it was a rather dangerous experiment. Being in such a leaky ship, I thought he wanted to hug the land as much as possible, which I considered a very wise and safe proceeding; but he had ulterior objects in view, which the sequel will reveal.
On the night of the 31st of May, after a long yarn from the captain about how he was once wrecked on an iceberg, I turned in with a feeling of perfect safety, for the sea was calm, the night clear, and the wind fair and free; but about daylight next morning I was awoke with a shock, a sudden tramping on deck, and the mate shouting down the companion stairs, “Captain, the ship’s ashore.” Both the captain and I rushed on deck just as we jumped out of our berths, but we could not see anything of the land or shore, for we were enveloped in a thick fog. We heard the breakers and felt the thud of the waves as they broke [47] upon the ship, but whether we had struck on a rock or grounded on a sandy beach we could not then ascertain. The captain ordered the sails to be “slewed back” and a hawser to be thrown astern, but all efforts to get the ship off were in vain, for with every wave the ship forged more and more on to the shore.
As the morning advanced, the fog cleared away a little, which enabled us to see dimly through the mist the top of a bank of yellow sand. This sight settled the doubt as to our whereabouts, and the captain immediately gave the order “Prepare to abandon the ship.” The long boat was at once got ready, and lowered with considerable difficulty, for the ship was then more among the breakers. After a good deal of delay and danger, we all succeeded in leaving the ship and clearing the breakers. We were exposed in the open boats all that day and night, and about ten o’clock next morning we effected a landing on the lee side of the island, which we ascertained to be Sable Island, a bald crown of one of the banks of Newfoundland. Here we received help, shelter, and provisions, all provided by the Home and Colonial Governments, for the relief of shipwrecked people, for this island was one of the places where ships were both accidentally and wilfully wrecked. We were obliged to stay there sixteen days before we could get a vessel to take us to Halifax, Nova Scotia, the nearest port, and would possibly have had to remain on the island much longer, but for a mutiny among the crew. I could describe some strange and startling incidents in connection with the wreck and mutiny, but I will not allow myself to be tempted further into the vale of divergence, as the chief object I have in view is my reminiscence of photography.
On leaving Sable Island I was taken to Halifax, where I waited the arrival of the Cunard steamer Niagara, to take me on to Boston; thence I proceeded by rail and steamer to New York, where I arrived about the end of June, 1853.
[48]
On landing in New York I only knew one individual, and not knowing how far I should have to go to find him I put up at an hotel on Broadway, but soon found that too expensive for my means, and went to a private boarding house as soon as I could.
Visiting all the leading Daguerreotypists on Broadway, I was somewhat astonished at their splendid reception rooms, and the vast number of large and excellent specimens exhibited. Their plain Daguerreotypes were all of fine quality, and free from the “buff lines” so noticeable in English work at that period; but all their attempts at colouring were miserable failures, and when I showed one of my coloured specimens to Mr. Gurney, he said, “Well, if you can colour one of my pictures like that I’ll believe you;” which I soon did, and very much to his astonishment. In those days I prepared my own colours, and Mr. Gurney bought a box immediately. The principal Daguerreotypists in New York at that time were Messrs. Brady, Gurney, Kent, Lawrence, Mead Brothers, and Samuel Root, and I called upon them all before I entered into any business arrangements, finally engaging myself to Messrs. Mead Brothers as a colourist and teacher of colouring for six months, and while fulfilling that engagement I gave lessons to several “Daguerreans,” and made the acquaintance of men from all parts of the Union, for I soon obtained some notoriety throughout the States in consequence of a man named Humphrey attacking me and my colouring process in a photographic journal which bore his name, as well as in the New York Tribune. I replied to his attack in the columns of the Tribune, but I saw that he had a friend on the staff, and I did not feel inclined to continue the controversy. Mr. Humphrey knew nothing about my process, but began and continued the discussion on his knowledge of what was known as the “Isinglass Process,” which was not mine. After completing my engagements with Messrs. Mead Brothers, I made arrangements [49] to supply the stock dealers with my prepared colours, and travel the States myself to introduce them to all the Daguerreans residing in the towns and cities I should visit.
In the principal cities I found all the Daguerreans quite equal to the best in New York, and all doing good business, and I gave lessons in colouring to most of them. In Newark I met Messrs. Benjamin and Polson; in Philadelphia, Marcus Root and Dr. Bushnell. I encountered a great many doctors and professors in the business in America. In Baltimore, Maryland—then a slave State—many of the Daguerreans owned slaves. In Washington D.C., I renewed my acquaintance with Mr. George Adams, one of the best Daguerreans in the City; and while visiting him a very curious thing occurred. One of the representatives of the South came in to have his portrait taken, and the first thing he did was to lay a revolver and a bowie knife on the table beside him. He had just come from the House of Representatives. His excuse for such a proceeding was that he had bought some slaves at the market at Alexandria, and was going to take them home that night. He was a very tall man, and when he stood up against the background his head was above it. As he wanted to be taken standing, this put Mr. Adams into a dilemma, and he asked what he should do. I thought the only thing that could be done was to move the background up and down during exposure, which we did, and so obviated the appearance of a line crossing the head.
While staying in Washington I attended one of the levées at the White House, and was introduced to President Pearce. There was no fuss or difficulty in gaining admission. I had only to present my card at the door, and the City Marshall at once led me into the room where the President, surrounded by some of his Cabinet, was waiting to receive, and I was introduced. After a cordial shake of his hand, I passed on to another saloon where there was music and promenading in mixed costumes, for most of the men were dressed as they liked, [50] and some of the ladies wore bonnets. It was the weekly sans cérémonie reception. Finding many of the people of Washington very agreeable and hospitable, I stayed there a considerable time. When I started on the southern journey I did intend to go on to New Orleans, but I stayed so long in Philadelphia and Washington the summer was too far advanced, and as a rather severe outbreak of yellow fever had occurred, I returned to New York and took a journey northward, visiting Niagara Falls, and going on to Canada. I sailed up the Hudson River, stopping at Albany and Troy. At the latter place I met an Englishman, named Irvine, a Daguerrean who treated me hospitably, and for whom I coloured several Daguerreotypes. He wanted me to stay with him, but that I declined. Thence I proceeded to Rochester, and there found that one of my New York pupils had been before me, representing himself as Werge the colourist, for when I introduced myself to the principal Daguerrean he told me that Werge—a very different man—had been there two or three weeks ago. I discovered who the fellow was, and that he had practised a piece of Yankee smartness for which I had no redress. From Rochester I proceeded to Buffalo, where I met with another instance of Yankee smartness of a different kind. I had sold some colours to a man there who paid me in dollar bills, the usual currency of the country, but when I tendered one of these bills for payment at the hotel, it was refused. I next offered it on board a steamboat, but there it was also declined. When I had an opportunity I returned it to the man who gave it to me, and requested him to send me a good one instead. He was honest enough to do that, and impudent enough to tell me that he knew it was bad when he gave it to me, but as I was a stranger he thought I might pass it off easily.
I next went to Niagara Falls, where it was my good fortune to encounter two very different specimens of American character in the persons of Mr. Easterly and Mr. Babbitt, the former a visitor and the latter a resident Daguerrean, who held a monopoly [51] from General Porter to Daguerreotype the Falls and visitors. He had a pavilion on the American side of the Falls, under which his camera was in position all day long, and when a group of visitors stood on the shore to survey the Falls from that point, he took the group—without their knowledge—and showed it to the visitors before they left. In almost every instance he sold the picture at a good price; the people were generally delighted to be taken at the Falls. I need hardly say that they were all taken instantaneously, and embraced a good general view, including the American Fall, Goat Island, the Horse Shoe Fall, and the Canadian shore. Many of these views I coloured for Mr. Babbitt, but there was always a beautiful green colour on the brink of the Horse Shoe Fall which I never could match. For many years I possessed one of Mr. Babbitt’s Daguerreotype views, as well as others taken by Mr. Easterly and myself, but I had the misfortune to be deprived of them all by fire. Some years after I lent them to an exhibition in Glasgow, which was burnt down, and all the exhibits destroyed. After a delightful sojourn of three weeks at Niagara Falls, I took steamer on the lower Niagara River, sailed down to Lake Ontario, and down the River St. Lawrence, shooting the Lachine Rapids, and on to Montreal.
In the Canadian City I did not find business very lively, so after viewing the fine Cathedral of Notre Dame, the mountain, and other places, I left Montreal and proceeded by rail to Boston. The difference between the two cities was immense. Montreal was dull and sleepy, Boston was all bustle and life, and the people were as unlike as the cities. On my arrival in Boston, I put up at the Quincy Adams Hotel, and spent the first few days in looking about the somewhat quaint and interesting old city, hunting up Franklin Associations, and revolutionary landmarks, Bunker Hill, and other places of interest. Having satisfied my appetite for these things, I began to look about me with an eye to business, and called upon the chief Daguerreans [52] and photographers in Boston. Messrs. Southworth and Hawes possessed the largest Daguerreotype establishment, and did an excellent business. In their “Saloon” I saw the largest and finest revolving stereoscope that was ever exhibited. The pictures were all whole-plate Daguerreotypes, and set vertically on the perpendicular drum on which they revolved. The drum was turned by a handle attached to cog wheels, so that a person sitting before it could see the stereoscopic pictures with the utmost ease. It was an expensive instrument, but it was a splendid advertisement, for it drew crowds to their saloon to see it and to sit, and their enterprise met with its reward.
At Mr. Whipple’s gallery, in Washington Street, a dual photography was carried on, for he made both Daguerreotypes and what he called “crystallotypes,” which were simply plain silver prints obtained from collodion negatives. Mr. Whipple was the first American photographer who saw the great commercial advantages of the collodion process over the Daguerreotype, and he grafted it on the elder branch of photography almost as soon as it was introduced. Indeed, Mr. Whipple’s establishment may be considered the very cradle of American photography as far as collodion negatives and silver prints are concerned, for he was the very first to take hold of it with spirit, and as early as 1853 he was doing a large business in photographs, and teaching the art to others. Although I had taken collodion negatives in England with Mawson’s collodion in 1852, I paid Mr. Whipple fifty dollars to be shown how he made his collodion, silver bath, developer, printing, &c., &c., for which purpose he handed me over to his active and intelligent assistant and newly-made partner, Mr. Black. This gave me the run of the establishment, and I was somewhat surprised to find how vast and varied were his mechanical appliances for reducing labour and expediting work. The successful practice of the Daguerreotype art greatly depended on the cleanness and highly polished surface of the silvered plates, and to secure these necessary conditions, Mr. [53] Whipple had, with characteristic and Yankee-like ingenuity, obtained the assistance of a steam engine which not only “drove” all the circular cleaning and buffing wheels, but an immense circular fan which kept the studio and sitters delightfully cool. Machinery and ingenuity did a great many things in Mr. Whipple’s establishment in the early days of photography. Long before the Ambrotype days, pictures were taken on glass and thrown upon canvas by means of the oxyhydrogen light for the use of artists. At that early period of the history of photography, Messrs. Whipple and Black did an immense “printing and publishing” trade, and their facilities were “something considerable.” Their toning, fixing, and washing baths were almost worthy the name of vats.
Messrs. Masury and Silsby were also early producers of photographs in Boston, and in 1854 employed a very clever operator, Mr. Turner, who obtained beautiful and brilliant negatives by iron development. On the whole, I think Boston was ahead of New York for enterprise and the use of mechanical appliances in connection with photography. I sold my colours to most of the Daguerreotypists, and entered into business relations with two of the dealers, Messrs. French and Cramer, to stock them, and then started for New York to make arrangements for my return to England.
When I returned to New York the season was over, and everyone was supposed to be away at Saratoga Springs, Niagara Falls, Rockaway, and other fashionable resorts; but I found the Daguerreotype galleries all open and doing a considerable stroke of business among the cotton planters and slave holders, who had left the sultry south for the cooler atmosphere of the more northern States. The Daguerreotype process was then in the zenith of its perfection and popularity, and largely patronised by gentlemen from the south, especially for large or double whole-plates, about 16 by 12 inches, for which they paid fifty dollars each. It was only the best houses that made a feature [54] of these large pictures, for it was not many of the Daguerreans that possessed a “mammoth tube and box”—i.e., lens and camera—or the necessary machinery to “get up” such large surfaces, but all employed the best mechanical means for cleaning and polishing their plates, and it was this that enabled the Americans to produce more brilliant pictures than we did. Many people used to say it was the climate, but it was nothing of the kind. The superiority of the American Daguerreotype was entirely due to mechanical appliances. Having completed my business arrangements and left my colours on sale with the principal stock dealers, including the Scovill Manufacturing Company, Messrs. Anthony, and Levi Chapman.
I sailed from New York in October 1854, and arrived in England in due time without any mishap, and visiting London again as soon as I could, I called at Mr. Mayall’s gallery in Regent Street to see Dr. Bushnell, whom I knew in Philadelphia, and who was then operating for Mr. Mayall. While there Mr. Mayall came in from the Guildhall, and announced the result of the famous trial, “Talbot versus Laroche,” a verbatim report of which is given in the Journal of the Photographic Society for December 21st, 1854. Mr. Mayall was quite jubilant, and well he might be, for the verdict for the defendant removed the trammels which Mr. Fox Talbot attempted to impose upon the practice of the collodion process, which was Frederick Scott Archer’s gift to photographers. That was the first time that I had met Mr. Mayall, though I had heard of him and followed him both at Philadelphia and New York, and even at Niagara Falls. At that time Mr. Mayall was relinquishing the Daguerreotype process, though one of the earliest practitioners, for he was in business as a Daguerreotypist in Philadelphia from 1842 to 1846, and I know that he made a Daguerreotype portrait of James Anderson, the tragedian, in Philadelphia, on Sunday, May 18th, 1845. During part of the time that he was in Philadelphia he was in partnership with Marcus Root, and the [55] name of the firm was “Highschool and Root,” and about the end of 1846 Mr. Mayall opened a Daguerreotype studio in the Adelaide Gallery, King William Street, Strand, London, under the name of Professor Highschool, and soon after that he opened a Daguerreotype gallery in his own name in the Strand, which establishment he sold to Mr. Jabez Hughes in 1855. The best Daguerreotypists in London in 1854 were Mr. Beard, King William Street, London Bridge; Messrs. Kilburn, T. R. Williams and Claudet, in Regent Street; and W. H. Kent, in Oxford Street. The latter had just returned from America, and brought all the latest improvements with him. Messrs. Henneman and Malone were in Regent Street doing calotype portraits. Henneman had been a servant to Fox Talbot, and worked his process under favourable conditions. Mr. Lock was also in Regent Street, doing coloured photographs. He offered me a situation at once, if I could colour photographs as well as I could colour Daguerreotypes, but I could not, for the processes were totally different. M. Manson, an old Frenchman, was the chief Daguerreotype colourist in London, and worked for all the principal Daguerreotypists. I met the old gentleman first in 1851, and knew him for many years afterwards. He also made colours for sale. Not meeting with anything to suit me in London, I returned to the North, calling at Birmingham on my way, where I met Mr. Whitlock, the chief Daguerreotypist there, and a Mr. Monson, who professed to make Daguerreotypes and all other types. Paying a visit to Mr. Elisha Mander, the well-known photographic case maker, I learnt that Mr. Jabez Hughes, then in business in Glasgow, was in want of an assistant, a colourist especially. Having met Mr. Hughes in Glasgow in 1852, and knowing what kind of man he was, I wrote to him, and was engaged in a few days. I went to Glasgow in January, 1855, and then commenced business relations and friendship with Mr. Hughes that lasted unbroken until his death in 1884. My chief occupation was to [56] colour the Daguerreotypes taken by Mr. Hughes, and occasionally take sitters, when Mr. Hughes was busy, in another studio. I had not, however, been long in Glasgow, when Mr. Hughes determined to return to London. At first he wished me to accompany him, but it was ultimately arranged that I should purchase the business, and remain in Glasgow, which I did, and took possession in June, Mr. Hughes going to Mr. Mayall’s old place in the Strand, London. Mr. Hughes had been in Glasgow for nearly seven years, and had done a very good business, going first as operator to Mr. Bernard, and succeeding to the business just as I was doing. While Mr. Hughes was in Glasgow he was very popular, not only as a Daguerreotypist, but as a lecturer. He delivered a lecture on photography at the Literary and Philosophical Society, became an active member of the Glasgow Photographic Society, and an enthusiastic member of the St. Mark’s Lodge of Freemasons. Only a day or two before he left Glasgow, he occupied the chair at a meeting of photographers, comprising Daguerreotypists and collodion workers, to consider what means could be adopted to check the downward tendency of prices even in those early days. I was present, and remember seeing a lady Daguerreotypist among the company, and she expressed her opinion quite decidedly. Efforts were made to enter into a compact to maintain good prices, but nothing came of it. Like all such bandings together, the band was quickly and easily broken.
I had the good fortune to retain the best of Mr. Hughes’s customers, and make new ones of my own, as well as many staunch and valuable friends, both among what I may term laymen and brother Masons, while I resided in Glasgow. Most of my sitters were of the professional classes, and the elite of the city, among whom were Sir Archibald Alison, the historian, Col. (now General) Sir Archibald Alison, Dr. Arnott, Professor Ramsey, and many of the princely merchants [57] and manufacturers. Some of my other patrons—for I did all kinds of photographic work—were the late Norman Macbeth, Daniel McNee (afterwards Sir Daniel), and President of the Scottish Academy of Art, and also Her Majesty the Queen, for she bought two of my photographs of Glasgow Cathedral, and a copy of my illustration of Hood’s “Song of the Shirt,” copies of which I possess now, and doubtless so does Her Majesty. One of the most interesting portraits I remember taking while I was in Glasgow was that of John Robertson, who constructed the first marine steam engine. He was associated with Henry Bell, and fitted the “Comet” with her engine. Mr. Napier senr., the celebrated engineer on the Clyde, brought Robertson to sit to me, and ordered a great many copies. I also took a portrait of Harry Clasper, of rowing and boat-building notoriety, which was engraved and published in the Illustrated London News. Several of my portraits were engraved both on wood and steel, and published. At the photographic exhibition in connection with the meeting of the British Association held in Glasgow, in 1855, I saw the largest collodion positive on glass that ever was made to my knowledge. The picture was thirty-six inches long, a view of Gourock, or some such place down the Clyde, taken by Mr. Kibble. The glass was British plate, and cost about £1. I thought it a great evidence of British pluck to attempt such a size. When I saw Mr. Kibble I told him so, and expressed an opinion that I thought it a waste of time, labour, and money not to have made a negative when he was at such work. He took the hint, and at the next photographic exhibition he showed a silver print the same size. Mr. Kibble was an undoubted enthusiast, and kept a donkey to drag his huge camera from place to place. My pictures frequently appeared at the Glasgow exhibition, but at one, which was burnt down, I lost all my Daguerreotype views of Niagara Falls, Whipple’s views of the moon, and many other valuable pictures, portraits, and views, which could never be replaced.
👁 :
Frank B.Baird, Jr. Professor of Science, Harvard University, Museum of Comparative
Zoology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Biological diversity must be treated more seriously as a global resource, to be
indexed, used, and above all, preserved. Three circumstances conspire to give this matter
an unprecedented urgency. First, exploding human populations are degrading the
environment at an accelerating rate, especially in tropical countries. Second, science is
discovering new uses for biological diversity in ways that can relieve both human suffering
and environmental destruction. Third, much of the diversity is being irreversibly lost
through extinction caused by the destruction of natural habitats, again especially in the
tropics. Overall, we are locked into a race. We must hurry to acquire the knowledge on
which a wise policy of conservation and development can be based for centuries to come.
To summarize the problem in this chapter, I review some current information on the
magnitude of global diversity and the rate at which we are losing it. I concentrate on the
tropical moist forests, because of all the major habitats, they are richest in species and
because they are in greatest danger.
THE AMOUNT OF BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
Many recently published sources, especially the multiauthor volume Synopsis and
Classification of Living Organisms, indicate that about 1.4 million living species of all
kinds of organisms have been described (Parker, 1982; see also the numerical breakdown
according to major taxonomic category of the world insect fauna prepared by Arnett,
1985). Approximately 750,000 are insects, 41,000 are vertebrates, and 250,000 are plants
(that is, vascular plants and bryophytes). The remainder consists of a complex array of
invertebrates, fungi, algae, and microorganisms. in a few well-studied groups such as the vertebrates and flowering plants. If insects,
the most species-rich of all major groups, are included, I believe that the absolute number
is likely to exceed 5 million. Recent intensive collections made by Terry L.Erwin and his
associates in the canopy of the Peruvian Amazon rain forest have moved the plausible
upper limit much higher. Previously unknown insects proved to be so numerous in these
samples that when estimates of local diversity were extrapolated to include all rain forests
in the world, a figure of 30 million species was obtained (Erwin, 1983). In an even earlier
stage is research on the epiphytic plants, lichens, fungi, roundworms, mites, protozoans,
bacteria, and other mostly small organisms that abound in the treetops. Other major
habitats that remain poorly explored include the coral reefs, the floor of the deep sea, and
the soil of tropical forests and savannas. Thus, remarkably, we do not know the true
number of species on Earth, even to the nearest order of magnitude (Wilson, 1985a). My
own guess, based on the described fauna and flora and many discussions with
entomologists A brief word is needed on the meaning of species as a category of classification. In
modern biology, species are regarded conceptually as a population or series of populations
within which free gene flow occurs under natural conditions. This means that all the
normal, physiologically competent individuals at a given time are capable of breeding with
all the other individuals of the opposite sex belonging to the same species or at least that they are capable of being linked genetically to them
through chains of other breeding individuals. By definition they do not breed freely with
members of other species.
This biological concept of species is the best ever devised, but it remains less than
ideal. It works very well for most animals and some kinds of plants, but for some plant and a
few animal populations in which intermediate amounts of hybridization occur, or ordinary
sexual reproduction has been replaced by self-fertilization or parthenogenesis, it must be
replaced with arbitrary divisions.
New species are usually created in one or the other of two ways. A large minority of
plant species came into existence in essentially one step, through the process of
polyploidy. This is a simple multiplication in the number of gene-bearing chromosomes
—sometimes within a preexisting species and sometimes in hybrids between two species.
Polyploids are typically not able to form fertile hybrids with the parent species. A second
major process is geographic speciation and takes much longer. It starts when a single
population (or series of populations) is divided by some barrier extrinsic to the organisms,
such as a river, a mountain range, or an arm of the sea. The isolated populations then
diverge from each other in evolution because of the inevitable differences of the
environments in which they find themselves. Since all populations evolve when given
enough time, divergence between all extrinsically isolated populations must eventually
occur. By this process alone the populations can acquire enough differences to reduce
interbreeding between them should the extrinsic barrier between them be removed and the
populations again come into contact. If sufficient differences have accumulated, the
populations can coexist as newly formed species. If those differences have not yet
occurred, the populations will resume the exchange of genes when the contact is renewed.
Species diversity has been maintained at an approximately even level or at most a
slowly increasing rate, although punctuated by brief periods of accelerated extinction
every few tens of millions of years. The more similar the species under consideration, the
more consistent the balance. Thus within clusters of islands, the numbers of species of
birds (or reptiles, or ants, or other equivalent groups) found on each island in turn
increases approximately as the fourth root of the area of the island. In other words, the
number of species can be predicted as a constant X (island area)0.25, where the exponent
can deviate according to circumstances, but in most cases it falls between 0.15 and 0.35.
According to this theory of island biogeography, in a typical case (where the exponent is
at or near 0.25) the rule of thumb is that a 10-fold increase in area results in a doubling of a
number of species (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967).
In a recent study of the ants of Hispaniola, I found fossils of 37 genera (clusters of
species related to each other but distinct from other such clusters) in amber from the
Miocene age—about 20 million years old. Exactly 37 genera exist on the island today.
However, 15 of the original 37 have become extinct, while 15 others not present in the
Miocene deposits have invaded to replace them, thus sustaining the original diversity
(Wilson, 1985b).
On a grander scale, families—clusters of genera—have also maintained a balance
within the faunas of entire continents. For example, a reciprocal and apparently
symmetrical exchange of land mammals between North and South America began 3 million years ago, after the rise of the Panamanian land bridge. The number of families
in South America first rose from 32 to 39 and then subsided to the 35 that exist there
today. A comparable adjustment occurred in North America. At the generic level, North
American elements dominated those from South America: 24 genera invaded to the south
whereas only 12 invaded to the north. Hence, although equilibrium was roughly
preserved, it resulted in a major shift in the composition of the previously isolated South
American fauna (Marshall et al., 1982).
Each species is the repository of an immense amount of genetic information. The
number of genes range from about 1,000 in bacteria and 10,000 in some fungi to 400,000
or more in many flowering plants and a few animals (Hinegardner, 1976). A typical
mammal such as the house mouse (Mus musculus) has about 100,000 genes. This full
complement is found in each of its myriad cells, organized from four strings of DNA, each
of which comprises about a billion nucleotide pairs (George D.Snell, Jackson Laboratory,
Maine, personal communication, 1987). (Human beings have genetic information closer in
quantity to the mouse than to the more abundantly endowed salamanders and flowering
plants; the difference, of course, lies in what is encoded.) If stretched out fully, the DNA
would be roughly 1-meter long. But this molecule is invisible to the naked eye because it
is only 20 angstroms in diameter. If we magnified it until its width equalled that of
wrapping string, the fully extended molecule would be 960 kilometers long. As we
traveled along its length, we would encounter some 20 nucleotide pairs or “letters” of
genetic code per inch, or about 50 per centimeter. The full information contained therein,
if translated into ordinary-size letters of printed text, would just about fill all 15 editions of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica published since 1768 (Wilson, 1985a).
The number of species and the amount of genetic information in a representative
organism constitute only part of the biological diversity on Earth. Each species is made up
of many organisms. For example, the 10,000 or so ant species have been estimated to
comprise 1015 living individuals at each moment of time (Wilson, 1971). Except for cases
of parthenogenesis and identical twinning, virtually no two members of the same species
are genetically identical, due to the high levels of genetic polymorphism across many of
the gene loci (Selander, 1976). At still another level, wide-ranging species consist of
multiple breeding populations that display complex patterns of geographic variation in
genetic polymorphism. Thus, even if an endangered species is saved from extinction, it
will probably have lost much of its internal diversity. When the populations are allowed to
expand again, they will be more nearly genetically uniform than the ancestral populations.
The bison herds of today are biologically not quite the same—not so interesting—as the
bison herds of the early nineteenth century
THE NATURAL LONGEVITY OF SPECIES
Within particular higher groups of organisms, such as ammonites or fishes, species
have a remarkably consistent longevity. As a result, the probability that a given species
will become extinct in a given interval of time after it splits off from other species can be
approximated as a constant, so that the frequency of species surviving through time falls off as an exponential decay function; in other words, the percentage
(but not the absolute number) of species going extinct in each period of time stays the
same (Van Valen, 1973).1 These regularities, such as they are, have been interrupted
during the past 250 million years by major episodes of extinction that have been recently
estimated to occur regularly at intervals of 26 million years (Raup and Sepkoski, 1984).
Because of the relative richness of fossils in shallow marine deposits, the longevity of
fish and invertebrate species living there can often be determined with a modest degree of
confidence. During Paleozoic and Mesozoic times, the average persistence of most fell
between 1 and 10 million years: that is, 6 million for echinoderms, 1.9 million for
graptolites, 1.2 to 2 million for ammonites, and so on (Raup, 1981, 1984).
These estimates are extremely interesting and useful but, as paleontologists have
generally been careful to point out, they also suffer from some important limitations. First,
terrestrial organisms are far less well known, few estimates have been attempted, and thus
different survivorship patterns might have occurred (although Cenozoic flowering plants,
at least, appear to fall within the 1- to 10-million-year range). More importantly, a great
many organisms on islands and other restricted habitats, such as lakes, streams, and
mountain crests, are so rare or local that they could appear and vanish within a short time
without leaving any fossils. An equally great difficulty is the existence of sibling species
—populations that are reproductively isolated but so similar to closely related species as to
be difficult or impossible to distinguish through conventional anatomical traits. Such
entities could rarely be diagnosed in fossil form. Together, all these considerations suggest
that estimates of the longevity of natural species should be extended only with great
caution to groups for which there is a poor fossil record RAIN FORESTS AS CENTERS OF DIVERSITY
In recent years, evolutionary biologists and conservationists have focused increasing
attention on tropical rain forests, for two principal reasons. First, although these habitats
cover only 7% of the Earth's land surface, they contain more than half the species in the
entire world biota. Second, the forests are being destroyed so rapidly that they will mostly
disappear within the next century, taking with them hundreds of thousands of species into
extinction. Other species-rich biomes are in danger, most notably the tropical coral reefs,
geologically ancient lakes, and coastal wetlands. Each deserves special attention on its
own, but for the moment the rain forests serve as the ideal paradigm of the larger global
crisis.
Tropical rain forests, or more precisely closed tropical forests, are defined as habitats
with a relatively tight canopy of mostly broad-leaved evergreen tre Van Valen's original formulation, whose difficulties and implications are revealed by
more recent research, has been discussed by Raup (1975) and by Lewin (1985). These
studies deal with the clade, or set of populations descending through time after having
split off as a distinct species from other such populations. They do not refer to the
chronospecies, which is just a set of generations of the same species that is subjectively
different from sets of generations. sustained by 100 centimeters or more of annual rainfall. Typically two or more other
layers of trees and shrubs occur beneath the upper canopy. Because relatively little
sunlight reaches the forest floor, the undergrowth is sparse and human beings can walk
through it with relative ease.
The species diversity of rain forests borders on the legendary. Every tropical
biologist has a favorite example to offer. From a single leguminous tree in the Tambopata
Reserve of Peru, I recently recovered 43 species of ants belonging to 26 genera, about
equal to the entire ant fauna of the British Isles (Wilson, 1987). Peter Ashton found 700
species of trees in 10 selected 1-hectare plots in Borneo, the same as in all of North
America (Ashton, Arnold Arboretum, personal communication, 1987). It is not unusual
for a square kilometer of forest in Central or South America to contain several hundred
species of birds and many thousands of species of butterflies, beetles, and other insects.
Despite their extraordinary richness, tropical rain forests are among the most fragile
of all habitats. They grow on so-called wet deserts—an unpromising soil base washed by
heavy rains. Two-thirds of the area of the forest surface consists of tropical red and yellow
earths, which are typically acidic and poor in nutrients. High concentrations of iron and
aluminum form insoluble compounds with phosphorus, thereby decreasing the availability
of phosphorus to plants. Calcium and potassium are leached from the soil soon after their
compounds are dissolved from the rain. As little as 0.1% of the nutrients filter deeper than 5
centimeters beneath the soil surface (NRC, 1982). An excellent popular account of rain
forest ecology is given by Forsyth and Miyata (1984).
During the 150 million years since its origin, the principally dicotyledonous flora has
nevertheless evolved to grow thick and tall. At any given time, most of the
nonatmospheric carbon and vital nutrients are locked up in the tissue of the vegetation. As a
consequence, the litter and humus on the ground are thin compared to the thick mats of
northern temperate forests. Here and there, patches of bare earth show through. At every
turn one can see evidence of rapid decomposition by dense populations of termites and
fungi. When the forest is cut and burned, the ash and decomposing vegetation release a
flush of nutrients adequate to support new herbaceous and shrubby growth for 2 or 3
years. Then these materials decline to levels lower than those needed to support a healthy
growth of agricultural crops without artificial supplements.
The regeneration of rain forests is also limited by the fragility of the seeds of the
constituent woody species. The seeds of most species begin to germinate within a few
days or weeks, severely limiting their ability to disperse across the stripped land into sites
favorable for growth. As a result, most sprout and die in the hot, sterile soil of the
clearings (Gomez-Pompa et al., 1972). The monitoring of logged sites indicates that
regeneration of a mature forest might take centuries. The forest at Angkor (to cite an
anecdotal example) dates back to the abandonment of the Khmer capital in 1431, yet is
still structurally different from a climax forest today, 556 years later. The process of rain
forest regeneration is in fact so generally slow that few extrapolations have been possible;
in some zones of greatest combined damage and sterility, restoration might never occur
naturally (Caufield, 1985; Gomez-Pompa et al., 1972). Approximately 40% of the land that can support tropical closed forest now lacks it,
primarily because of human action. By the late 1970s, according to estimates from the
Food and Agricultural Organization and United Nations Environmental Programme, 7.6
million hectares or nearly 1% of the total cover is being permanently cleared or converted
into the shifting-cultivation cycle. The absolute amount is 76,000 square kilometers
(27,000 square miles) a year, greater than the area of West Virginia or the entire country
of Costa Rica. In effect, most of this land is being permanently cleared, that is, reduced to a
state in which natural reforestation will be very difficult if not impossible to achieve
(Mellilo et al., 1985). This estimated loss of forest cover is close to that advanced by the
tropical biologist Norman Myers in the mid-1970s, an assessment that was often
challenged by scientists and conservationists as exaggerated and alarmist. The vindication
of this early view should serve as a reminder always to take such doomsday scenarios
seriously, even when they are based on incomplete information.
A straight-line extrapolation from the first of these figures, with identically absolute
annual increments of forest-cover removal, leads to 2135 A.D. as the year in which all the
remaining rain forest will be either clear-cut or seriously disturbed, mostly the former. By
coincidence, this is close to the date (2150) that the World Bank has estimated the human
population will plateau at 11 billion people (The World Bank, 1984). In fact, the
continuing rise in human population indicates that a straight line estimate is much too
conservative. Population pressures in the Third World will certainly continue to accelerate
deforestation during the coming decades unless heroic measures are taken in conservation
and resource management.
There is another reason to believe that the figures for forest cover removal present too
sanguine a picture of the threat to biological diversity. In many local areas with high levels
of endemicity, deforestation has proceeded very much faster than the overall average.
Madagascar, possessor of one of the most distinctive floras and faunas in the world, has
already lost 93% of its forest cover. The Atlantic coastal forest of Brazil, which so
enchanted the young Darwin upon his arrival in 1832 (“wonder, astonishment & sublime
devotion, fill & elevate the mind”), is 99% gone. In still poorer condition—in fact,
essentially lost—are the forests of many of the smaller islands of Polynesia and the
Caribbean.
👁 :
This story is about a giant.
Do you believe in them?
He peeps out of your coffee cup in the morning.
He cheers you upon a cold day in winter.
But the boys and girls were not so well acquainted with him a hundred years ago.
About that long ago, far to the north and east, a queer boy lived.
He sat in his grandmother's kitchen many an hour, watching the tea-kettle.
[8]He seemed to be idle.
But he was really very busy.
He was talking very earnestly to the giant.
The giant was a prisoner.
No one knew how to free him.
Many had often tried to do this and failed.
He was almost always invisible.
But when he did appear, it was in the form of a very old man.
This old man had long, white hair, and a beard which seemed to enwrap him like a cloak—a cloak as white as snow.
So his name is The White Giant.
The boy's name was James Watt.
He lived in far-away Scotland.
He sat long, listening to the White Giant as he told him many wonderful things.
The way in which the giant first showed himself to James was very strange.
[9]James noticed that the lid of the tea-kettle was acting very strangely.
It rose and fell, fluttered and danced.
Now, James had lived all his life among people who believed in witches and fairies.
So he was watching for them.
And he thought there was somebody in the kettle trying to get out.
So he said, "Who are you and what do you want?"
"Space, freedom, and something to do," cried the giant.
"If you will only let me out, I'll work hard for you.
I'll draw your carriages and ships.
I'll lift all your weights.
I'll turn all the wheels of your factories.
I'll be your servant always, in a thousand other ways."If you have now guessed the common name of this giant, we will call him Steam.
At the time James Watt lived, there were no steam boats, steam mills, nor railways.
And this boy, though his grandmother scolded, thought much about the giant in the tea-kettle.
And he became the inventor of the first steam engine that was of any use to the world.
So, little by little, people came to know that steam is a great, good giant.
They tried in many different ways to make him useful.
They wished very much to make him run a boat.
One man tried to run his boat in a queer way.
He made something like a duck's foot to push it through the water.
[12]Another moved his boat by forcing a stream of water in at the bow and out at the stern.
Then came a man named John Fitch.
He made his engine run a number of oars so as to paddle the boat forward.
He grew very poor.
People laughed at him.
But he said, "When I shall be forgotten, steam boats will run up the rivers and across the seas."
Then people laughed the harder and called him "a crank."
Mr. Fitch's boat was tried in 1787.
Now, in 1765, there happened a good thing for this old world.
A little baby boy was born in that year.
Perhaps you wonder why it was such a good thing for the world.
Some of you will know why when you read that this baby's name was Robert Fulton.
[13]His father was poor.
His father was a farmer in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Fulton had two little girls older than baby Robert.
When Robert was grown larger he had three sisters and one brother.
But their father died when they were all small.
Robert did not go to school till he was eight years old.
His mother taught him at home.
He knew how to read and write, and a very little arithmetic.
His first teacher was a Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson was a Quaker.
He thought Robert a dull pupil.
Robert did not learn his lessons very well.
But Mr. Johnson soon found that he was never idle.
[14]He did not care to play at recess.
He stayed in and used his pencil in drawing.
He often spent hours in this way.
Robert soon became fond of going into the machine shops.
He understood machinery very quickly.
The men always gave him a welcome.
He didn't get into mischief.
He often helped the men with his neat drawings.
One day Robert was late in getting to school.
The master asked the reason.
Robert answered that he had been in Mr. Miller's shop pounding out lead for a lead pencil.
Mr. Johnson then encouraged him in doing such useful things.
[15]In a few days, all the pupils in the school had pencils made in that way.
Mr. Johnson urged Robert to give more attention to his studies.
Robert said, "My head is so full of thoughts of my own that I haven't room there for the thoughts from dusty books."
As he was not idle, no doubt this was true.
When Robert was thirteen, the boys in the town had a great disappointment.
It was nearly July.
Of course the boys expected to celebrate the Fourth.
But a notice was put up.
This notice urged the people not to illuminate their homes.
It was very warm weather.
The people then had only candles with which to light their homes.
[16]Candles were very scarce.
But Robert had some.
He took them to a shop and exchanged them for powder.
The owner of the store asked him why he gave up the candles, which were so scarce and dear.
Robert said, "I am a good citizen, and if our officers do not wish us to illuminate the town, I shall respect their wishes."
He found some pieces of paste-board.
He rolled these himself.
In this way he made some rockets.
The store-keeper told him he would find it impossible to do this.
"No, sir," Robert answered, "there is nothing impossible."
His rockets were a success, and the people were astonished.
[17]Robert bought at different times small quantities of quicksilver.
The men in the machine shops were curious to know what he did with it.
But they could not find out.
For this reason they called him "Quicksilver Bob."
Robert was interested in guns.
Sometimes he would tell the workmen how to improve them.
The men liked him so well that they were always willing to try whatever he advised.
Robert was fond of fishing.
One of the workmen often went fishing with his father.
This man sometimes took Robert.
They had only an old flat boat.
The boys had to pole the boat from place to place.
[18]It was hard work.
They were sometimes very tired.
Robert, soon after one fishing excursion, went away to visit an aunt.
He was gone a week.
While away he made a complete model of a little fishing boat.
This boat had paddle wheels.
The model was placed in the garret.
Many years afterward his aunt was proud to have it as an ornament on her parlor table.
Of course the boys arranged a set of paddle wheels for their fishing boat.
After this they enjoyed their fishing much more than before.
Robert Fulton's boyhood was during the Revolutionary War.
He made many queer pictures of the Hessian soldiers.
[19]These Hessians were Germans, who had been hired by the British to help them fight the Americans.
The people who wished our country to belong to England were called Tories.
Those who wished America to be free were called Whigs.
The Whig boys often fought the Tory boys on the soldiers' camp ground.
The soldiers grew tired of this.
They stretched a rope to keep the boys out.
Robert drew a picture in which the Whigs crossed the rope and whipped the Tories.
The boys all thought it a good picture.
So they tried to make it real.
They became so troublesome that the town officers had to interfere.
But Robert was all this time fast growing up.
[20]He had to choose some way of taking care of himself.
He was more fond of his pencil and brush than of anything else.
Near his home, had lived a celebrated painter.
His name was Benjamin West.
Benjamin West's father and Robert's father had been great friends.
Mr. West had become famous.
He now lived in England.
Robert thought he would like to be an artist, too.
So he left his home and went to the city of Philadelphia.
He knew that it meant hard work.
He was industrious and pains-taking.
He had many friends.
Benjamin Franklin was one of his friends.
[21]Soon he did very nice work.
In the four years after he was seventeen, he not only took care of himself, but sent money to his mother and sisters.
He spent his twenty-first birthday at home.
He had then earned enough money to buy a small farm for his mother.
For this farm he paid four hundred dollars.
He helped his family to get nicely settled in their new home.
Then he went back to Philadelphia.
At this time Mr. Fulton, as we must now call him, was not well.
Partly for this reason he decided to take a voyage to Europe.
He carried letters from many well-known Americans.
He found friends in Europe.
Benjamin West was kind to him there.He soon had plenty of work to do.
One of his friends was an English gentleman, who was called the Earl of Stanhope.
The Earl was much interested in canals.
Canals, you probably know, are artificial rivers.
Boats are drawn on them by horses, which walk along a path on the shore.
The path is called the tow-path.
Railways were almost unknown then.
So canals were very useful in carrying goods across the country.
They had been in use in Europe and Asia for hundreds of years.
Mr. Fulton invented a double inclined-plane.
This could be used in raising and lowering canal boats without disturbing their cargoes.
The British government gave Mr. Fulton a patent upon it.
[24]Mr. Fulton wrote a book about canals and the ways in which they help a country.
He sent copies of this book to the President of the United States, and other men in high offices.
He thought canals would help America.
But it was ten years before he could get people to think much about it.
Then Mr. Fulton helped in planning the Erie Canal.
This was very successful.
You can see this canal now.
It is in the State of New York and is still used.
Mr. Fulton planned a cast-iron aqueduct which was built in Scotland.
An aqueduct is often made to carry water to cities.
He invented a mill for sawing marble, a [25]machine for spinning flax, another for scooping out earth, called a dredging machine, and several kinds of canal boats.
You will wonder before reaching the end of this story how one man could do so many things.
But you must remember that he was never lazy as a boy, and so learned to make good use of every moment.
In 1797, Mr. Fulton went to the greatest city in France, called Paris.
There he made a new friend.
This was Joel Barlow, an American and a poet.
Mr. Fulton thought that all ships should have the freedom of the ocean.
He thought it would take hundreds of years to get all nations to consent to this.
He believed that he could find a quicker way.
[26]He thought it would be best to blow up all warships.
He made a little sub-marine boat.
Sub-marine means under the sea.
This boat could be lowered below the surface of the water.
He found a way to supply it with air.
But he could not get it to run swiftly.
It took much money to build such boats.
He tried to get the French government to help him.
He was often tired and disappointed.
But he never stopped trying.
He tried to destroy some large boats.
This was to be done with torpedoes.
But he was not very successful.
He succeeded in destroying one boat.
But since then others have carried out his plan, and torpedoes are often used in war.
[27]This little story is told of Mr. Fulton:—
He was once in New York working upon his torpedoes.
He invited the Mayor and many others to hear him lecture.
They came and were all much interested.
He showed them the copper cylinders which were to hold the powder.
Then he showed them the clockwork, which, when it was set running, would cause the cylinders to explode.
He turned to a case and drew out a peg.
He then said, "Gentlemen, this torpedo is all ready to blow up a vessel.
It contains one hundred and seventy pounds of powder.
The clockwork is now running.
If I should allow it to run fifteen minutes it would blow us all to atoms."
[28]His audience was much frightened.
They all ran away.
Mr. Fulton put the peg back in its place.
He told them it was then safe.
Not until then did they dare come back.
But now our giant, Steam, became the friend of Mr. Fulton.
Many had tried to put this giant to work.
But at first he seemed rather hard to teach.
Long before, a poet had written these lines, which show how much people hoped to make the giant do:—
"Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam, afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car."
It was a true prophecy.
Mr. Fulton married the daughter of a Mr. Walter Livingston.
This Mr. Livingston had a relative who was a great man, and a rich man.
[29]He was much interested in all inventions.
He often helped inventors with his money.
He had long believed that boats could be moved by steam.
At one time the state of New York gave him the right of all steam boats for twenty years.
He was given the right if he would get one steam boat running within a year.
But the year passed and the boat was not built.
Everybody made fun of his "grand rights."
At this time our government made him our minister to France.
There he met Robert Fulton for the first time.
And in Paris Mr. Livingston and Mr. Fulton made a steam boat.
When it was finished they invited their friends to come and see it tried.
[30]Early upon the morning when they hoped to succeed, a messenger came.
He bore sad news.
The new boat had broken in two.
The machinery was too heavy for it.
It had sunk to the bottom of the river Seine.
Mr. Fulton had not had his breakfast.
He hurried to the river.
He worked standing in the cold water.
In twenty-four hours he had saved the machinery, and some other parts of the boat.
But it made him ill.
He never was so strong again.
Of course he felt greatly discouraged.
They went to work again.
They built another boat.
This was a success.
It was sixty-six feet long, and moved by wheels on the side.
[31]Mr. Livingston and Mr. Fulton decided to try again in America upon the Hudson River.
Mr. Livingston was given again the same privileges by the State of New York.
But this time Mr. Fulton was his partner.
They were given two years in which to make their boat.
They were to make one which could go four miles an hour.
It took much money.
Mr. Fulton promised to ask only a certain sum of Mr. Livingston.
But this sum proved to be too small.
He went to see a friend.
He talked long and earnestly to him.
But the friend grew tired and told him he must go home or go to bed.
Mr. Fulton wanted one thousand dollars.
His friend said he would see him again.Mr. Fulton came again before the poor man had had any breakfast.
He gave him no peace.
But he got his money at last.
Mr. Fulton was much laughed at for trying to make such a boat.
The boat was called by people, "Fulton's Folly."
His friends would listen politely to him.
But he said he knew they did not believe in him.
He often, as he walked about, heard people laugh and sneer at him.
But at last the boat was done.
The sun rose smiling on that August morning.
The world was enjoying its morning nap.
Only a few people were on the shores.
Gracefully the boat was moved from the Jersey shore.Those who saw were amazed.
Old sailors were frightened.
When they saw a boat with no sails, they thought it an evil spirit.
But the long line of black smoke which they saw was only the breath of the dear old giant, Steam.
At last he had something to do.
This boat was called the Clermont.
It passed the city of New York.
It passed the beautiful Highlands of the Hudson.
It puffed patiently on until it reached Albany.
All along the shores people watched it breathlessly.
Everybody stopped sneering and cheered.
The Clermont had gone one hundred and fifty miles in thirty-two hours.
Except that the ocean steamships are larger, [36]handsomer, and more finely finished, they are much like Mr. Fulton's Clermont.
Who can doubt Mr. Fulton's joy at his success.
At last he had found a way to make all nations know each other.
Mr. Fulton had other troubles after this.
Wicked people tried to steal his invention from him.
But no one else has ever been given credit for it.
Everyone who tried a ride upon the boat found it much nicer than jolting along in a stage coach.
In two years a regular line of boats was running between the great city of New York and its capital city.
Mr. Fulton built other boats.
Some of them were ferry-boats.A ferry from New York to Long Island is still called by his name, Fulton Ferry.
Do you suppose the thousands of people who cross by it, ever think of patient, industrious, hard-working, Robert Fulton?
In January, 1815, Mr. Fulton went to Trenton, New Jersey, as witness in a lawsuit.
The weather was very severe.
Mr. Fulton became much chilled.
In coming back his boat was caught in the ice.
It was several hours before it could be moved.
You remember Mr. Fulton was not very strong.
He was ill for several days.
He was very anxious about a boat which he was building.
He left his bed too soon.
[39]He was then taken very ill indeed.
And upon the twenty-fourth of February, 1815, the world lost this great man.
Everyone mourned his loss.
The great city of New York was in mourning.
He was buried in the Livingston vault in Trinity Churchyard, New York.
No monument has ever been raised over this great man.
But the boats which every year ply back and forth upon lake, river, and ocean, are constant reminders of his great work for the world.
👁 :
Frank B.Baird, Jr. Professor of Science, Harvard University, Museum of Comparative
Zoology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Biological diversity must be treated more seriously as a global resource, to be
indexed, used, and above all, preserved. Three circumstances conspire to give this matter
an unprecedented urgency. First, exploding human populations are degrading the
environment at an accelerating rate, especially in tropical countries. Second, science is
discovering new uses for biological diversity in ways that can relieve both human suffering
and environmental destruction. Third, much of the diversity is being irreversibly lost
through extinction caused by the destruction of natural habitats, again especially in the
tropics. Overall, we are locked into a race. We must hurry to acquire the knowledge on
which a wise policy of conservation and development can be based for centuries to come.
To summarize the problem in this chapter, I review some current information on the
magnitude of global diversity and the rate at which we are losing it. I concentrate on the
tropical moist forests, because of all the major habitats, they are richest in species and
because they are in greatest danger.
THE AMOUNT OF BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY
Many recently published sources, especially the multiauthor volume Synopsis and
Classification of Living Organisms, indicate that about 1.4 million living species of all
kinds of organisms have been described (Parker, 1982; see also the numerical breakdown
according to major taxonomic category of the world insect fauna prepared by Arnett,
1985). Approximately 750,000 are insects, 41,000 are vertebrates, and 250,000 are plants
(that is, vascular plants and bryophytes). The remainder consists of a complex array of
invertebrates, fungi, algae, and microorganisms. in a few well-studied groups such as the vertebrates and flowering plants. If insects,
the most species-rich of all major groups, are included, I believe that the absolute number
is likely to exceed 5 million. Recent intensive collections made by Terry L.Erwin and his
associates in the canopy of the Peruvian Amazon rain forest have moved the plausible
upper limit much higher. Previously unknown insects proved to be so numerous in these
samples that when estimates of local diversity were extrapolated to include all rain forests
in the world, a figure of 30 million species was obtained (Erwin, 1983). In an even earlier
stage is research on the epiphytic plants, lichens, fungi, roundworms, mites, protozoans,
bacteria, and other mostly small organisms that abound in the treetops. Other major
habitats that remain poorly explored include the coral reefs, the floor of the deep sea, and
the soil of tropical forests and savannas. Thus, remarkably, we do not know the true
number of species on Earth, even to the nearest order of magnitude (Wilson, 1985a). My
own guess, based on the described fauna and flora and many discussions with
entomologists A brief word is needed on the meaning of species as a category of classification. In
modern biology, species are regarded conceptually as a population or series of populations
within which free gene flow occurs under natural conditions. This means that all the
normal, physiologically competent individuals at a given time are capable of breeding with
all the other individuals of the opposite sex belonging to the same species or at least that they are capable of being linked genetically to them
through chains of other breeding individuals. By definition they do not breed freely with
members of other species.
This biological concept of species is the best ever devised, but it remains less than
ideal. It works very well for most animals and some kinds of plants, but for some plant and a
few animal populations in which intermediate amounts of hybridization occur, or ordinary
sexual reproduction has been replaced by self-fertilization or parthenogenesis, it must be
replaced with arbitrary divisions.
New species are usually created in one or the other of two ways. A large minority of
plant species came into existence in essentially one step, through the process of
polyploidy. This is a simple multiplication in the number of gene-bearing chromosomes
—sometimes within a preexisting species and sometimes in hybrids between two species.
Polyploids are typically not able to form fertile hybrids with the parent species. A second
major process is geographic speciation and takes much longer. It starts when a single
population (or series of populations) is divided by some barrier extrinsic to the organisms,
such as a river, a mountain range, or an arm of the sea. The isolated populations then
diverge from each other in evolution because of the inevitable differences of the
environments in which they find themselves. Since all populations evolve when given
enough time, divergence between all extrinsically isolated populations must eventually
occur. By this process alone the populations can acquire enough differences to reduce
interbreeding between them should the extrinsic barrier between them be removed and the
populations again come into contact. If sufficient differences have accumulated, the
populations can coexist as newly formed species. If those differences have not yet
occurred, the populations will resume the exchange of genes when the contact is renewed.
Species diversity has been maintained at an approximately even level or at most a
slowly increasing rate, although punctuated by brief periods of accelerated extinction
every few tens of millions of years. The more similar the species under consideration, the
more consistent the balance. Thus within clusters of islands, the numbers of species of
birds (or reptiles, or ants, or other equivalent groups) found on each island in turn
increases approximately as the fourth root of the area of the island. In other words, the
number of species can be predicted as a constant X (island area)0.25, where the exponent
can deviate according to circumstances, but in most cases it falls between 0.15 and 0.35.
According to this theory of island biogeography, in a typical case (where the exponent is
at or near 0.25) the rule of thumb is that a 10-fold increase in area results in a doubling of a
number of species (MacArthur and Wilson, 1967).
In a recent study of the ants of Hispaniola, I found fossils of 37 genera (clusters of
species related to each other but distinct from other such clusters) in amber from the
Miocene age—about 20 million years old. Exactly 37 genera exist on the island today.
However, 15 of the original 37 have become extinct, while 15 others not present in the
Miocene deposits have invaded to replace them, thus sustaining the original diversity
(Wilson, 1985b).
On a grander scale, families—clusters of genera—have also maintained a balance
within the faunas of entire continents. For example, a reciprocal and apparently
symmetrical exchange of land mammals between North and South America began 3 million years ago, after the rise of the Panamanian land bridge. The number of families
in South America first rose from 32 to 39 and then subsided to the 35 that exist there
today. A comparable adjustment occurred in North America. At the generic level, North
American elements dominated those from South America: 24 genera invaded to the south
whereas only 12 invaded to the north. Hence, although equilibrium was roughly
preserved, it resulted in a major shift in the composition of the previously isolated South
American fauna (Marshall et al., 1982).
Each species is the repository of an immense amount of genetic information. The
number of genes range from about 1,000 in bacteria and 10,000 in some fungi to 400,000
or more in many flowering plants and a few animals (Hinegardner, 1976). A typical
mammal such as the house mouse (Mus musculus) has about 100,000 genes. This full
complement is found in each of its myriad cells, organized from four strings of DNA, each
of which comprises about a billion nucleotide pairs (George D.Snell, Jackson Laboratory,
Maine, personal communication, 1987). (Human beings have genetic information closer in
quantity to the mouse than to the more abundantly endowed salamanders and flowering
plants; the difference, of course, lies in what is encoded.) If stretched out fully, the DNA
would be roughly 1-meter long. But this molecule is invisible to the naked eye because it
is only 20 angstroms in diameter. If we magnified it until its width equalled that of
wrapping string, the fully extended molecule would be 960 kilometers long. As we
traveled along its length, we would encounter some 20 nucleotide pairs or “letters” of
genetic code per inch, or about 50 per centimeter. The full information contained therein,
if translated into ordinary-size letters of printed text, would just about fill all 15 editions of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica published since 1768 (Wilson, 1985a).
The number of species and the amount of genetic information in a representative
organism constitute only part of the biological diversity on Earth. Each species is made up
of many organisms. For example, the 10,000 or so ant species have been estimated to
comprise 1015 living individuals at each moment of time (Wilson, 1971). Except for cases
of parthenogenesis and identical twinning, virtually no two members of the same species
are genetically identical, due to the high levels of genetic polymorphism across many of
the gene loci (Selander, 1976). At still another level, wide-ranging species consist of
multiple breeding populations that display complex patterns of geographic variation in
genetic polymorphism. Thus, even if an endangered species is saved from extinction, it
will probably have lost much of its internal diversity. When the populations are allowed to
expand again, they will be more nearly genetically uniform than the ancestral populations.
The bison herds of today are biologically not quite the same—not so interesting—as the
bison herds of the early nineteenth century
THE NATURAL LONGEVITY OF SPECIES
Within particular higher groups of organisms, such as ammonites or fishes, species
have a remarkably consistent longevity. As a result, the probability that a given species
will become extinct in a given interval of time after it splits off from other species can be
approximated as a constant, so that the frequency of species surviving through time falls off as an exponential decay function; in other words, the percentage
(but not the absolute number) of species going extinct in each period of time stays the
same (Van Valen, 1973).1 These regularities, such as they are, have been interrupted
during the past 250 million years by major episodes of extinction that have been recently
estimated to occur regularly at intervals of 26 million years (Raup and Sepkoski, 1984).
Because of the relative richness of fossils in shallow marine deposits, the longevity of
fish and invertebrate species living there can often be determined with a modest degree of
confidence. During Paleozoic and Mesozoic times, the average persistence of most fell
between 1 and 10 million years: that is, 6 million for echinoderms, 1.9 million for
graptolites, 1.2 to 2 million for ammonites, and so on (Raup, 1981, 1984).
These estimates are extremely interesting and useful but, as paleontologists have
generally been careful to point out, they also suffer from some important limitations. First,
terrestrial organisms are far less well known, few estimates have been attempted, and thus
different survivorship patterns might have occurred (although Cenozoic flowering plants,
at least, appear to fall within the 1- to 10-million-year range). More importantly, a great
many organisms on islands and other restricted habitats, such as lakes, streams, and
mountain crests, are so rare or local that they could appear and vanish within a short time
without leaving any fossils. An equally great difficulty is the existence of sibling species
—populations that are reproductively isolated but so similar to closely related species as to
be difficult or impossible to distinguish through conventional anatomical traits. Such
entities could rarely be diagnosed in fossil form. Together, all these considerations suggest
that estimates of the longevity of natural species should be extended only with great
caution to groups for which there is a poor fossil record RAIN FORESTS AS CENTERS OF DIVERSITY
In recent years, evolutionary biologists and conservationists have focused increasing
attention on tropical rain forests, for two principal reasons. First, although these habitats
cover only 7% of the Earth's land surface, they contain more than half the species in the
entire world biota. Second, the forests are being destroyed so rapidly that they will mostly
disappear within the next century, taking with them hundreds of thousands of species into
extinction. Other species-rich biomes are in danger, most notably the tropical coral reefs,
geologically ancient lakes, and coastal wetlands. Each deserves special attention on its
own, but for the moment the rain forests serve as the ideal paradigm of the larger global
crisis.
Tropical rain forests, or more precisely closed tropical forests, are defined as habitats
with a relatively tight canopy of mostly broad-leaved evergreen tre Van Valen's original formulation, whose difficulties and implications are revealed by
more recent research, has been discussed by Raup (1975) and by Lewin (1985). These
studies deal with the clade, or set of populations descending through time after having
split off as a distinct species from other such populations. They do not refer to the
chronospecies, which is just a set of generations of the same species that is subjectively
different from sets of generations. sustained by 100 centimeters or more of annual rainfall. Typically two or more other
layers of trees and shrubs occur beneath the upper canopy. Because relatively little
sunlight reaches the forest floor, the undergrowth is sparse and human beings can walk
through it with relative ease.
The species diversity of rain forests borders on the legendary. Every tropical
biologist has a favorite example to offer. From a single leguminous tree in the Tambopata
Reserve of Peru, I recently recovered 43 species of ants belonging to 26 genera, about
equal to the entire ant fauna of the British Isles (Wilson, 1987). Peter Ashton found 700
species of trees in 10 selected 1-hectare plots in Borneo, the same as in all of North
America (Ashton, Arnold Arboretum, personal communication, 1987). It is not unusual
for a square kilometer of forest in Central or South America to contain several hundred
species of birds and many thousands of species of butterflies, beetles, and other insects.
Despite their extraordinary richness, tropical rain forests are among the most fragile
of all habitats. They grow on so-called wet deserts—an unpromising soil base washed by
heavy rains. Two-thirds of the area of the forest surface consists of tropical red and yellow
earths, which are typically acidic and poor in nutrients. High concentrations of iron and
aluminum form insoluble compounds with phosphorus, thereby decreasing the availability
of phosphorus to plants. Calcium and potassium are leached from the soil soon after their
compounds are dissolved from the rain. As little as 0.1% of the nutrients filter deeper than 5
centimeters beneath the soil surface (NRC, 1982). An excellent popular account of rain
forest ecology is given by Forsyth and Miyata (1984).
During the 150 million years since its origin, the principally dicotyledonous flora has
nevertheless evolved to grow thick and tall. At any given time, most of the
nonatmospheric carbon and vital nutrients are locked up in the tissue of the vegetation. As a
consequence, the litter and humus on the ground are thin compared to the thick mats of
northern temperate forests. Here and there, patches of bare earth show through. At every
turn one can see evidence of rapid decomposition by dense populations of termites and
fungi. When the forest is cut and burned, the ash and decomposing vegetation release a
flush of nutrients adequate to support new herbaceous and shrubby growth for 2 or 3
years. Then these materials decline to levels lower than those needed to support a healthy
growth of agricultural crops without artificial supplements.
The regeneration of rain forests is also limited by the fragility of the seeds of the
constituent woody species. The seeds of most species begin to germinate within a few
days or weeks, severely limiting their ability to disperse across the stripped land into sites
favorable for growth. As a result, most sprout and die in the hot, sterile soil of the
clearings (Gomez-Pompa et al., 1972). The monitoring of logged sites indicates that
regeneration of a mature forest might take centuries. The forest at Angkor (to cite an
anecdotal example) dates back to the abandonment of the Khmer capital in 1431, yet is
still structurally different from a climax forest today, 556 years later. The process of rain
forest regeneration is in fact so generally slow that few extrapolations have been possible;
in some zones of greatest combined damage and sterility, restoration might never occur
naturally (Caufield, 1985; Gomez-Pompa et al., 1972). Approximately 40% of the land that can support tropical closed forest now lacks it,
primarily because of human action. By the late 1970s, according to estimates from the
Food and Agricultural Organization and United Nations Environmental Programme, 7.6
million hectares or nearly 1% of the total cover is being permanently cleared or converted
into the shifting-cultivation cycle. The absolute amount is 76,000 square kilometers
(27,000 square miles) a year, greater than the area of West Virginia or the entire country
of Costa Rica. In effect, most of this land is being permanently cleared, that is, reduced to a
state in which natural reforestation will be very difficult if not impossible to achieve
(Mellilo et al., 1985). This estimated loss of forest cover is close to that advanced by the
tropical biologist Norman Myers in the mid-1970s, an assessment that was often
challenged by scientists and conservationists as exaggerated and alarmist. The vindication
of this early view should serve as a reminder always to take such doomsday scenarios
seriously, even when they are based on incomplete information.
A straight-line extrapolation from the first of these figures, with identically absolute
annual increments of forest-cover removal, leads to 2135 A.D. as the year in which all the
remaining rain forest will be either clear-cut or seriously disturbed, mostly the former. By
coincidence, this is close to the date (2150) that the World Bank has estimated the human
population will plateau at 11 billion people (The World Bank, 1984). In fact, the
continuing rise in human population indicates that a straight line estimate is much too
conservative. Population pressures in the Third World will certainly continue to accelerate
deforestation during the coming decades unless heroic measures are taken in conservation
and resource management.
There is another reason to believe that the figures for forest cover removal present too
sanguine a picture of the threat to biological diversity. In many local areas with high levels
of endemicity, deforestation has proceeded very much faster than the overall average.
Madagascar, possessor of one of the most distinctive floras and faunas in the world, has
already lost 93% of its forest cover. The Atlantic coastal forest of Brazil, which so
enchanted the young Darwin upon his arrival in 1832 (“wonder, astonishment & sublime
devotion, fill & elevate the mind”), is 99% gone. In still poorer condition—in fact,
essentially lost—are the forests of many of the smaller islands of Polynesia and the
Caribbean.
👁 :
THE BEST LAID PLANS
One.
The first entry in Leslie Stewart's diary read:
Dear Diary: This morning I met the man I am going to marry.
It was a simple, optimistic statement, with not the slightest portent of the dramatic chain of events that was about to occur.
It was one of those rare, serendipitous days when nothing could go wrong, when nothing would dare go wrong. Leslie Stewart had no interest in astrology, but that morning, as she was leafing through the Lexington Herald-Leader, a horoscope in an astrology column by Zoltaire caught her eye. It read:
FOR LEO (JULY 23RD TO AUGUST 22ND). THE NEW
MOON ILLUMINATES YOUR LOVE LIFE. YOU ARE IN YOUR LUNAR CYCLE HIGH NOW,
AND MUST PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO AN EXCITING NEW EVENT IN YOUR LIFE. YOUR COMPATIBLE SIGN IS ViRGO. TODAY WILL BE A RED-LETTER DAY. BE PREPARED TO ENJOY IT.
Be prepared to enjoy what? Leslie thought wryly. Today was going to be like every other day. Astrology was nonsense, mind candy for fools.
Leslie Stewart was a public relations and advertising executive at the Lexington, Kentucky, firm of Bailey & Tomkins. She had three meetings scheduled for that afternoon, the first with the Kentucky Fertilizer Company, whose executives were excited about the new campaign she was working up for them. They especially liked its beginning: "If you want to smell the roses...." The second meeting was with the Breeders Stud Farm, and the third with the Lexington Coal Company. Red-letter day?
In her late twenties, with a slim, provocative figure, Leslie Stewart had an exciting, exotic look; gray, sloe eyes, high cheekbones, and soft, honey-colored hair, which she wore long and elegantly simple. A friend of Leslie's had once told her,
"If you're beautiful and have a brain and a vagina, you can own the world." Leslie Stewart was beautiful and had an IQ of 170, and nature had taken care of the rest. But she found her looks a disadvantage.
Men were constantly pro positioning her or proposing, but few of them bothered to try really to get to know her. Aside from the two secretaries who worked at Bailey & Tomkins, Leslie was the only woman
there. There were fifteen male employees. It had taken Leslie less than a week to learn that she was more intelligent than any of them. It was a discovery she decided to keep to herself. In the beginning, both partners, Jim Bailey, an overweight, soft-spoken man in his forties, and Al Tomkins, anorexic and hyper, ten years younger than Bailey, individually tried to talk Leslie into going to bed with them. She had stopped them very simply. "Ask me once more, and I'll quit." That had put an end to that. Leslie was too valuable an employee to lose. Her first week on the job, during a coffee break, Leslie had told her fellow employees a joke. "Three men came across a female genie who promised to grant each one a wish. The first man said, "I wish I were twenty-five percent smarter." The genie blinked, and the man said, "Hey, I feel smarter already." "The second man said, "I wish I were fifty percent smarter." The genie blinked, and the man exclaimed, "That's wonderful! I think I know things now that I didn't know before."
"The third man said, "I'd like to be one hundred percent smarter." "So the genie blinked, and the man changed into a woman."
Leslie looked expectantly at the men at the table. They were all staring at her, unamused.
Point taken.
The red-letter day that the astrologer had promised began at eleven o'clock that morning. Jim Bailey walked into Leslie's tiny, cramped office. "We have a new client," he announced. "I want you to take charge." She was already handling more accounts than anyone else at the firm, but she knew better than to protest. "Fine," she said. "What is it?" "It's not a what, it's a who. You've heard of Oliver Russell, of course?" Everyone had heard of Oliver Russell. A local attorney and candidate for governor, he had his face on billboards all over Kentucky. With his brilliant legal record, he was considered, at thirty-five, the most eligible bachelor in the state. He was on all the talk shows on the major television stations in Lexington WDKY, WTVQ, WKYT and on the popular local radio stations, WKQQ and WLRO. Strikingly handsome, with black,
unruly hair, dark eyes, an athletic build, and a warm smile, he had the reputation of having slept with most of the ladies in Lexington.
"Yes, I've heard of him. What are we going to do for him?"
"We're going to try to help turn him into the governor of Kentucky. He's on his way here now."
Oliver Russell arrived a few minutes later. He was even more attractive in person than in his photographs. When he was introduced to Leslie, he smiled warmly. "I've heard a lot about you. I'm so glad you're going to handle my campaign." He was not at all what Leslie had expected. There was a completely disarming sincerity about the man.
For a moment, Leslie was at a loss for words. "I thank you. Please
sit down." Oliver Russell took a seat. "Let's start at the beginning," Leslie suggested. "Why are you running for governor?" "It's very simple. Kentucky's a wonderful state. We know it is, because we live here, and we're able to enjoy its magic but much of the country thinks of us as a bunch of hillbillies. I want to change that image. Kentucky has more to offer than a dozen other states combined.
The history of this country began here. We have one of the oldest capitol buildings in America. Kentucky gave this country two presidents. It's the land of
Daniel Boone and Kit Carson and Judge Roy Bean. We have the most beautiful scenery in the world exciting caves, rivers, bluegrass fields everything. I want to open all that up to the rest of the world."
He spoke with a deep conviction, and Leslie found herself strongly drawn to him. She thought of the astrology column. "The new moon illuminates your love life. Today will be a red-letter day. Be prepared to enjoy it."
Oliver Russell was saying, "The campaign won't work unless you believe in this as strongly as I do."
"I do," Leslie said quickly. Too quickly? "I'm really looking forward to this." She hesitated a moment. "May I ask you a question?"
"Certainly."
"What's your birth sign?" "Virgo."
After Oliver Russell left, Leslie went into Jim Bailey's office. "I like him," she said. "He's sincere. He really cares. I think he'd make a fine governor." Jim looked at her thoughtfully. "It's not going to be easy." She looked at him, puzzled. "Oh? Why?" Bailey shrugged. "I'm not sure. There's something going on that I can't explain. You've seen Russell on all the billboards and on television?" "Yes." '.f
"Well, that's stopped." "I don't understand. Why?" "No one knows for certain, but there are a lot of strange rumors. One of the rumors is that someone was backing Russell, putting up all the money for his campaign, and then for some reason suddenly dropped him." "In the middle of a campaign he was winning? That doesn't make sense, Jim." "I know." "Why did he come to us?" "He really wants this. I think he's ambitious. And he feels he can make a difference. He would like us to figure out a campaign that won't cost him a lot of money. He can't afford to buy any more airtime or do much advertising. All we can really do for him is to arrange interviews, plant newspaper articles, that sort of thing." He shook his head. "Governor Addison is spending a fortune on his campaign. In the last two weeks, Russell's gone way down in the polls. It's a shame. He's a good lawyer. Does a lot of pro bono work. I think he'd make a good governor, too." That night Leslie made her first note in her new
diary. Dear Diary: This morning I met the man I am going to marry. Leslie Stewart's early childhood was idyllic. She was an extraordinarily intelligent child. Her father was an English professor at Lexington Community College and her mother was a housewife.
Leslie's father was a handsome man, patrician and intellectual. He was a caring father, and he saw to it that the family took their vacations together and traveled together. Her father adored her. "You're Daddy's girl," he would say. He would tell her how beautiful she looked and compliment her on her grades, her behavior, her friends. Leslie could do no wrong in his eyes. For her ninth birthday, her father bought her a beautiful brown velvet dress with lace cuffs. He would have her put the dress on, and he would show her off to his friends when they came to dinner. "Isn't she a beauty?" he would say. Leslie worshiped him. One morning, a year later, in a split second, Leslie's wonderful life vanished. Her mother, face stained with tears, sat her down. "Darling, your father has ... left us." Leslie did not understand at first. "When will he be back?" "He's not coming back." And each word was a sharp knife. My mother has driven him away, Leslie thought. She felt sorry for her mother because now there would be a divorce and a custody fight. Her father would never let her go. Never. He'll come for me, Leslie told herself. But weeks passed, and her father never called. They won't let him come and see me, Leslie decided. Mother's punishing him. It was Leslie's elderly aunt who explained to the child that there would be no custody battle. Leslie's father had fallen in love with a widow who taught at the university and had moved in with her, in her house on Limestone Street.
One day when they were out shopping, Leslie's mother pointed out the house. "That's where they live," she said bitterly.
Leslie resolved to visit her father. When he sees me, she thought, he'll want to come home.
On a Friday, after school, Leslie went to the house on Limestone Street and rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a girl Leslie's age. She was wearing a brown velvet dress with lace cuffs. Leslie stared at her, in shock.
The little girl was looking at her curiously. "Who are you?" Leslie fled.
Over the next year, Leslie watched her mother retire into herself. She had lost all interest in life. Leslie had believed that "dying of a broken heart" was an empty phrase, but Leslie helplessly watched her mother fade away and die, and when people asked her what her mother had died of, Leslie answered, "She died of a broken heart." And Leslie resolved that no man would ever do that to her. After her mother's death, Leslie moved in with her aunt. Leslie attended Bryan Station High School and was graduated from the University of Kentucky summa cum laude. In her final year in college, she was voted beauty queen, and turned down numerous offers from modeling agencies. Leslie had two brief affairs, one with a college football hero, and the other with her economics professor. They quickly bored her. The fact was that she
was brighter than both of them.
Just before Leslie was graduated, her aunt died. Leslie finished school and applied for a job at the advertising and public relations agency of Bailey & Tomkins. Its offices were on Vine Street in a
U-shaped brick building with a copper roof and a fountain in the courtyard.
Jim Bailey, the senior partner, had examined Leslie's resume, and nodded. "Very impressive. You're in luck. We need a secretary."
"A secretary? I hoped " "Yes?"
"Nothing."
Leslie started as a secretary, taking notes at all the meetings, her mind all the while judging and thinking of ways to improve the advertising campaigns that were being suggested. One morning, an account executive was saying, "I've thought of the perfect logo for the Rancho Beef Chili account. On the label of the can, we show a picture of a cowboy roping a cow. It suggests that the beef is fresh, and "
That's a terrible idea, Leslie thought. They were all staring at her, and to her horror, Leslie realized she had spoken aloud.
"Would you mind explaining that, young lady?"
"I..." She wished she were somewhere else. Anywhere.
They were all waiting. Leslie took a deep breath. "When people eat meat, they don't want to be reminded that they're eating a dead animal."
There was a heavy silence. Jim Bailey cleared his throat. "Maybe we should give this a little more thought."
The following week, during a meeting on how to publicize a new beauty soap account, one of the executives said, "We'll use beauty contest winners."
"Excuse me," Leslie said diffidently. "I believe that's been done. Why couldn't we use lovely flight attendants from around the world to show that our beauty soap is universal?"
In the meetings after that, the men found themselves turning to Leslie for her opinion.
A year later, she was a junior copywriter, and two years after that, she became an account executive, handling both advertising and publicity.
Oliver Russell was the first real challenge that Leslie had had at the
agency. Two weeks after Oliver Russell came to them, Bailey suggested to Leslie that it might be better to drop him, because he could not afford to pay their usual agency fee, but Leslie persuaded him to keep the account.
"Call it pro bono," she said.
Bailey studied her a moment. "Right."
Leslie and Oliver Russell were seated on a bench in Triangle Park. It was a cool fall day, with a soft breeze coming from the lake. "I hate politics," Oliver Russell said.
Leslie looked at him in surprise. "Then why in the world are you ?"
"Because I want to change the system, Leslie. It's been taken over by lobbyists and corporations that help put the wrong people in power and then control them. There are a lot of things I want to do." His voice was filled with passion. "The people who are running the country have turned it into an old boys' club. They care more about themselves than they do about the people. It's not right, and I'm going to try to correct that."
Leslie listened as Oliver went on, and she was thinking, He could do it. There was such a compelling excitement about him. The truth was that she found everything about him exciting. She had never felt this way about a man before, and it was an exhilarating experience. She had no way of knowing how he felt about her. He is always the perfect gentleman, damn him. It seemed to Leslie that every few minutes people were coming up to the park bench to shake Oliver's hand and to wish him well. The women were visually throwing daggers at Leslie. They've probably all been out with him, Leslie thought. They've probably all been to bed with him. Well, that's none of my business.
She had heard that until recently he had been dating the daughter of a senator. She wondered what had happened. That's none of my business, either.
There was no way to avoid the fact that Oliver's campaign was going badly. Without money to pay his staff, and no television, radio, or newspaper ads, it was impossible to compete with Governor Gary Addison, whose image seemed to be everywhere. Leslie arranged for Oliver to appear at company picnics, at factories, and at dozens of social events, but she knew these appearances were all minor-league, and it frustrated her.
"Have you seen the latest polls?" Jim Bailey asked Leslie. "Your boy is going down the tubes."
Not if I can help it, Leslie thought.
Leslie and Oliver were having dinner at Cheznous. "It's not working, is it?" Oliver asked quietly. "There's still plenty of time," Leslie said reassuringly. "When the voters get to know you " Oliver shook his
head. "I read the polls, too. I want you to know I appreciate everything you've tried to do for me, Leslie. You've been great." She sat there looking at him across the table, thinking, He's the most wonderful man I've ever met, and I can't help him. She wanted to take him in her arms and hold him and console him. Console him? Who am I kidding? As they got up to leave, a man, a woman, and two small girls approached the table. "Oliver! How are you?" The speaker was in his forties, an attractive-looking man with a black eye patch that gave him the raffish look of an amiable pirate.
Oliver rose and held out his hand. "Hello, Peter. I'd like you to meet Leslie Stewart. Peter Tager."
"Hello, Leslie." Tager nodded toward his family. "This is my wife, Betsy, and this is Elizabeth and this is Rebecca." There was enormous pride in his voice.
Peter Tager turned to Oliver. "I'm awfully sorry about what happened. It's a damned shame. I hated to do it, but I had no choice."
"I understand, Peter."
"If there was anything I could have done " "It doesn't matter. I'm fine."
"You know I wish you only the best of luck."
On the way home, Leslie asked, "What was that all about?"
Oliver started to say something, then stopped. "It's not important."
Leslie lived in a neat one-bedroom apartment in the Brandy-wine section of Lexington. As they approached the building, Oliver said hesitantly, "Leslie, I know that your agency is handling me for almost nothing, but frankly, I think you're wasting your time. It might be better if I just quit now."
"No," she said, and the intensity of her voice surprised her. "You can't quit. We'll find a way to make it work."
Oliver turned to look at her. "You really care, don't you?"
Am I reading too much into that question? "Yes," she said quietly. "I really care."
When they arrived at her apartment, Leslie took a deep breath. "Would you like to come in?"
He looked at her a long time. "Yes."
Afterward, she never knew who made the first move. All she remembered was that they were undressing each other and she was in his arms and there was a wild, feral haste in their lovemaking, and after that, a
slow and easy melting, in a rhythm that was timeless and ecstatic. It was the most wonderful feeling Leslie had ever experienced.
They were together the whole night, and it was magical. Oliver was insatiable, giving and demanding at the same time, and he went on forever. He was an animal. And Leslie thought, Oh, my God, I'm one, too.
In the morning, over a breakfast of orange juice, scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon, Leslie said, "There's going to be a picnic at Green River Lake on Friday, Oliver. There will be a lot of people there.
I'll arrange for you to make a speech. We'll buy radio time to let everyone know you're going to be there. Then we'll " "Leslie," he protested, "I haven't the money to do that." "Oh, don't worry about that," she said airily. "The agency will pay for it." She knew that there was not the remotest chance that the agency would pay for it. She intended to do that herself. She would tell Jim Bailey that the money had been donated by a Russell supporter. And it would be the truth.
Ill do anything in the world to help him, she thought.
There were two hundred people at the picnic at Green River Lake, and when Oliver addressed the crowd, he was brilliant.
"Half the people in this country don't vote," he told them. "We have the lowest voting record of any industrial country in the world less than fifty percent. If you want things to change, it's your responsibility to make sure they do change. It's more than a responsibility, it's a privilege. There's an election coming up soon. Whether you vote for me or my opponent, vote. Be there."
They cheered him.
Leslie arranged for Oliver to appear at as many functions as possible. He presided at the opening of a children's clinic, dedicated a bridge, talked to women's groups, labor groups, at charity events, and retirement homes. Still, he kept slipping in the polls. Whenever Oliver was not campaigning, he and Leslie found some time to be together. They went riding in a horse-drawn carriage through Triangle Park, spent a Saturday afternoon at the Antique Market, and had dinner at A la Lucie. Oliver gave Leslie flowers for Groundhog Day and on the anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run, and left loving messages on her answering machine: "Darling where are you? I miss you, miss you, miss you."
"I'm madly in love with your answering machine. Do you have any idea how sexy it sounds?"
"I think it must be illegal to be this happy. I love you."
It didn't matter to Leslie where she and Oliver went: She just wanted to be with him.
One of the most exciting things they did was to go white-water rafting on the Russell Fork River one Sunday. The trip started innocently,
gently, until the river began to pound its way around the base of the mountains in a giant loop that began a series of deafening, breathtaking vertical drops in the rapids: five feet... eight feet... nine feet... only a terrifying raft length apart. The trip took three and a half hours, and when Leslie and Oliver got off the raft, they were soaking wet and glad to be alive. They could not keep their hands off each other. They made love in their cabin, in the back of his automobile, in the woods.
One early fall evening, Oliver prepared dinner at his home, a charming house in Versailles, a small town near Lexington. There were grilled flank steaks marinated in soy sauce, garlic, and herbs, served with baked potato, salad, and a perfect red wine.
"You're a wonderful cook," Leslie told him. She snuggled up to him. "In fact, you're a wonderful everything, sweetheart." "Thank you, my love." He remembered something. "I have a little surprise for you that I want you to try." He disappeared into the bedroom for a moment and came out carrying a small bottle with a clear liquid inside. "Here it is," he said. "What is it?" "Have you heard of Ecstasy?" "Heard of it? I'm in it." "I mean the drug Ecstasy. This is liquid Ecstasy. It's supposed to be a great aphrodisiac." Leslie frowned. "Darling you don't need that. We don't need it. It could be dangerous." She hesitated. "Do you use it often?" Oliver laughed. "As a matter of fact, I don't. Take that look off your face. A friend of mine gave me this and told me to try it. This would have been the first time." "Let's not have a first time," Leslie said. "Will you throw it away?" "You're right. Of course I will." He went into the bathroom, and a moment later Leslie heard the toilet flush. Oliver reappeared. "All gone." He grinned. "Who needs Ecstasy in a bottle? I have it in a better package." And he took her in his arms. Leslie had read the love stories and had heard the love songs, but nothing had prepared her for the incredible reality. She had always thought that romantic lyrics were sentimental nonsense, wishful dreaming. She knew better now. The world suddenly seemed brighter, more beautiful. Everything was touched with magic, and the magic was Oliver Russell.
One Saturday morning, Oliver and Leslie were hiking in the Breaks Interstate Park, enjoying the spectacular scenery that surrounded them.
"I've never been on this trail before," Leslie said. "I think you're going to enjoy it."
They were approaching a sharp curve in the path. As they rounded it, Leslie stopped, stunned. In the middle of the path was a hand-painted wooden sign: LESLIE, WILL YOU
MARRY ME?
Leslie's heart began to beat faster. She turned to Oliver, speechless.
He took her in his arms. "Will you?"
How did I get so lucky? Leslie wondered. She hugged him tightly and whispered, "Yes, darling. Of course I will."
"I'm afraid I can't promise you that you're going to marry a governor, but I'm a pretty good attorney."
She snuggled up to him and whispered, "That will do nicely."
A few nights later, Leslie was getting dressed to meet Oliver for dinner when he telephoned.
"Darling, I'm terribly sorry, but I've bad news. I have to go to a meeting tonight, and I'll have to cancel our dinner. Will you forgive me?"
Leslie smiled and said softly, "You're forgiven."
The following day, Leslie picked up a copy of the State Journal. The headline read: WOMAN'S BODY FOUND IN KENTUCKY RIVER. The story went on: "Early this morning, the body of a nude woman who appeared to be in her early twenties was found by police in the Kentucky River ten miles east of Lexington. An autopsy is being performed to determine the cause of death. "
Leslie shuddered as she read the story. To die so young. Did she have a lover? A husband? How thankful I am to be alive and so happy and so loved.
It seemed that all of Lexington was talking about the forthcoming wedding. Lexington was a small town, and Oliver Russell was a popular figure. They were a spectacular-looking couple, Oliver dark and handsome, and Leslie with her lovely face and figure and honey-blond hair. The news had spread like wildfire. "I hope he knows how lucky he is," Jim Bailey said. Leslie smiled. "We're both lucky."
"Are you going to elope?"
"No. Oliver wants to have a formal wedding. We're getting married at the Calvary Chapel church."
"When does the happy event take place?" "In six weeks."
A few days later, a story on the front page of the State Journal read: "An autopsy has revealed that the woman found in the Kentucky River, identified as Lisa Burnette, a legal secretary, died of an overdose of a dangerous illegal drug known on the streets as liquid Ecstasy. "
Liquid Ecstasy. Leslie recalled the evening with Oliver. And she thought, How lucky it was that he threw that bottle away.
The next few weeks were filled with frantic preparations for the wedding. There was so much to do. Invitations went out to two hundred
people. Leslie chose a maid of honor and selected her outfit, a ballerina-length dress with matching shoes and gloves to complement the length of the sleeves. For herself, Leslie shopped at Fayette Mall on Nicholasville Road and selected a floor-length gown with a full skirt and a sweep train, shoes to match the gown, and long gloves. Oliver ordered a black cutaway coat with striped trousers, gray waistcoat, a wing-collared white shirt, and a striped ascot. His best man was a lawyer in his firm.
"Everything is set," Oliver told Leslie. "I've made all the arrangements for the reception afterward. Almost everyone has accepted."
Leslie felt a small shiver go through her. "I can't wait, my darling."
On a Thursday night one week before the wedding, Oliver came to Leslie's apartment. "I'm afraid something has come up, Leslie. A client of mine is in trouble. I'm going to have to fly to Paris to straighten things out." "Paris? How long will you be gone?" "It shouldn't take more than two or three days, four days at the most. I'll be back in plenty of time." "Tell the pilot to fly safely." "I promise." When Oliver left, Leslie picked up the newspaper on the table. Idly, she turned to the horoscope by Zoltaire. It read: FOR LEO (JULY 23RD TO AUGUST 22ND). THIS is NOT
A GOOD DAY TO CHANGE PLANS. TAKING RISKS CAN LEAD TO SERIOUS PROBLEMS.
Leslie read the horoscope again, disturbed. She was almost tempted to telephone Oliver and tell him not to leave. But that's ridiculous, she thought. It's just a stupid horoscope.
By Monday, Leslie had not heard from Oliver. She telephoned his office, but the staff had no information. There was no word from him Tuesday. Leslie was beginning to panic. At four o'clock on Wednesday morning, she was awakened by the insistent ringing of the telephone.
She sat up in bed and thought: It's Oliver! Thank God. She knew that she should be angry with him for not calling her sooner, but that was unimportant now. She picked up the receiver. "Oliver ..." A male voice said, "Is this Leslie Stewart?" She felt a sudden cold chill. "Who who is this?" "Al Towers, Associated Press. We have a story going out on our wires, Miss Stewart, and we wanted to get your reaction." Something terrible had happened. Oliver was dead. "Miss Stewart?" "Yes." Her voice was a strangled whisper. "Could we get a quote from you?" "A quote?" "About Oliver Russell marrying Senator Todd Davis's daughter in Paris." For an instant the room seemed to spin. "You and Mr. Russell were engaged, weren't you? If we could get a quote ..." She sat there, frozen. "Miss Stewart."
She found her voice. "Yes." wish them both well." She replaced the receiver, numb. It was a nightmare. She would awaken in a few minutes and find that she had been dreaming.
But this was no dream. She had been abandoned again. "Yourfather's not coming back." She walked into the bathroom and stared at her pale image in the mirror. "We have a story going out on our wires." Oliver had married someone else. Why? What have I done wrong? How have I failed him? But deep down she knew that it was Oliver who had failed her. He was gone. How could she face the future?
When Leslie walked into the agency that morning, everyone was trying hard not to stare at her. She went into Jim Bailey's office.
He took one look at her pale face and said, "You shouldn't have come in today, Leslie. Why don't you go home and "
She took a deep breath. "No, thank you. I'll be fine."
The radio and television newscasts and afternoon newspapers were filled with details of the Paris wedding. Senator Todd Davis was without doubt Kentucky's most influential citizen, and the story of his daughter's marriage and of the groom's jilting Leslie was big news.
The phones in Leslie's office never stopped ringing.
"This is the Courier-Journal, Miss Stewart. Could you give us a statement about the wedding?"
"Yes. The only thing I care about is Oliver Russell's happiness." "But you and he were going to be "
"It would have been a mistake for us to marry. Senator Davis's daughter was in his life first. Obviously, he never got over her. I wish them both well."
"This is the State Journal in Frankfort. "
And so it went.
It seemed to Leslie that half of Lexington pitied her, and the other half rejoiced at what had happened to her. Wherever Leslie went, there were whispers and hastily broken-off conversations. She was fiercely determined not to show her feelings.
"How could you let him do this to ?"
"When you truly love someone," Leslie said firmly, "you want him to be happy. Oliver Russell is the finest human being I've ever known. I wish them both every happiness."
She sent notes of apology to all those who had been invited to the wedding and returned their gifts.
Leslie had been half hoping for and half dreading the call from Oliver. Still, when it came, she was unprepared. She was shaken by the
familiar sound of his voice. "Leslie ... I don't know what to say." "It's true, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Then there isn't anything to say."
"I just wanted to explain to you how it happened. Before I met you, Jan and I were almost engaged. And when I saw her again I I knew that I still loved her."
"I understand, Oliver. Goodbye."
Five minutes later, Leslie's secretary buzzed her. "There's a telephone call for you on line one, Miss Stewart."
"I don't want to talk to " "It's Senator Davis."
The father of the bride. What does he want with me? Leslie wondered. She picked up the telephone.
A deep southern voice said, "Miss Stewart?" "Yes."
"This is Todd Davis. I think you and I should have a little talk." She hesitated. "Senator, I don't know what we "
"I'll pick you up in one hour." The line went dead.
Exactly one hour later, a limousine pulled up in front of the office building where Leslie worked. A chauffeur opened the car door for Leslie. Senator Davis was in the backseat. He was a
distinguished-looking man with flowing white hair and a small, neat mustache. He had the face of a patriarch. Even in the fall he was dressed in his trademark white suit and white broad-brimmed leghorn hat. He was a classic figure from an earlier century, an old-fashioned southern gentleman.
As Leslie got into the car, Senator Davis said, "You're a beautiful young woman."
"Thank you," she said stiffly. The limousine started off.
"I didn't mean just physically, Miss Stewart. I've been hearing about the manner in which you've been handling this whole sordid matter. It must be very distressing for you. I couldn't believe the news when I heard it." His voice filled with anger. "Whatever happened to good
old-fashioned morality? To tell you the truth, I'm disgusted with Oliver for treating you so shabbily. And I'm furious with Jan for marrying him. In a way, I feel guilty, because she's my daughter. They deserve each other." His voice was choked with emotion.
They rode in silence for a while. When Leslie finally spoke, she said, "I know Oliver. I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt me. What happened... just happened. I want only the best for him. He deserves that, and I wouldn't do anything to stand in his way."
"That's very gracious of you." He studied her a moment. "You really are a remarkable young lady."
The limousine had come to a stop. Leslie looked out the window. They had reached Paris Pike, at the Kentucky Horse Center. There were more than a hundred horse farms in and around Lexington, and the largest of them was owned by Senator Davis. As far as the eye could see were white plank fences, white paddocks with red trim, and rolling Kentucky bluegrass.
Leslie and Senator Davis stepped out of the car and walked over to the fence surrounding the racetrack. They stood there a few moments, watching the beautiful animals working out.
Senator Davis turned to Leslie. "I'm a simple man," he said quietly. "Oh, I know how that must sound to you, but it's the truth. I was born here, and I could spend the rest of my life here. There's no place in the world like it. Just look around you, Miss Stewart. This is as close as we may ever come to heaven. Can you blame me for not wanting to leave all this? Mark Twain said that when the world came to an end, he wanted to be in Kentucky, because it's always a good twenty years behind. I have to spend half my life in Washington, and I loathe
it."
"Then why do you do it?"
"Because I have a sense of obligation. Our people voted me into the Senate, and until they vote me out, I'll be there trying to do the best job I can." He abruptly changed the subject. "I want you to know how much I admire your sentiments and the way you've behaved. If you had been nasty about this, I suppose it could have created quite a scandal. As it is, well I'd like to show my appreciation."
Leslie looked at him.
"I thought that perhaps you would like to get away for a while, take a little trip abroad, spend some time traveling. Naturally, I'd pick up all the "
"Please don't do this." "I was only "
"I know. I haven't met your daughter, Senator Davis, but if Oliver
loves her, she must be very special. I hope they'll be happy."
He said awkwardly, "I think you should know they're coming back here to get married again. In Paris, it was a civil ceremony, but Jan wants a church wedding here."
It was a stab in the heart. "I see. All right. They have nothing to worry about."
"Thank you."
The wedding took place two weeks later, in the Calvary Chapel church where Leslie and Oliver were to have been married. The church was packed.
Oliver Russell, Jan, and Senator Todd Davis were standing before the minister at the altar. Jan Davis was an attractive brunette, with an imposing figure and an aristocratic air.
The minister was nearing the end of the ceremony. "God meant for man and woman to be united in holy matrimony, and as you go through life together..."
The church door opened, and Leslie Stewart walked in. She stood at the back for a moment, listening, then moved to the last pew, where she remained standing.
The minister was saying, "... so if anyone knows why this couple should not be united in holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his
..." He glanced up and saw Leslie. "... hold his peace."
Almost involuntarily, heads began to turn in Leslie's direction. Whispers began to sweep through the crowd. People sensed that they were about to witness a dramatic scene, and the church filled with sudden tension.
The minister waited a moment, then nervously cleared his throat. "Then, by the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife." There was a note of deep relief in his voice. "You may kiss the bride."
When the minister looked up again, Leslie was gone. The final note in Leslie Stewart's diary read:
Dear Diary: It was a beautiful wedding. Oliver's bride is very pretty. She wore a lovely white lace-and-satin wedding gown with a halter top and a bolero jacket. Oliver looked more handsome than ever. He seemed very happy. I'm pleased.
Because before I'm finished with him, I'm going to make him wish he had never been born.
Two.
It was Senator Todd Davis who had arranged the reconciliation of Oliver Russell and his daughter. Todd Davis was a widower. A multi billionaire the senator owned tobacco plantations, coal mines, oil fields in Oklahoma and Alaska, and a world-class racing stable. As Senate majority leader, he was one of the most powerful men in Washington, and was serving his fifth term. He was a man with a simple philosophy: Never forget a favor, never forgive a slight. He prided himself on picking winners, both at the track and in politics, and early on he had spotted Oliver Russell as a comer. The fact that Oliver might marry his daughter was an unexpected plus, until, of course, Jan foolishly called it off. When the senator heard the news of the impending wedding between Oliver Russell and Leslie Stewart, he found it disturbing. Very disturbing.
Senator Davis had first met Oliver Russell when Oliver handled a legal matter for him. Senator Davis was impressed. Oliver was intelligent, handsome, and articulate, with a boyish charm that drew people to him. The senator arranged to have lunch with Oliver on a regular basis, and Oliver had no idea how carefully he was being assessed. A month after meeting Oliver, Senator Davis sent for Peter Tager. "I think we've found our next governor." Tager was an earnest man who had grown up in a religious family. His father was a history teacher and his mother was a housewife, and they were devout churchgoers. When Peter Tager was eleven, he had been traveling in a car with his parents and younger brother when the brakes of the car failed. There had been a deadly accident. The only one who survived was Peter, who lost an eye. Peter believed that Goo had spared him so that he could spread His word.
Peter Tager understood the dynamics of politics better than anyone Senator Davis had ever met. Tager knew where the votes were and how to get them. He had an uncanny sense of what the public wanted to hear and what it had gotten tired of hearing. But even more important to Senator Davis was the fact that Peter Tager was a man he could trust, a man of integrity. People liked him. The black eye patch he wore gave him a dashing look. What mattered to Tager more than anything in the world was his family. The senator had never met a man so deeply proud of his wife and children.
When Senator Davis first met him, Peter Tager had been contemplating going into the ministry.
"So many people need help, Senator. I want to do what I can."
But Senator Davis had talked him out of the idea. "Think of how many more people you can help by working for me in the Senate of the United States." It had been a felicitous choice. Tager knew how to get things done.
"The man I have in mind to run for governor is Oliver Russell." "The attorney?"
"Yes. He's a natural. I have a hunch if we get behind him, he can't miss."
"Sounds interesting, Senator."
The two of them began to discuss it.
Senator Davis spoke to Jan about Oliver Russell. "The boy has a hot future, honey." "He has a hot past, too, Father. He's the biggest wolf in town." "Now, darling, you mustn't listen to gossip. I've invited Oliver to dinner here Friday."
The dinner Friday evening went well. Oliver was charming, and in spite of herself, Jan found herself warming to him. The senator sat at his place watching them, asking questions that brought out the best in Oliver.
At the end of the evening, Jan invited Oliver to a dinner party the following Saturday. "I'd be delighted."
From that night on, they started seeing only each other.
"They'll be getting married soon," the senator predicted to Peter Tager. "It's time we got Oliver's campaign rolling."
Oliver was summoned to a meeting at Senator Davis's office. "I want to ask you a question," the senator said. "How would you like to be the governor of Kentucky?" Oliver looked at him in surprise. "I I haven't thought about it." "Well, Peter Tager and I have. There's an election coming up next year. That gives us more than enough time to build you up, let people know who you are. With us behind you, you can't lose." And Oliver knew it was true. Senator Davis was a powerful man, in control of a well-oiled political machine, a machine that could create myths or destroy anyone who got in its way. "You'd have to be totally committed," the senator warned. "I would be."
"I have some even better news for you, son. As far as I'm concerned, this is only the first step. You serve a term or two as governor, and I promise you we'll move you into the White House."
Oliver swallowed. "Are are you serious?"
"I don't joke about things like this. I don't have to tell you that this is the age of television. You have something that money can't buy charisma. People are drawn to you. You genuinely like people, and it shows. It's the same quality Jack Kennedy had."
"I I don't know what to say, Todd."
"You don't have to say anything. I have to return to Washington tomorrow, but when I get back, we'll go to work."
A few weeks later, the campaign for the office of governor began. Billboards with Oliver's picture flooded the state. He appeared on television and at rallies and political seminars. Peter Tager had his own private polls that showed Oliver's popularity increasing each week. "He's up another five points," he told the senator. "He's only ten
points behind the governor, and we've still got plenty of time left. In another few weeks, they should be neck and neck." Senator Davis nodded. "Oliver's going to win. No question about it."
Todd Davis and Jan were having breakfast. "Has our boy proposed to you yet?"
Jan smiled. "He hasn't come right out and asked me, but he's been hinting around."
"Well, don't let him hint too long. I want you to be married before he becomes governor. It will play better if the governor has a wife."
Jan put her arms around her father. "I'm so glad you brought him into my life. I'm mad about him."
The senator beamed. "As long as he makes you happy, I'm happy." Everything was going perfectly.
The following evening, when Senator Davis came home, Jan was in her room, packing, her face stained with tears. He looked at her, concerned. "What's going on, baby?" "I'm getting out of here. I never want to see Oliver again as long as I live!" "Whoa! Hold on there. What are you talking about?" She turned to him. "I'm talking about Oliver." Her tone was bitter. "He spent last night in a motel with my best friend. She couldn't wait to call and tell me what a wonderful lover he was." The senator stood there in shock. "Couldn't she have been just ?" "No. I called Oliver. He he couldn't deny it. I've decided to leave. I'm going to Paris."
"Are you sure you're doing ?" "I'm positive."
And the next morning Jan was gone.
The senator sent for Oliver. "I'm disappointed in you, son." Oliver took a deep breath. "I'm sorry about what happened, Todd. It was it was just one of those things. I had a few drinks and this woman came on to me and well, it was hard to say no." "I can understand that," the senator said sympathetically. "After all, you're a man, right?" Oliver smiled in relief. "Right. It won't happen again, I can assure " "It's too bad, though. You would have made a fine governor." The blood drained from Oliver's face. "What what are you saying, Todd?" "Well, Oliver, it wouldn't look right if I supported you now, would it? I mean, when you think about Jan's feelings " "What does the governorship have to do with Jan?" "I've been telling everybody that there was a good chance that the next governor was going to be my
son-in-law. But since you're not going to be my son-in-law, well, I'll just have to make new plans, won't I?" "Be reasonable, Todd. You can't " Senator Davis's smile faded. "Never tell me what I can or can't do, Oliver. I can make you and I can break you!" He smiled again. "But don't misunderstand me. No hard feelings. I wish you
only the best."
Oliver sat there, silent for a moment. "I see." He rose to his feet. "I I'm sorry about all this."
"I am, too, Oliver. I really am."
When Oliver left, the senator called in Peter Tager. "We're dropping the campaign."
"Dropping it? Why? It's in the bag. The latest polls " "Just do as I tell you. Cancel all of Oliver's appearances.
As far as we're concerned, he's out of the race."
Two weeks later, the polls began to show a drop in Oliver Russell's ratings. The billboards started to disappear, and the radio and television ads had been canceled.
"Governor Addison is beginning to pick up ratings in the polls. If we're going to find a new candidate, we'd better hurry," Peter Tager said.
The senator was thoughtful. "We have plenty of time. Let's play this out."
It was a few days later that Oliver Russell went to the Bailey & Tomkins agency to ask them to handle his campaign. Jim Bailey introduced him to Leslie, and Oliver was immediately taken with her. She was not only beautiful, she was intelligent and sympathetic and believed in him. He had sometimes felt a certain aloofness in Jan, but he had overlooked it. With Leslie, it was completely different. She was warm and sensitive, and it had been natural to fall in love with her. From time to time, Oliver thought about what he had lost. "... this is only the first step. You serve a term or two as governor, and I promise you we'll move you into the White House."
The hell with it. I can be happy without any of that, Oliver persuaded himself. But occasionally, he could not help thinking about the good things he might have accomplished.
With Oliver's wedding imminent, Senator Davis had sent for Tager. "Peter, we have a problem. We can't let Oliver Russell throw away his career by marrying a nobody." Peter Tager frowned. "I don't know what you can do about it now, Senator. The wedding is all set." Senator Davis was thoughtful for a moment. "The race hasn't been run yet, has it?" He telephoned his daughter in Paris. "Jan, I have some terrible news for you. Oliver is getting married." There was a long silence. "I I heard." "The sad part is that he doesn't love this woman. He told me he's marrying her on the rebound because you left him. He's still in love with you." "Did Oliver say that?" "Absolutely. It's a terrible thing he's doing to himself.
And, in a way, you're forcing him to do it, baby. When you ran out on
him, he just fell apart." "Father, I I had no idea."
"I've never seen a more unhappy man." "I don't know what to say."
"Do you still love him?"
"I'll always love him. I made a terrible mistake." "Well, then, maybe it's not too late."
"But he's getting married."
"Honey, why don't we just wait and see what happens? Maybe he'll come to his senses."
When Senator Davis hung up, Peter Tager said, "What are you up to, Senator?"
"Me?" Senator Davis said innocently. "Nothing. Just putting a few pieces back together, where they belong. I think I'll have a little talk with Oliver."
That afternoon, Oliver Russell was in Senator Davis's office. "It's good to see you, Oliver. Thank you for dropping by. You're looking very well." "Thank you, Todd. So are you." "Well, I'm getting on, but I do the best I can." "You asked to see me, Todd?" "Yes, Oliver. Sit down." Oliver took a chair. "I want you to help me out with a legal problem I'm having in Paris. One of my companies over there is in trouble.
There's a stockholders' meeting coming up. I'd like you to be there for it." "I'll be glad to. When is the meeting? I'll check my calendar and " "I'm afraid you'd have to leave this afternoon." Oliver stared at him. "This afternoon?" "I hate to give you such short notice, but I just heard about it. My plane's waiting at the airport. Can you manage it? It's important to me." Oliver was thoughtful. "I'll try to work it out, somehow." "I appreciate that, Oliver. I knew I could count on you." He leaned forward. "I'm real unhappy about what's been happening to you. Have you seen the latest polls?" He sighed. "I'm afraid you're way down." "I know." "I wouldn't mind so much, but..." He stopped. "But ?" "You'd have made a fine governor. In fact, your future couldn't have been brighter. You would have had money... power. Let me tell you something about money and power, Oliver. Money doesn't care who owns it. A bum can win it in a lottery, or a dunce can inherit it, or someone can get it by holding up a bank. But power that's something different. To have power is to own the world. If you were governor of this state, you could affect the lives of everybody living here. You could get bills passed that would help the people, and you'd have the power to veto bills that could harm them. I once promised you that someday you could be President of the
United
States. Well, I meant it, and you could have been. And think about that power, Oliver, to be the most important man in the world, running the most powerful country in the world. That's something worth dreaming about, isn't it? Just think about it." He repeated slowly, "The most powerful man in the world." Oliver was listening, wondering where the conversation was leading. As though in answer to Oliver's unspoken question, the senator said, "And you let all that get away, for a piece of pussy. I thought you were smarter than that, son." Oliver waited. Senator Davis said casually, "I talked to Jan this morning. She's in Paris, at the Ritz. When I told her you were getting married well, she just broke down and sobbed." "I I'm sorry, Todd. I really am." The senator sighed. "It's just a shame that you two couldn't get together again." "Todd, I'm getting married next week." "I know. And I wouldn't interfere with that for anything in the world. I suppose I'm just an old sentimentalist, but to me marriage is the most sacred thing on earth. You have my blessing, Oliver." "I appreciate that." "I know you do." The senator looked at his watch. "Well, you'll want to go home and pack. The background and details of the meeting will be faxed to you in Paris." Oliver rose. "Right. And don't worry. I'll take care of things over there." "I'm sure you will. By the way, I've booked you in at the
Ritz."
On Senator Davis's luxurious Challenger, flying to Paris, Oliver thought about his conversation with the senator. "You'd have made a fine governor. In fact, your future couldn't have been brighter,... Let me tell you something about money and power, Oliver.... To have power is to own the world. If you were governor of this state, you could affect the lives of everybody living here. You could get bills passed that would help the people, and you could veto bills that might harm them."
But I don't need that power, Oliver reassured himself. No. I'm getting married to a wonderful woman. We'll make each other happy. Very happy.
When Oliver arrived at the Trans Air Execujet base at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, there was a limousine waiting for him. "Where to, Mr. Russell?" the chauffeur asked. "By the way, I've booked you in at the Ritz." Jan was at the Ritz. It would be smarter, Oliver thought, if I stayed at a different hotel the Plaza-Athen6e or the Meurice. The chauffeur was looking at him expectantly. "The Ritz," Oliver said.
The least he could do was to apologize to Jan.
He telephoned her from the lobby. "It's Oliver. I'm in Paris." "I know," Jan said. "Father called me."
"I'm downstairs. I'd like to say hello if you " "Come up."
When Oliver walked into Jan's suite, he was still not sure what he was going to say.
Jan was waiting for him at the door. She stood there a moment, smiling, then threw her arms around him and held him close. "Father told me you were coming here. I'm so glad!"
Oliver stood there, at a loss. He was going to have to tell her about Leslie, but he had to find the right words. I'm sorry about what happened with us.... I never meant to hurt you.... I've fallen in love with someone else.... but I'll always... "I I have to tell you something," he said awkwardly. "The fact is ..." And as he looked at Jan, he thought of her father's words. "I once promised you that some day you could be President of the United States. Well, I meant it....
And think about that power, Oliver, to be the most important man in the world, running the most powerful country in the world. That's something worth dreaming about, isn't it?"
"Yes, darling?"
And the words poured out as though they had a life of their own. "I made a terrible mistake, Jan. I was a bloody fool. I love you. I want to marry you."
"Oliver!" AA
"Will you marry me?"
There was no hesitation. "Yes. Oh, yes, my love!"
He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, and moments later they were in bed, naked, and Jan was saying, "You don't know how much I've missed you, darling."
"I must have been out of my mind. "
Jan pressed close to his naked body and moaned. "Oh! This feels so wonderful."
"It's because we belong together." Oliver sat up. "Let's tell your father the news."
She looked at him, surprised. "Now?" "Yes."
And I'm going to have to tell Leslie.
Fifteen minutes later Jan was speaking to her father. "Oliver and I are going to be married." "That's wonderful news, Jan. I couldn't be more surprised or delighted. By the way, the mayor of Paris is an old
friend of mine. He's expecting your call. He'll marry you there. I'll make sure everything's arranged." "But " "Put Oliver on." "Just a minute, Father." Jan held out the phone to Oliver. "He wants to talk to you." Oliver picked up the phone. "Todd?" "Well, my boy, you've made me very happy. You've done the right thing."
"Thank you. I feel the same way."
"I'm arranging for you and Jan to be married in Paris. And when you come home, you'll have a big church wedding here. At the Calvary Chapel."
Oliver frowned. "The Calvary Chapel? I I don't think that's a good idea, Todd. That's where Leslie and I... Why don't we ?"
Senator Davis's voice was cold. "You embarrassed my daughter, Oliver, and I'm sure you want to make up for that. Am I right?"
There was a long pause. "Yes, Todd. Of course."
"Thank you, Oliver. I look forward to seeing you in a few days. We have a lot to talk about... governor. "
The Paris wedding was a brief civil ceremony in the mayor's office. When it was over, Jan looked at Oliver and said, "Father wants to give us a church wedding at the Calvary Chapel."
Oliver hesitated, thinking about Leslie and what it would do to her. But he had come too far to back down now. "Whatever he wants."
Oliver could not get Leslie out of his mind. She had done nothing to deserve what he had done to her. I'll call her and explain. But each time he picked up the telephone, he thought: How can I explain? What can I tell her? And he had no answer. He had finally gotten up the nerve to call her, but the press had gotten to her first, and he had felt worse afterward.
The day after Oliver and Jan returned to Lexington, Oliver's election campaign went back into high gear. Peter Tager had set all the wheels in motion, and Oliver became ubiquitous again on television and radio and in the newspapers. He spoke to a large crowd at the Kentucky Kingdom Thrill Park and headed a rally at the Toyota Motor Plant in Georgetown. He spoke at the twenty-thousand-square-foot mall in Lancaster. And that was only the beginning.
Peter Tager arranged for a campaign bus to take Oliver around the state. The bus toured from Georgetown down to Stanford and stopped at Frankfort... Versailles ... Winchester ... Louisville. Oliver spoke at the Kentucky Fairground and at the Exposition Center. In Oliver's honor, they served burgoo, the traditional Kentucky stew made of chicken, veal, beef, lamb, pork, and a variety of fresh vegetables cooked in a big kettle over an open fire.
Oliver's ratings kept going up. The only interruption in the campaign
had been Oliver's wedding. He had seen Leslie at the back of the church, and he had had an uneasy feeling. He talked about it with Peter Tager. "You don't think Leslie would try to do anything to hurt me, do you?" "Of course not. And even if she wanted to, what could she do? Forget her."
Oliver knew that Tager was right. Things were moving along beautifully. There was no reason to worry. Nothing could stop him now. Nothing.
On election night, Leslie Stewart sat alone in her apartment in front of her television set, watching the returns. Precinct by precinct, Oliver's lead kept mounting. Finally, at five minutes before midnight, Governor Addison appeared on television to make his concession speech. Leslie turned off the set. She stood up and took a deep breath. Weep no more, my lady, Oh, weep no more today! We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home far away. It was time.
Three.
Senator Todd Davis was having a busy morning. He had flown into Louisville from the capital for the day, to attend a sale of Thoroughbreds. "You have to keep up the bloodlines," he told Peter Tager, as they sat watching the splendid-looking horses being led in and out of the large arena. "That's what counts, Peter." A beautiful mare was being led into the center of the ring. "That's Sail Away," Senator Davis said. "I want her." The bidding was spirited, but ten minutes later, when it was over, Sail Away belonged to Senator Davis. The cellular phone rang. Peter Tager answered it. "Yes?" He listened a moment, then turned to the senator. "Do you want to talk to Leslie Stewart?"
Senator Davis frowned. He hesitated a moment, then took the phone from Tager. "Miss Stewart?" "I'm sorry to bother you, Senator Davis, but I wonder if I could see you? I need a favor." "Well, I'm flying back to Washington tonight, so " "I could come and meet you. It's really important." Senator Davis hesitated a moment. "Well, if it's that important, I can certainly accommodate you, young lady. I'll be leaving for my farm in a few minutes. Do you want to meet me there?" "That will be fine." "I'll see you in an hour." "Thank you." Davis pressed the END button and turned to Tager. "I was wrong about her. I thought she was smarter than that. She should have asked me for money before Jan and Oliver got married." He was thoughtful for a moment, then his face broke into a slow grin. "I'll be a son of a bitch." "What is it, Senator?" "I just figured out what this urgency is all about. Miss Stewart has discovered that she's pregnant with Oliver's baby and she's going to need a little financial help. It's the oldest con game in the world."
One hour later, Leslie was driving onto the grounds of Dutch Hill, the senator's farm. A guard was waiting outside the main house. "Miss Stewart?" "Yes." "Senator Davis is expecting you. This way, please." He showed Leslie inside, along a wide corridor that led to a large
paneled library crammed with books. Senator Davis was at his desk, thumbing through a volume. He looked up and rose as Leslie entered. "It's good to see you, my dear. Sit down, please." Leslie took a seat. The senator held up his book. "This is fascinating. It lists the name of every Kentucky Derby winner from the first derby to the latest. Do you know who the first Kentucky Derby winner was?" "No." "Aristides, in 1875. But I'm sure you didn't come here to discuss horses." He put the book down. "You said you wanted a favor." He wondered how she was going to phrase it. I just found out I'm going to have Oliver's baby, and I don't know what to do.... I don't want to cause a scandal, but... I'm willing to raise the baby, but I don't have enough money.... "Do you know Henry Chambers?" Leslie asked. Senator Davis blinked, caught completely off guard. "Do I Henry? Yes, I do.
Why?" "I would appreciate it very much if you would give me an introduction to him."
Senator Davis looked at her, hastily reorganizing his thoughts. "Is that the favor? You want to meet Henry Chambers?"
"Yes."
"I'm afraid he's not here anymore, Miss Stewart. He's living in Phoenix, Arizona."
"I know. I'm leaving for Phoenix in the morning. I thought it would be nice if I knew someone there."
Senator Davis studied her a moment. His instinct told him that there was something going on that he did not understand.
He phrased his next question cautiously. "Do you know anything about Henry Chambers?"
"No. Only that he comes from Kentucky."
He sat there, making up his mind. She's a beautiful lady, he thought. Henry will owe me a favor. "I'll make a call."
Five minutes later, he was speaking to Henry Chambers.
"Henry, it's Todd. You'll be sorry to know that I bought Sail Away this morning. I know you had your eye on her." He listened a moment, then laughed. "I'll bet you did. I hear you just got another divorce. Too bad. I liked Jessica."
Leslie listened as the conversation went on for a few more minutes. Then Senator Davis said, "Henry, I'm going to do you a good turn. A friend of mine is arriving in Phoenix tomorrow, and she doesn't know a soul there. I would appreciate it if you would keep an eye on her....
What does she look like?" He looked over at Leslie and smiled. "She's not too bad-looking. Just don't get any ideas."
He listened a moment, then turned back to Leslie. "What time does your plane get in?"
"At two-fifty. Delta flight 159."
The senator repeated the information into the phone. "Her name is Leslie Stewart. You'll thank me for this. You take care now, Henry. I'll be in touch." He replaced the receiver.
"Thank you," Leslie said.
"Is there anything else I can do for you?" "No. That's all I need."
Why? What the hell does Leslie Stewart want with Henry Chambers?
The public fiasco with Oliver Russell had been a hundred times worse than anything Leslie could have imagined. It was a never-ending nightmare. Everywhere Leslie went there were the whispers: "She's the one. He practically jilted her at the altar " "I'm saving my wedding invitation as a souvenir...." "I wonder what she's going to do with her wedding gown?..." The public gossip fueled Leslie's pain, and the humiliation was unbearable. She would never trust a man again. Never. Her only consolation was that somehow, someday, she was going to make Oliver Russell pay for the unforgivable thing he had done to her. She had no idea how. With Senator Davis behind him, Oliver would have money and power. Then I have to find a way to have more money and more power, Leslie thought. But how? How?
The inauguration took place in the garden of the state capitol in Frankfort, near the exquisite thirty-four-foot floral clock.
Jan stood at Oliver's side, proudly watching her handsome husband being sworn in as governor of Kentucky.
If Oliver behaved himself, the next stop was the White House, her father had assured her. And Jan intended to do everything in her power to see that nothing went wrong. Nothing.
After the ceremony, Oliver and his father-in-law were seated in the palatial library of the Executive Mansion, a beautiful building modeled after the Petit Trianon, Marie Antoinette's villa near the palace of Versailles. Senator Todd Davis looked around the luxurious room and nodded in satisfaction. "You're going to do fine here, son. Just fine." "I owe it all to you," Oliver said warmly. "I won't forget that." Senator Davis waved a hand in dismissal. "Don't give it a thought, Oliver. You're here because you deserve to be. Oh, maybe I helped push things along a wee bit. But this is just the beginning.
I've been in politics a long time, son, and there are a few things I've learned."
He looked over at Oliver, waiting, and Oliver said dutifully, "I'd love to hear them, Todd." "You see, people have got it wrong. It's not who you know," Senator Davis explained, "it's what you know about who you know. Everybody's got a little skeleton buried somewhere. All you
have to do is dig it up, and you'll be surprised how glad they'll be to help you with whatever you need. I happen to know that there's a congressman in Washington who once spent a year in a mental institution. A representative from up North served time in a reform school for stealing. Well, you can see what it would do to their careers if word ever got out. But it's grist for our mills." The senator opened an expensive leather briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers and handed them to Oliver. "These are the people you'll be dealing with here in Kentucky. They're powerful men and women, but they all have Achilles' heels." He grinned. "The mayor has an Achilles' high heel. He's a transvestite." Oliver was scanning the papers, wide-eyed. "You keep those locked up, you hear? That's pure gold." "Don't worry, Todd. I'll be careful." "And, son don't put too much pressure on those people when you need something from them. Don't break them just bend them a little." He studied Oliver a moment. "How are you and Jan getting along?" "Great," Oliver said quickly. It was true, in a sense. As far as Oliver was concerned, it was a marriage of convenience, and he was careful to see that he did nothing to disrupt it. He would never forget what his earlier indiscretion had almost cost him.
"That's fine. Jan's happiness is very important to me." It was a warning.
"For me, as well," Oliver said.
"By the way, how do you like Peter Tager?"
Oliver said enthusiastically, "I like him a lot. He's been a tremendous help to me."
Senator Davis nodded. "I'm glad to hear that. You won't find anyone better. I'm going to lend him to you, Oliver. He can smooth a lot of paths for you."
Oliver grinned. "Great. I really appreciate that."
Senator Davis rose. "Well, I have to get back to Washington. You let me know if you need anything."
"Thanks, Todd. I will."
On the Sunday after his meeting with Senator Davis, Oliver tried to find Peter Tager. "He's in church, Governor." "Right. I forgot. I'll see him tomorrow." Peter Tager went to church every Sunday with his family, and attended a two-hour prayer meeting three times a week. In a way, Oliver envied him. He's probably the only truly happy man I've ever known, he thought. On Monday morning, Tager came into Oliver's office. "You wanted to see me, Oliver?" "I need a favor.
It's personal."
Peter nodded. "Anything I can do." "I need an apartment." Tager glanced around the large room in mock disbelief. "This place is too small for you, Governor?" "No." Oliver looked into Tager's one good
eye. "Sometimes I have private meetings at night. They have to be discreet. You know what I mean?" There was an uncomfortable pause. "Yes." "I want someplace away from the center of town. Can you handle that for me?" "I guess so." "This is just between us, of course." Peter Tager nodded, unhappily. One hour later, Tager telephoned Senator Davis in Washington. "Oliver asked me to rent an apartment for him, Senator. Something discreet." "Did he now? Well, he's learning, Peter. He's learning. Do it. Just make damned sure Jan never hears about it." The senator was thoughtful for a moment. "Find him a place out in Indian Hills. Someplace with a private entrance." "But it's not right for him to " "Peter just do it."
Four.
The solution to Leslie's problem had come in two disparate items in the Lexington Herald-Leader. The first was a long, flattering editorial praising Governor Oliver Russell. The last line read, "None of us here in Kentucky who knows him will be surprised when one day Oliver Russell becomes President of the United States." The item on the next page read: "Henry Chambers, a former Lexington resident, whose horse Lightning won the Kentucky Derby five years ago, and Jessica, his third wife, have divorced. Chambers, who now lives in Phoenix, is the owner and publisher of the Phoenix Star." The power of the press. That was real power. Katharine Graham and her Washington Post had destroyed a president. And that was when the idea jelled.
Leslie had spent the next two days doing research on Henry Chambers. The Internet had some interesting information on him. Chambers was a fifty-five-year-old philanthropist who had inherited a tobacco fortune and had devoted most of his life to giving it away. But it was not his money that interested Leslie. It was the fact that he owned a newspaper and that he had just gotten a divorce.
Half an hour after her meeting with Senator Davis, Leslie walked into Jim Bailey's office. "I'm leaving, Jim."
He looked at her sympathetically. "Of course. You need a vacation. When you come back, we can "
"I'm not coming back."
"What? I I don't want you to go, Leslie. Running away won't solve " "I'm not running away."
"You've made up your mind?" "Yes."
"We're going to hate to lose you. When do you want to leave?" "I've already left."
Leslie Stewart had given a lot of thought to the various ways in which
she could meet Henry Chambers. There were endless fin possibilities, but she discarded them one by one. What she had in mind had to be planned very carefully. And then she had thought of Senator Davis.
Davis and Chambers had the same background, traveled in the same circles. The two men would certainly know each other. That was when Leslie had decided to call the senator.
When Leslie arrived at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, on an impulse, she walked over to the newsstand in the terminal. She bought a copy of the Phoenix Star and scanned it. No luck. She bought the Arizona Republic, and then the Phoenix Gazette, and there it was, the astrological column by Zoltaire. Not that I believe in astrology, I'm much too intelligent for that nonsense. But... FOR LEO (JULY 23RD TO AUGUST 22ND). JUPITER is JOINING YOUR SUN. ROMANTIC PLANS MADE NOW
WILL BE FULFILLED. EXCELLENT PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE. PROCEED
CAUTIOUSLY. There was a chauffeur and limousine waiting for her at the curb. "Miss Stewart?" "Yes." "Mr. Chambers sends his regards and asked me to take you to your hotel." "That's very kind of him." Leslie was disappointed. She had hoped that he would come to meet her himself.
"Mr. Chambers would like to know whether you are free to join him for dinner this evening." Better. Much better. "Please tell him I would be delighted."
At eight o'clock that evening, Leslie was dining with Henry Chambers. Chambers was a pleasant-looking man, with an aristocratic face, graying brown hair, and an endearing enthusiasm. He was studying Leslie admiringly. "Todd really meant it when he said he was doing me a favor." Leslie smiled. "Thank you." "What made you decide to come to Phoenix, Leslie?" You don't really want to know. "I've heard so much about it, I thought I might enjoy living here," "It's a great place.
You'll love it. Arizona has everything the Grand Canyon, desert, mountains. You can find anything you want here." And I have, Leslie thought. "You'll need a place to live. I'm sure I can help you locate something." Leslie knew the money she had would last for no more than three months. As it turned out, her plan took no more than two months.
Bookstores were filled with how-to books for women on how to get a man. The various pop psychologies ranged from "Play hard to get" to "Get them hooked in bed." Leslie followed none of that advice. She had her own method: She teased Henry Chambers. Not physically, but mentally.
Henry had never met anyone like her. He was of the old school that believed if a blonde was beautiful, she must be dumb. It never occurred to him that he had always been attracted to women who were beautiful and not overly bright. Leslie was a revelation to him. She was intelligent and articulate and knowledgeable about an amazing range of subjects.
They talked about philosophy and religion and history, and Henry confided to a friend, "I think she's reading up on a lot of things so
she can keep up with me."
Henry Chambers enjoyed Leslie's company tremendously. He showed her off to his friends and wore her on his arm like a trophy. He took her to the Carefree Wine and Fine Art Festival and to the Actors Theater. They watched the Phoenix Suns play at the America West Arena. They visited the Lyon Gallery in Scottsdale, the Symphony Hall, and the little town of Chandler to see the Doo-dah Parade. One evening, they went to see the Phoenix Roadrunners play hockey. After the hockey game, Henry said, "I really like you a lot, Leslie. I think we'd be great together. I'd like to make love with you."
She took his hand in hers and said softly, "I like you, too, Henry, but the answer is no."
The following day they had a luncheon date. Henry telephoned Leslie. "Why don't you pick me up at the Star? I want you to see the place."
"I'd love to," Leslie said. That was what she had been waiting for. There were two other newspapers in Phoenix, the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette. Henry's paper, the Star, was the only one losing money.
The offices and production plant of the Phoenix Star were smaller than Leslie had anticipated. Henry took her on a tour, and as Leslie looked around, she thought, This isn't going to bring down a governor or a president. But it was a stepping-stone. She had plans for it.
Leslie was interested in everything she saw. She kept asking Henry questions, and he kept referring them to Lyle Bannister, the managing editor. Leslie was amazed at how little Henry seemed to know about the newspaper business and how little he cared. It made her all the more determined to learn everything she could.
It happened at the Borgata, a restaurant in a castle like old Italian village setting. The dinner was superb. They had enjoyed fi4
a lobster bisque, medallions of veal with a sauce bearnaise, white asparagus vinaigrette, and a Grand Marnier souffle. Henry Chambers was charming and easy to be with, and it had been a beautiful evening. "I love Phoenix," Henry was saying. "It's hard to believe that only fifty years ago the population here was just sixty-five thousand. Now it's over a million." Leslie was curious about something. "What made you decide to leave Kentucky and move here, Henry?" He shrugged. "It wasn't my decision, really. It was my damned lungs. The doctors didn't know how long I had to live. They told me Arizona would be the best climate for me. So I decided to spend the rest of my life whatever that means living it up." He smiled at her. "And here we are." He took her hand in his. "When they told me how good it would be for me, they had no idea. You don't think I'm too old for you, do you?" he asked anxiously. Leslie smiled. "Too young. Much too young." Henry looked at her for a long moment. "I'm serious. Will you marry me?" Leslie closed her eyes for a moment. She could see the hand-painted wooden sign on the Breaks Interstate Park trail: LESLIE,
WILL YOU MARRY ME? ... "I'm afraid I can't promise you that you're going to marry a governor, but I'm a pretty good attorney." Leslie opened her eyes and looked up at Henry. "Yes, I want to marry you." More than anything in the world. They were married two weeks later.
When the wedding announcement appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Senator Todd Davis studied it for a long time. "I'm sorry to bother you, Senator, but I wonder if I could see you? I need a favor. Do
you know Henry Chambers?... I'd appreciate it if you'd introduce me to him."
If that's all she was up to, there would be no problem. If that's all she was up to.
Leslie and Henry honeymooned in Paris, and wherever they went, Leslie wondered whether Oliver and Jan had visited those same places, walked those streets, dined there, shopped there. She pictured the two of them together, making love, Oliver whispering the same lies into Jan's ears that he had whispered into hers. Lies that he was going to pay dearly for.
Henry sincerely loved her and went out of his way to make her happy. Under other circumstances, Leslie might have fallen in love with him, but something deep within her had died. I can never trust any man again.
A few days after they returned to Phoenix, Leslie surprised Henry by saying, "Henry, I'd like to work at the paper." He laughed. "Why?" "I think it would be interesting. I was an executive at an advertising agency. I could probably help with that part." He protested, but in the end, he gave in.
Henry noticed that Leslie read the Lexington Herald-Leader every day. "Keeping up with the hometown folks?" he teased her.
"In a way," Leslie smiled. She avidly read every word that was written about Oliver. She wanted him to be happy and successful. The bigger they are ... When Leslie pointed out to Henry that the Star was losing money, he laughed. "Honey, it's a drop in the bucket. I've got money coming in from places you never even heard of. It doesn't matter." But it mattered to Leslie. It mattered a great deal. As she began to get more and more involved in the running of the newspaper, it seemed to her that the biggest reason it was losing money was the unions. The Phoenix Star's presses were outdated, but the unions refused to let the newspaper put in new equipment, because they said it would cost union members their jobs. They were currently negotiating a new contract with the Star. When Leslie discussed the situation with Henry, he said, "Why do you want to bother with stuff like that? Let's just have fun." "I'm having fun," Leslie assured him.
Leslie had a meeting with Craig McAllister, the Star's attorney. "How are the negotiations going?" "I wish I had better news, Mrs.
Chambers, but I'm afraid the situation doesn't look good." "We're still in negotiation, aren't we?" "Ostensibly. But Joe Riley, the head of the printers' union, is a stubborn son of a a stubborn man. He won't give an inch. The pressmen's contract is up in ten days, and Riley says if the union doesn't have a new contract by then, they're going to walk." "Do you believe him?" "Yes. I don't like to give in to the unions, but the reality is that without them, we have no newspaper. They can shut us down. More than one publication has collapsed because it tried to buck the unions." "What are they asking?" "The usual. Shorter hours, raises, protection against future automation...." "They're squeezing us, Craig. I don't like it." "This is not an emotional issue, Mrs. Chambers. This is a practical issue." "So your advice is to give in?" "I don't think we have a choice." "Why don't I have a talk with Joe Riley?"
The meeting was set for two o'clock, and Leslie was late coming back from lunch. When she walked into the reception office, Riley was waiting, chatting with Leslie's secretary, Amy, a pretty, dark-haired young woman.
Joe Riley was a rugged-looking Irishman in his middle forties. He had been a pressman for more than fifteen years. Three years earlier he had been appointed head of his union and had earned the reputation of being the toughest negotiator in the business. Leslie stood there for a moment, watching him flirting with Amy.
Riley was saying, "... and then the man turned to her and said, "That's easy for you to say, but how will I get back?" "
Amy laughed. "Where do you hear those, Joe?"
"I get around, darling'. How about dinner tonight?" "I'd love it."
Riley looked up and saw Leslie. "Afternoon, Mrs. Chambers." "Good afternoon, Mr. Riley. Come in, won't you?"
Riley and Leslie were seated in the newspaper's conference room. "Would you like some coffee?" Leslie offered.
"No, thanks." "Anything stronger?"
He grinned. "You know it's against the rules to drink during company hours, Mrs. Chambers."
Leslie took a deep breath. "I wanted the two of us to have a talk because I've heard that you're a very fair man."
fiQ
"I try to be," Riley said.
"I want you to know that I'm sympathetic to the union. I think your men are entitled to something, but what you're asking for is unreasonable. Some of their habits are costing us millions of dollars a year."
"Could you be more specific?"
"I'll be glad to. They're working fewer hours of straight time and finding ways to get on the shifts that pay overtime. Some of them put in three shifts back to back, working the whole weekend. I believe they call it 'going to the whips." We can't afford that anymore. We're losing money because our equipment is outdated. If we could put in new cold-type production "
"Absolutely not! The new equipment you want to put in would put my men out of work, and I have no intention of letting machinery throw my men out into the street. Your goddam machines don't have to eat, my men do." Riley rose to his feet. "Our contract is up next week. We either get what we want, or we walk."
When Leslie mentioned the meeting to Henry that evening, he said, "Why do you want to get involved in all that? The unions are something we all have to live with. Let me give you a piece of advice, sweetheart. You're new to all this, and you're a woman. Let the men handle it.
Let's not " He stopped, out of breath. "Are you all right?"
He nodded. "I saw my stupid doctor today, and he thinks I should get an oxygen tank."
"I'll arrange it," Leslie said. "And I'm going to get you a nurse so that when I'm not here "
"No! I don't need a nurse. I'm I'm just a little tired." "Come on, Henry. Let's get you into bed."
Three days later, when Leslie called an emergency board meeting, Henry said, "You go, baby. I'll just stay here and take it easy." The oxygen tank had helped, but he was feeling weak and depressed.
Leslie telephoned Henry's doctor. "He's losing too much weight and he's in pain. There must be something you can do."
"Mrs. Chambers, we're doing everything we can. Just see that he gets plenty of rest and stays on the medication."
Leslie sat there, watching Henry lying in bed, coughing.
"Sorry about the meeting," Henry said. "You handle the board. There's nothing anyone can do, anyway."
She only smiled. Five.
The members of the board were gathered around the table in the conference room, sipping coffee and helping themselves to bagels and cream cheese, waiting for Leslie. When she arrived, she said, "Sorry to keep you waiting, ladies and gentlemen. Henry sends his regards." Things had changed since the first board meeting Leslie had attended. The board had snubbed her then, and treated her as an interloper. But gradually, as Leslie had learned enough about the business to make valuable suggestions, she had won their respect. Now, as the meeting was about to begin, Leslie turned to Amy, who was serving coffee. "Amy, I would like you to stay for the meeting." Amy looked at her in surprise. "I'm afraid my shorthand isn't very good, Mrs. Chambers.
Cynthia can do a better job of "
"I don't want you to take minutes of the meeting. Just make a note of whatever resolutions we pass at the end."
"Yes, ma'am." Amy picked up a notebook and pen and sat in a chair against the wall.
Leslie turned to face the board. "We have a problem. Our contract with the pressmen's union is almost up. We've been negotiating for three months now, and we haven't been able to reach an agreement. We have to make a decision, and we have to make it fast. You've all seen the reports I sent you. I'd like to have your opinions."
She looked at Gene Osborne, a partner in a local law firm.
"If you ask me, Leslie, I think they're getting too damn much already. Give them what they want now, and tomorrow they'll want more."
Leslie nodded and looked at Aaron Drexel, the owner of a local department store. "Aaron?"
"I have to agree. There's a hell of a lot of featherbedding going on. If we give them something, we should get something in return. In my opinion, we can afford a strike, and they can't."
The comments from the others were similar.
Leslie said, "I have to disagree with all of you." They looked at her in surprise. "I think we should let them have what they want."
"That's crazy."
"They'll wind up owning the newspaper."
"There won't be any stopping them." "You can't give in to them." Leslie let them speak. When they had finished, she said, "Joe Riley is a fair man. He believes in what he's asking for." Seated against the wall, Amy was following the discussion, astonished. One of the women spoke up. "I'm surprised you're taking his side, Leslie." "I'm not taking anyone's side. I just think we have to be reasonable about this. Anyway, it's not my decision. Let's take a vote." She turned to
look at Amy. "This is what I want you to put in the record." "Yes, ma'am." Leslie turned back to the group. "All those opposed to the union demands, raise your hands." Eleven hands went into the air. "Let the record show that I voted yes and that the rest of the committee has voted not to accept the union demands." Amy was writing in her notebook, a thoughtful expression on her face. Leslie said, "Well, that's it then." She rose. "If there's no further business
..." The others got to their feet. "Thank you all for coming." She watched them leave, then turned to Amy. "Would you type that up, please?" "Right away, Mrs. Chambers." Leslie headed for her office.
The telephone call came a short time later. "Mr. Riley is on line one," Amy said.
Leslie picked up the telephone. "Hello."
"Joe Riley. I just wanted to thank you for what you tried to do." Leslie said, "I don't understand ..."
"The board meeting. I heard what happened."
Leslie said, "I'm surprised, Mr. Riley. That was a private meeting."
Joe Riley chuckled. "Let's just say I have friends in low places. Anyway, I thought what you tried to do was great. Too bad it didn't work."
There was a brief silence, then Leslie said slowly, "Mr. Riley ... what if I could make it work?"
"What do you mean?"
"I have an idea. I'd rather not discuss it on the phone. Could we meet somewhere ... discreetly?"
There was a pause. "Sure. Where did you have in mind?" "Someplace where neither of us will be recognized." "What about meeting at the Golden Cup?"
"Right. I'll be there in an hour." "I'll see you."
The Golden Cup was an infamous cafe in the seedier section of Phoenix, near the railroad tracks, an area police warned tourists to stay away from. Joe Riley was seated at a corner booth when Leslie walked in. He rose as she approached him.
"Thank you for being here," Leslie said. They sat down. "I came because you said there might be a way for me to get my contract." "There is. I think the board is being stupid and shortsighted. I tried to talk to them, but they wouldn't listen." He nodded, "I know. You advised them to give us the new contract." "That's right. They don't realize how important you pressmen are to our newspaper." He was studying her, puzzled. "But if they voted you down, how can we ... ?" "The only reason they voted me down is that they're not taking your union seriously. If you want to avoid a long strike, and maybe the death of the paper, you have to show them you mean business." "How do you mean?" Leslie said nervously, "What I'm telling you is very confidential, but it's the only way that you're going to get what you want. The problem is simple. They think you're bluffing. They don't believe you mean business. You have to show them that you do. Your contract is up this Friday at midnight." "Yes ..." "They'll expect you just to quietly walk out." She leaned forward. "Don't!" He was listening intently. "Show them that they can't run the Star without you. Don't just go out like lambs. Do some damage." His eyes widened. "I don't mean anything serious," Leslie said quickly. "Just enough to show them that you mean business. Cut a few cables, put a press or two out of commission. Let them learn that they need you to operate them. Everything can be repaired in a day or two, but meanwhile, you'll have scared them into their senses. They'll finally know what they're dealing with."
Joe Riley sat there for a long time, studying Leslie. "You're a remarkable lady."
"Not really. I thought it over, and I have a very simple choice. You can cause a little damage that can be easily corrected, and force the board to deal with you, or you can walk out quietly and resign yourself to a long strike that the paper may never recover from. All I care about is protecting the paper."
A slow smile lit Riley's face. "Let me buy you a cup of coffee, Mrs. Chambers."
"We're striking!" Friday night, at one minute past midnight, under Joe Riley's direction, the pressmen attacked. They stripped parts from the machines, overturned tables full of equipment, and set two printing presses on fire. A guard who tried to stop them was badly beaten. The pressmen, who had started out merely to disable a few presses, got caught up in the fever of the excitement, and they became more and more destructive. "Let's show the bastards that they can't shove us around!" one of the men cried. "There's no paper without us!"
"We're the Star!"
Cheers went up. The men attacked harder. The pressroom was turning into a shambles.
In the midst of the wild excitement, floodlights suddenly flashed on from the four corners of the room. The men stopped, looking around in bewilderment. Near the doors, television cameras were recording the
fiery scene and the destruction. Next to them were reporters from the Arizona Republic, the Phoenix Gazette, and several news services, covering the havoc. There were at least a dozen policemen and firemen.
Joe Riley was looking around in shock. How the hell had they all gotten here so fast? As the police started to close in and the firemen turned on their hoses, the answer suddenly came to Riley, and he felt as though someone had kicked him in the stomach. Leslie Chambers had set him up! When these pictures of the destruction the union had caused got out, there would be no sympathy for them. Public opinion would turn against them. The bitch had planned this all along. The
television pictures were aired within the hour, and the radio waves were filled with details of the wanton destruction. News services around the world printed the story, and they all carried the theme of the vicious employees who had turned on the hand that fed them. It was a public relations triumph for the Phoenix Star.
Leslie had prepared well. Earlier, she had secretly sent some of the Star's executives to Kansas to learn how to run the giant presses, and to teach nonunion employees cold-type production. Immediately after the sabotage incident, two other striking unions, the mailers and photoengravers, came to terms with the Star.
With the unions defeated, and the way open to modernize the paper's technology, profits began to soar. Overnight, productivity jumped 20 percent.
The morning after the strike, Amy was fired.
On a late Friday afternoon, two years from the date of their wedding, Henry had a touch of indigestion. By Saturday morning, it had become chest pains, and Leslie called for an ambulance to rush him to the hospital. On Sunday, Henry Chambers passed away.
He left his entire estate to Leslie.
The Monday after the funeral, Craig McAllister came to see Leslie. "I wanted to go over some legal matters with you, but if it's too soon " "No," Leslie said. "I'm all right." Henry's death had affected Leslie more than she had expected. He had been a dear, sweet man, and she had used him because she wanted him to help her get revenge against Oliver.
And somehow, in Leslie's mind, Henry's death became another reason to destroy Oliver.
"What do you want to do with the Star'?" McAllister asked. "I don't imagine you'll want to spend your time running it."
"That's exactly what I intend to do. We're going to expand."
Leslie sent for a copy of the Managing Editor, the trade magazine that lists newspaper brokers all over the United States. Leslie selected
Dirks, Van Essen and Associates in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"This is Mrs. Henry Chambers. I'm interested in acquiring another newspaper, and I wondered what might be available. "
It turned out to be the Sun in Hammond, Oregon.
"I'd like you to fly up there and take a look at it," Leslie told McAllister.
Two days later, McAllister telephoned Leslie. "You can forget about the Sun, Mrs. Chambers."
"What's the problem?"
"The problem is that Hammond is a two-newspaper town. The daily circulation of the Sun is fifteen thousand. The other newspaper, the Hammond Chronicle, has a circulation of twenty-eight thousand, almost double. And the owner of the Sun is asking five million dollars. The deal doesn't make any sense."
Leslie was thoughtful for a moment. "Wait for me," she said. "I'm on my way."
Leslie spent the following two days examining the newspaper and studying its books.
"There's no way the Sun can compete with the Chronicle," McAllister assured her. "The Chronicle keeps growing. The Sun's circulation has gone down every year for the past five years."
"I know," Leslie said. "I'm going to buy it."
He looked at her in surprise. "You're going to what?" "I'm going to buy it."
The deal was completed in three days. The owner of the Sun was delighted to get rid of it. "I suckered the lady into making a deal," he crowed. "She paid me the full five million." Walt Meriwether, the owner of the Hammond Chronicle, came to call on Leslie. "I understand you're my new competitor," he said genially. Leslie nodded. "That's right." "If things don't work out here for you, maybe you'd be interested in selling the Sun to me." Leslie smiled. "And if things do work out, perhaps you'd be interested in selling the Chronicle to me."
Meriwether laughed. "Sure. Lots of luck, Mrs. Chambers."
When Meriwether got back to the Chronicle, he said confidently, "In six months, we're going to own the Sun."
Leslie returned to Phoenix and talked to Lyle Bannister, the Star's managing editor. "You're going with me to Hammond, Oregon. I want you
to run the newspaper there until it gets on its feet."
"I talked to Mr. McAllister," Bannister said. "The paper has no feet. He said it's a disaster waiting to happen."
She studied him a moment. "Humor me."
In Oregon, Leslie called a staff meeting of the employees of the Sun. "We're going to operate a little differently from now on," she informed them. "This is a two-newspaper town, and we're going to own them both." Derek Zornes, the managing editor of the Sun, said, "Excuse me, Mrs. Chambers. I'm not sure you understand the situation. Our circulation is way below the Chronick's, and we're slipping every month. There's no way we can ever catch up to it." "We're not only going to catch up to it," Leslie assured him, "we're going to put the Chronicle out of business."
The men in the room looked at one another and they all had the same thought: Females and amateurs should stay the hell out of the newspaper business.
"How do you plan to do that?" Zornes asked politely. "Have you ever watched a bullfight?" Leslie asked.
He blinked. "A bullfight? No ..."
"Well, when the bull rushes into the ring, the matador doesn't go for the kill right away. He bleeds the bull until it's weak enough to be killed."
Zornes was trying not to laugh. "And we're going to bleed the Chronicle?"
"Exactly."
"How are we going to do that?"
"Starting Monday, we're cutting the price of the Sun from thirty-five cents to twenty cents. We're cutting our advertising rates by thirty percent. Next week, we're starting a giveaway contest where our readers can win free trips all over the world. We'll begin publicizing the contest immediately."
When the employees gathered later to discuss the meeting, the consensus was that their newspaper had been bought by a crazy woman.
The bleeding began, but it was the Sun that was being bled.
McAllister asked Leslie, "Do you have any idea how much money the Sun is losing?"
"I know exactly how much it's losing," Leslie said.
"How long do you plan to go on with this?"
"Until we win," Leslie said. "Don't worry. We will."
But Leslie was worried. The losses were getting heavier every week. Circulation continued to dwindle, and advertisers' reactions to the rate reduction had been lukewarm.
"Your theory's not working," McAllister said. "We've got to cut our losses. I suppose you can keep pumping in money, but what's the point?"
The following week, the circulation stopped dropping. It took eight weeks for the Sun to begin to rise.
The reduction in the price of the newspaper and in the cost of advertising was attractive, but what made the circulation of the Sun move up was the giveaway contest. It ran for twelve weeks, and entrants had to compete every week. The prizes were cruises to the South Seas and trips to London and Paris and Rio. As the prizes were handed out and publicized with front-page photographs of the winners, the circulation of the Sun began to explode.
"You took a hell of a gamble," Craig McAllister said grudgingly, "but it's working."
"It wasn't a gamble," Leslie said. "People can't resist getting something for nothing."
When Walt Meriwether was handed the latest circulation figures, he was furious. For the first time in years, the Sun was ahead of the Chronicle.
"All right," Meriwether said grimly. "Two can play that stupid game. I want you to cut our advertising rates and start some kind of
contest."
But it was too late. Eleven months after Leslie had bought the Sun, Walt Meriwether came to see her.
"I'm selling out," he said curtly. "Do you want to buy the Chronicle?"
"Yes."
The day the contract for the Chronicle was signed, Leslie called in her staff.
"Starting Monday," she said, "we raise the price of the Sun, double our advertising rates, and stop the contest."
One month later, Leslie said to Craig McAllister, "The Evening Standard in Detroit is up for sale. It owns a television station, too. I think
we should make a deal." McAllister protested. "Mrs. Chambers, we don't know anything about television, and " "Then we'll have to learn, won't we?" The empire Leslie needed was beginning to build.
Six.
Oliver's days were full, and he loved every minute of what he was doing. There were political appointments to be made, legislation to be put forward, appropriations to be approved, meetings and speeches and press interviews. The State Journal in Frankfort, the Herald-Leader in Lexington, and the Louisville Courier-Journal gave him glowing reports. He was earning the reputation of being a governor who got things done. Oliver was swept up in the social life of the super wealthy and he knew that a large part of that was because he was married to the daughter of Senator Todd Davis.
Oliver enjoyed living in Frankfort. It was a lovely, historic city nestled in a scenic river valley among the rolling hills of Kentucky fabled bluegrass region. He wondered what it would be like to live in Washington, D.C.
The busy days merged into weeks, and the weeks merged into months. Oliver began the last year of his term.
Oliver had made Peter Tager his press secretary. He was the perfect choice. Tager was always forthright with the press, and because of the decent, old-fashioned values he stood for and liked to talk about, he gave the party substance and dignity. Peter Tager and his black eye patch became almost as well recognized as Oliver.
Todd Davis made it a point to fly down to Frankfort to see Oliver at least once a month.
He said to Peter Tager, "When you've got a Thoroughbred running, you have to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't lose his timing."
On a chilly evening in October, Oliver and Senator Davis were seated in Oliver's study. The two men and Jan had gone out to dinner at Gabriel's and had returned to the Executive Mansion. Jan had left the men to talk. "Jan seems very happy, Oliver. I'm pleased." "I try to make her happy, Todd." Senator Davis looked at Oliver and wondered how often he used the apartment. "She loves you a lot, son." "And I love her." Oliver sounded very sincere.
Senator Davis smiled. "I'm glad to hear that. She's already redecorating the White House." Oliver's heart skipped a beat. "I beg your pardon?" "Oh, didn't I tell you? It's begun. Your name's becoming a byword in Washington. We're going to begin our campaign the first of the year." Oliver was almost afraid to ask the next question. "Do you honestly think I have a chance, Todd?" "The word 'chance' implies a gamble, and I don't gamble, son. I won't get involved in anything unless I know it's a sure thing." Oliver took a deep breath. "You can be the most important man in the world." "I want you to know how very much I appreciate everything you've done for me, Todd." Todd
patted Oliver's arm. "It's a man's duty to help his son-in-law, isn't it?" The emphasis on "son-in-law" was not lost on Oliver. The senator said casually, "By the way, Oliver, I was very disappointed that your legislature passed that tobacco tax bill." "That money will take care of the shortfall in our fiscal budget, and " "But of course you're going to veto it." Oliver stared at him. "Veto it?" The senator gave him a small smile. "Oliver, I want you to know that I'm not thinking about myself. But I have a lot of friends who invested their
hard-earned money in tobacco plantations, and I wouldn't want to see them get hurt by oppressive new taxes, would you?"
There was a silence. "Would you, Oliver?"
"No," Oliver finally said. "I guess it wouldn't be fair." "I appreciate that. I really do."
Oliver said, "I had heard that you'd sold your tobacco plantations, Todd."
Todd Davis looked at him, surprised. "Why would I want to do that?"
"Well, the tobacco companies are taking a beating in the courts. Sales are way down, and "
"You're talking about the United States, son. There's a great big world out there. Wait until our advertising campaigns start rolling in China and Africa and India." He looked at his watch and rose. "I have to head back to Washington. I have a committee meeting."
"Have a good flight."
Senator Davis smiled. "Now I will, son. Now I will."
Oliver was upset. "What the hell am I going to do, Peter? The tobacco tax is by far the most popular measure the legislature has passed this year. What excuse do I have for vetoing it?" Peter Tager took several sheets of paper from his pocket. "All the answers are right here, Oliver. I've discussed it with the senator. You won't have any problem. I've set up a press conference for four o'clock." Oliver studied the papers. Finally, he nodded. "This is good."
"It's what I do. Is there anything else you need me for?" "No. Thank you. I'll see you at four." Peter Tager started to leave. "Peter." Tager turned. "Yes?" "Tell me something. Do you think I really have a chance of becoming president?" "What does the senator say?" "He says I do." Tager walked back to the desk. "I've known Senator Davis for many years, Oliver. In all that time, he hasn't been wrong once.
Not once. The man has incredible instincts. If Todd Davis says you're going to be the next President of the United States, you can bet the farm on it." There was a knock at the door. "Come in." The door opened, and an attractive young secretary walked in, carrying some
faxes. She was in her early twenties, bright and eager. "Oh, excuse me, Governor. I didn't know you were in a " "That's all right, Miriam." Tager smiled. "Hi, Miriam." "Hello, Mr. Tager." Oliver said, "I don't know what I'd do without Miriam. She does everything for me." Miriam blushed. "If there's nothing else " She put the faxes on Oliver's desk and turned and hurried out of the office.
"That's a pretty woman," Tager said. He looked over at Oliver. "Yes."
"Oliver, you are being careful, aren't you?"
"Of course I am. That's why I had you get that little apartment for me."
"I mean big-time careful. The stakes have gone up. The next time you get horny, just stop and think about whether a Miriam or Alice or Karen is worth the Oval Office."
"I know what you're saying, Peter, and I appreciate it. But you don't have to worry about me."
"Good." Tager looked at his watch. "I have to go. I'm taking Betsy and the kids out to lunch." He smiled. "Did I tell you what Rebecca did this morning? She's my five-year-old. There was a tape of a kid's show she wanted to watch at eight o'clock this morning. Betsy said, "Darling, I'll run it for you after lunch." Rebecca looked at her and said, "Mama, I want lunch now." Pretty smart, huh?"
Oliver had to smile at the pride in Tager's voice.
At ten o'clock that evening, Oliver walked into the den where Jan was reading and said, "Honey, I have to leave. I have a conference to go to." Jan looked up. "At this time of night?" He sighed. "I'm afraid so. There's a budget committee meeting in the morning, and they want to brief me before the meeting."
"You're working too hard. Try to come home early, will you, Oliver?" She hesitated a moment. "You've been out a lot lately."
He wondered whether that was intended as a warning. He walked over to her, leaned down, and kissed her. "Don't worry, honey. I'll be home as early as I can."
Downstairs Oliver said to his chauffeur, "I won't need you tonight. I'm taking the small car."
"Yes, Governor."
"You're late, darling." Miriam was naked.
He grinned and walked over to her. "Sorry about that. I'm glad you didn't start without me."
She smiled. "Hold me."
He took her in his arms and held her close, her warm body pressed against his.
"Get undressed. Hurry."
Afterward, he said, "How would you like to move to Washington, D.C.?" Miriam sat up in bed. "Are you serious?" "Very. I may be going there. I want you to be with me." "If your wife ever found out about us ..." "She won't." "Why Washington?"
"I can't tell you that now. All I can say is that it's going to be very exciting." "I'll go anywhere you want me to go, as long as you love me." "You know I love you." The words slipped out easily, as they had so many times in the past. "Make love to me again." "Just a second. I have something for you." He got up and walked over to the jacket he had flung over a chair. He took a small bottle out of his pocket and poured the contents into a glass. It was a clear liquid. "Try this." "What is it?" Miriam asked. "You'll like it. I promise." He lifted the glass and drank half of it. Miriam took a sip, then swallowed the rest of it. She smiled. "It's not bad." "It's going to make you feel real sexy." "I already feel real sexy. Come back to bed." They were making love again when she gasped and said, "I I'm not feeling well." She began to pant. "I can't breathe." Her eyes were closing. "Miriam!" There was no response. She fell back on the bed. "Miriam!" She lay there, unconscious. Son of a bitch! Why are you doing this to me? He got up and began to pace. He had given the liquid to a dozen women, and only once had it harmed anyone. He had to be careful. Unless he handled this right, it was going to be the end of everything. All his dreams, everything he had worked for. He could not let that happen. He stood at the side of the bed, looking down at her. He felt her pulse. She was still breathing, thank God. But he could not let her be discovered in this apartment. It would be traced back to him. He had to leave her somewhere where she would be found and be given medical help. He could trust her not to reveal his name.
It took him almost half an hour to get her dressed and to remove all traces of her from his apartment. He opened the door a crack to make sure that the hallway was empty, then picked her up, put her over his shoulder, and carried her downstairs and put her in the car. It was almost midnight, and the streets were deserted. It was beginning to rain. He drove to Juniper Hill Park, and when he was sure that no one was in sight, he lifted Miriam out of the car and gently laid her down on a park bench. He hated to leave her there, but he had no choice.
None. His whole future was at stake.
There was a public phone booth a few feet away. He hurried over to it and dialed 911.
Jan was waiting up for Oliver when he returned home. "It's after midnight," she said. "What took you ?" "I'm sorry, darling. We got into a long, boring discussion on the budget, and well, everyone had a
different opinion." "You look pale," Jan said. "You must be exhausted." "I am a little tired," he admitted.
She smiled suggestively. "Let's go to bed." He kissed her on the forehead. "I've really got to get some sleep, Jan. That meeting knocked me out."
The story was on the front page of the State Journal the following morning:
GOVERNOR'S SECRETARY FOUND UNCONSCIOUS IN PARK.
At two o'clock this morning, police found the unconscious woman, Miriam Friedland, lying on the bench in the rain and immediately called for an ambulance. She was taken to Memorial Hospital, where her condition is said to be critical.
As Oliver was reading the story, Peter came hurrying into his office, carrying a copy of the newspaper.
"Have you seen this?"
"Yes. It's it's terrible. The press has been calling all morning." "What do you suppose happened?" Tager asked.
Oliver shook his head. "I don't know. I just talked to the hospital. She's in a coma. They're trying to learn what caused it. The hospital is going to let me know as soon as they find out."
Tager looked at Oliver. "I hope she's going to be all right."
Leslie Chambers missed seeing the newspaper stories. She was in Brazil, buying a television station.
Qfi
The telephone call from the hospital came the following day. "Governor, we've just finished the laboratory tests. She's ingested a substance called methylenedioxymethamphetamine, commonly known as Ecstasy. She took it in liquid form, which is even more lethal."
"What's her condition?"
"I'm afraid it's critical. She's in a coma. She could wake up or " He hesitated. "It could go the other way."
"Please keep me informed."
"Of course. You must be very concerned, Governor." "I am."
Oliver Russell was in a conference when a secretary buzzed. "Excuse
me, Governor. There's a telephone call for you." "I told you no interruptions, Heather." "It's Senator Davis on line three." "Oh." Oliver turned to the men in the room. "We'll finish this later, gentlemen. If you'll excuse me ..." He watched them leave the room, and when the door closed behind them, he picked up the telephone. "Todd?" "Oliver, what's this about a secretary of yours found drugged on a park bench?" "Yes," Oliver said. "It's a terrible thing, Todd. I " "How terrible?" Senator Davis demanded.
"What do you mean?" "You know damn well what I mean." "Todd, you don't think I I swear I don't know anything about what happened." "I hope not." The senator's voice was grim. "You know how fast gossip gets around in Washington, Oliver. It's the smallest town in America. We don't want anything negative linked to you. We're getting ready to make our move. I'd be very, very upset if you did anything stupid." "I promise you, I'm clean." "Just make sure you keep it that way." "Of course I will. I " The line went dead. Oliver sat there thinking. I'll have to be more careful. I can't let anything stop me now. He glanced at his watch, then reached for the remote control that turned on the television set. The news was on. On the screen was a picture of a besieged street, with snipers shooting at random from buildings.
The sound of mortar fire could be heard in the background. An attractive young female reporter, dressed in battle fatigues and holding a microphone, was saying, "The new treaty is supposed to take effect at midnight tonight, but regardless of whether it holds, it can never bring back the peaceful villages in this war-torn country or restore the lives of the innocents who have been swept up in the ruthless reign of terror." The scene shifted to a close-up of Dana Evans, a passionate, lovely young woman in a flak jacket and combat boots. "The people here are hungry and tired. They ask for only one thing peace. Will it come? Only time will tell. This is Dana
Evans reporting from Sarajevo for WTE, Washington Tribune Enterprises." The scene dissolved into a commercial. Dana Evans was a foreign correspondent for the Washington Tribune Enterprises Broadcasting System. She reported the news every day, and Oliver tried not to miss her broadcasts. She was one of the best reporters on the air. She's a great-looking woman, Oliver thought, not for the first time. Why the hell would someone that young and attractive want to be in the middle of a shooting war?
Seven.
Dana Evans was an army brat, the daughter of a colonel who traveled from base to base as an armaments instructor. By the time Dana was eleven years old, she had lived in five American cities and in four foreign countries. She had moved with her father and mother to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, and Fort Mon-mouth in New Jersey. She had gone to schools for officers' children at Camp Zama in Japan, Chiemsee in Germany, Camp Darby in Italy, and Fort Buchanan in Puerto Rico. Dana was an only child, and her friends were the army personnel and their families who were stationed at the various postings. She was precocious, cheerful, and outgoing, but her mother worried about the
fact that Dana was not having a normal childhood.
"I know that moving every six months must be terribly hard on you, darling," her mother said.
Dana looked at her mother, puzzled. "Why?"
Whenever Dana's father was assigned to a new post, Dana was thrilled. "We're going to move again!" she would exclaim.
Unfortunately, although Dana enjoyed the constant moving, her mother hated it.
When Dana was thirteen, her mother said, "I can't live like a gypsy any longer. I want a divorce."
Dana was horrified when she heard the news. Not about the divorce so much, but by the fact that she would no longer be able to travel around the world with her father.
"Where am I going to live?" Dana asked her mother.
"In Claremont, California. I grew up there. It's a beautiful little town. You'll love it."
Dana's mother had been right about Claremont's being a beautiful little town. She was wrong about Dana's loving it. Claremont was at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles County, with a population of about thirty-three thousand. Its streets were lined with lovely trees and it had the feel of a quaint college community. Dana hated it. The change from being a world traveler to settling down in a small town brought on a severe case of culture shock.
"Are we going to live here forever?" Dana asked gloomily. "Why, darling?"
"Because it's too small for me. I need a bigger town."
On Dana's first day at school, she came home depressed. "What's the matter? Don't you like your school?" Dana sighed. "It's all right, but it's full of kids." Dana's mother laughed. "They'll get over that, and so will you."
Dana went on to Claremont High School and became a reporter for the Woljpacket, the school newspaper. She found that she enjoyed newspaper work, but she desperately missed traveling.
"When I grow up," Dana said, "I'm going to go all over the world again."
When Dana was eighteen, she enrolled in Claremont McKenna College, majored in journalism, and became a reporter for the college newspaper, the Forum. The following year, she was made editor of the paper.
Students were constantly coming to her for favors. "Our sorority is having a dance next week, Dana. Would you mention it in the paper ...
?"
"The debating club is having a meeting Tuesday...." "Could you review the play the drama club is putting on...?"
"We need to raise funds for the new library "
It was endless, but Dana enjoyed it enormously. She was in a position to help people, and she liked that. In her senior year, Dana decided that she wanted a newspaper career.
"I'll be able to interview important people all over the world," Dana told her mother. "It will be like helping to make history."
Growing up, whenever young Dana looked in a mirror, she became depressed. Too short, too thin, too flat. Every other girl was awesomely beautiful. It was some kind of California law. I'm an ugly duckling in a land of swans, she thought. She made it a point to avoid looking in mirrors. If Dana had looked, she would have realized that at the age of fourteen, her body was beginning to blossom. At the age of sixteen, she had become very attractive. When she was seventeen, boys began seriously to pursue her. There was something about her eager, heart-shaped face, large inquisitive eyes, and husky laugh that was both adorable and a challenge.
Dana had known since she was twelve how she wanted to lose her virginity. It would be on a beautiful, moon-lit night on some faraway tropical island, with the waves gently lapping against the shore. There would be soft music playing in the background. A handsome, sophisticated stranger would approach her and look deeply into her eyes, into her soul, and he would take her in his arms without a word and suavely carry her to a nearby palm tree. They would get undressed and make love and the music in the background would swell to a
climax.
She actually lost her virginity in the back of an old Chevrolet, after a school dance, to a skinny eighteen-year-old redhead named Richard Dobbins, who worked on the Forum with her. He gave Dana his ring and a month later, moved to Milwaukee with his parents. Dana never heard from him again.
The month before she was graduated from college with a B.A. in journalism, Dana went down to the local newspaper, the Claremont Examiner, to see about a job as a reporter. A man in the personnel office looked over her resume. "So you were the editor of the Forum, eh?" Dana smiled modestly. "That's right." "Okay. You're in luck. We're a little short-handed right now. We'll give you a try." Dana was thrilled. She had already made a list of the countries she wanted to cover: Russia ... China ... Africa.... "I know I can't start as a foreign correspondent," Dana said, "but as soon as " "Right. You'll be working here as a gofer. You'll see that the editors have coffee in
the morning. They like it strong, by the way. And you'll run copy down to the printing presses."
Dana stared at him in shock. "I can't "
He leaned forward, frowning. "You can't what?" "I can't tell you how glad I am to have this job."
The reporters all complimented Dana on her coffee, and she became the best runner the paper had ever had. She was at work early every day and made friends with everyone. She was always eager to help out. She knew that was the way to get ahead.
The problem was that at the end of six months, Dana was still a gofer. She went to see Bill Crowell, the managing editor.
"I really think I'm ready," Dana said earnestly. "If you give me an assignment, I'll "
He did not even look up. "There's no opening yet. My coffee's cold."
It isn't fair, Dana thought. They won't even give me a chance. Dana had heard a line that she firmly believed in. "If something can stop you, you might as well let it." Well, nothing's going to stop me, Dana thought. Nothing. But how am I going to get started?
One morning, as Dana was walking through the deserted Teletype room, carrying cups of hot coffee, a police scanner print out was coming over the wires. Curious, Dana walked over and read it:
ASSOCIATED PRESS CLARE MONT CALIFORNIA. IN CLARE MONT THIS MORNING,
THERE WAS AN ATTEMPTED KIDNAPPING. A SIX-YEAR-OLD BOY WAS PICKED UP BY
A STRANGER AND .. .
Dana read the rest of the story, wide-eyed. She took a deep breath, ripped the story from the teletype, and put it in her pocket. No one else had seen it.
Dana hurried into Bill Crowell's office, breathless. "Mr. Crowell, someone tried to kidnap a little boy in Claremont this morning. He offered to take him on a pony ride. The boy wanted some candy first, and the kidnapper took him to a candy store, where the owner recognized the boy. The owner called the police and the kidnapper fled."
Bill Crowell was excited. "There was nothing on the wires. How did you hear about this?"
"I I happened to be in the store, and they were talking about it and "
"I'll get a reporter over there right away."
"Why don't you let me cover it?" Dana said quickly. "The owner of the candy store knows me. He'll talk to me."
He studied Dana a moment and said reluctantly, "All right."
Dana interviewed the owner of the candy store, and her story appeared on the front page of the Claremont Examiner the next day and was well received.
"That wasn't a bad job," Bill Crowell told her. "Not bad at all." "Thank you."
It was almost a week before Dana found herself alone again in the teletype room. There was a story coming in on the wire from the Associated Press:
POMONA, CALIFORNIA: FEMALE JUDO INSTRUCTOR CAPTURES WOULD-BE RAPIST.
Perfect, Dana decided. She tore off the printout, crumpled it, stuffed it in her pocket, and hurried in to see Bill Crowell. "My old roommate just called me," Dana said excitedly. "She was looking out the window and saw a woman attack a would-be rapist. I'd like to cover it." Crowell looked at her a moment. "Go ahead." Dana drove to Pomona to get an interview with the judo instructor, and again her story made the front page. Bill Crowell asked Dana to come into his office. "How would you like to have a regular beat?" Dana was thrilled. "Great!" It's begun, she thought. My career has finally begun. The following day, the Claremont Examiner was sold to the Washington Tribune in Washington, D.C.
When the news of the sale came out, most of the Claremont Examiner employees were dismayed. It was inevitable that there would be downsizing and that some of them would lose their jobs. Dana did not think of it that way. I work for the Washington Tribune now, she thought, and the next logical thought was, Why don't I go to work at its headquarters? She marched into Bill Crowell's office. "I'd like a ten-day leave." He looked at her curiously. "Dana, most of the people around here won't go to the bathroom because they're scared to death that their desks won't be there when they get back. Aren't you worried?" "Why should I be? I'm the best reporter you have," she said confidently. "I'm going to get a job at the Washington Tribune." "Are you serious?" He saw her expression. "You're serious." He sighed. "All right. Try to see Matt Baker. He's in charge of Washington Tribune Enterprises newspapers, TV stations, radio, everything." "Matt Baker. Right."
Eight.
Washington, D.C." was a much larger city than Dana bad imagined. This was the power center of the world, and Dana could feel the electricity
in the air. This is where I belong, she thought happily. Her first move was to check into the Stouffer Renaissance Hotel. She looked up the address of the Washington Tribune and headed there. The Tribune was located on 6th Street and took up the entire block. It consisted of four separate buildings that seemed to reach to infinity. Dana found the main lobby and confidently walked up to the uniformed guard behind the desk. "Can I help you, miss?" "I work here. That is, I work for the Tribune. I'm here to see Matt Baker."
"Do you have an appointment?" Dana hesitated. "Not yet, but " "Come back when you have one." He turned his attention to several men who had come up to the desk. "We have an appointment with the head of the circulation department," one of the men said. "Just a moment, please." The guard dialed a number. In the background, one of the elevators had arrived and people were getting out. Dana casually headed for it. She stepped inside, praying that it would go up before the guard noticed her. A woman got into the elevator and pressed the button, and they started up. "Excuse me," Dana said. "What floor is Matt Baker on?" "Third." She looked at Dana. "You're not wearing a pass." "I lost it," Dana said. When the elevator reached the third floor, Dana got out. She stood there, speechless at the scale of what she was seeing. She was looking at a sea of cubicles. It seemed as though there were hundreds of them, occupied by thousands of people. There were different-colored signs over each cubicle. EDITORIAL . ART .. . METRO
.. . SPORTS .. . CALENDAR .. . Dana stopped a man hurrying by. "Excuse me. Where's Mr. Baker's office?" "Matt Baker?" He pointed. "Down at the end of the hall to the right, last door." "Thank you." As Dana turned, she bumped into an unshaven, rumpled-looking man carrying some papers. The papers fell to the floor.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I was "
"Why don't you look where the hell you're going?" the man snapped. He stooped to pick up the papers.
"It was an accident. Here. I'll help you. I " Dana reached down, and as she started to pick up the papers, she knocked several sheets under a desk.
The man stopped to glare at her. "Do me a favor. Don't help me anymore."
"As you like," Dana said icily. "I just hope everyone in Washington isn't as rude as you."
Haughtily, Dana rose and walked toward Mr. Baker's office. The legend on the glass window read MATT BAKER." The office was empty. Dana walked inside and sat down. Looking through the office window, she watched the frenetic activity going on.
It's nothing like the Claremont Examiner, she thought. There were thousands of people working here. Down the corridor, the grumpy, rumpled-looking man was heading toward the office.
No! Dana thought. He's not coming in here. He's on his way somewhere else
And the man walked in the door. His eyes narrowed. "What the hell are you doing here?"
Dana swallowed. "You must be Mr. Baker," she said brightly. "I'm Dana Evans."
"I asked you what you're doing here."
"I'm a reporter with the Claremont Examiner." "And?"
"You just bought it." "I did?"
"I I mean the newspaper bought it. The newspaper bought the newspaper." Dana felt it was not going well. "Anyway, I'm here for a job. Of course, I already have a job here. It's more like a transfer, isn't it?"
He was staring at her.
"I can start right away." Dana babbled on. "That's no problem." Matt Baker moved toward the desk. "Who the hell let you in here?" "I told you. I'm a reporter for the Claremont Examiner and "
"Go back to Claremont," he snapped. "Try not to knock anyone down on your way out."
Dana rose and said stiffly, "Thank you very much, Mr. Baker. I appreciate your courtesy." She stormed out of the office.
Matt Baker looked after her, shaking his head. The world was full of weirdos.
Dana retraced her steps to the huge editorial room, where dozens of reporters were typing out stories on their computers. This is where I'm going to work, Dana thought fiercely. Go back to Claremont. How dare he!
As Dana looked up, she saw Matt Baker in the distance,
moving in her direction. The damned man was everywhere! Dana quickly stepped behind a cubicle so he could not see her.
Baker walked past her to a reporter seated at a desk. "Did you get the interview, Sam?"
"No luck. I went to the Georgetown Medical Center, and they said there's nobody registered by that name. Tripp Taylor's wife isn't a patient there."
Matt Baker said, "I know damn well she is. They're covering something up, dammit. I want to know why she's in the hospital."
"If she is in there, there's no way to get to her, Matt." "Did you try the flower delivery routine?"
"Sure. It didn't work."
Dana stood there watching Matt Baker and the reporter walk away. What kind of reporter is it, Dana wondered, who doesn't know how to get an interview?
Thirty minutes later, Dana was entering the Georgetown Medical Center. She went into the flower shop. "May I help you?" a clerk asked. "Yes. I'd like " She hesitated a moment. " fifty dollars' worth of flowers." She almost choked on the word "fifty." When the clerk handed her the flowers, Dana said, "Is there a shop in the hospital that might have a little cap of some kind?" "There's a gift shop around the corner."
"Thank you."
The gift shop was a cornucopia of junk, with a wide array of greeting cards, cheaply made toys, balloons and banners, junk-food racks, and gaudy items of clothing. On a shelf were some souvenir caps. Dana bought one that resembled a chauffeur's cap and put it on. She purchased a get-well card and scribbled something on the inside.
Her next stop was at the information desk in the hospital lobby. "I have flowers here for Mrs. Tripp Taylor."
The receptionist shook her head. "There's no Mrs. Tripp Taylor registered here."
Dana sighed. "Really? That's too bad. These are from the Vice President of the United States." She opened the card and showed it to the receptionist. The inscription read, "Get well quickly." It was signed, "Arthur Cannon."
Dana said, "Guess I'll have to take these back." She turned to leave.
The receptionist looked after her uncertainly. "Just a moment!" Dana stopped. "Yes?"
"I can have those flowers delivered to her."
"Sorry," Dana said. "Vice President Cannon asked that they be
delivered personally." She looked at the receptionist. "Could I have your name, please? They'll want to tell Mr. Cannon why I couldn't deliver the flowers."
Panic. "Oh, well. All right. I don't want to cause any problems. Take them to Room 615. But as soon as you deliver them, you'll have to leave."
"Right," Dana said.
Five minutes later, she was talking to the wife of the famous rock star Tripp Taylor.
Stacy Taylor was in her middle twenties. It was difficult to tell whether she was attractive or not, because at the moment, her face was badly battered and swollen. She was trying to reach for a glass of water on a table near the bed when Dana walked in. "Flowers for " Dana stopped in shock as she saw the woman's face. "Who are they from?" The words were a mumble. Dana had removed the card. "From from an admirer." The woman was staring at Dana suspiciously. "Can you reach that water for me?" "Of course." Dana put the flowers down and handed the glass of water to the woman in bed. "Can I do anything else for you?" Dana asked. "Sure," she said through swollen lips. "You can get me out of this stinking place. My husband won't let me have visitors. I'm sick of seeing all these doctors and nurses." Dana sat down on a chair next to the bed. "What happened to you?" The woman snorted. "Don't you know? I was in an auto accident." "You were?" "Yes."
"That's awful," Dana said skeptically. She was filled with a deep anger, for it was obvious that this woman had been beaten.
Forty-five minutes later, Dana emerged with the true story.
When Dana returned to the lobby of the Washington Tribune, a different guard was there. "Can I help ?"
"It's not my fault," Dana said breathlessly. "Believe me, it's the darned traffic. Tell Mr. Baker I'm on my way up. He's going to be furious with me for being late." She hurried toward the elevator and pressed the button. The guard looked after her uncertainly, then began dialing. "Hello. Tell Mr. Baker there's a young woman who "
The elevator arrived. Dana stepped in and pressed three. On the third floor, the activity seemed to have increased, if that was possible.
Reporters were rushing to make their deadlines. Dana stood there, looking around frantically. Finally, she saw what she wanted. In a cubicle with a green sign that read GARDENING was an empty desk. Dana hurried over to it and sat down. She looked at the computer in front of her, then began typing. She was so engrossed in the story she was writing that she lost all track of time. When she was finished, she printed it and pages began spewing out. She was putting them together when she sensed a shadow over her shoulder.
"What the hell are you doing?" Matt Baker demanded.
"I'm looking for a job, Mr. Baker. I wrote this story, and I thought " "You thought wrong," Baker exploded. "You don't just walk in here and take over someone's desk. Now get the hell out before I call security and have you arrested." "But " "Out!" Dana rose. Summoning all her dignity, she thrust the pages in Matt Baker's hand and walked around the corner to the elevator. Matt Baker shook his head in disbelief. Jesus! What the hell is the world coming to? There was a wastebasket under the desk. As Matt moved toward it, he glanced at the first sentence of Dana's story: "Stacy Taylor, her face battered and bruised, claimed from her hospital bed today that she was there because her famous rock star husband, Tripp Taylor, beat her. "Every time I get pregnant, he beats me up. He doesn't want children." " Matt started to read further and stood there rooted. He looked up, but Dana was gone. Clutching the pages in his hand, Matt raced toward the elevators, hoping to find her before she disappeared. As he ran around the corner, he bumped into her. She was leaning against the wall, waiting. "How did you get this story?" he demanded. Dana said simply, "I told you. I'm a reporter." He took a deep breath. "Come on back to my office."
They were seated in Matt Baker's office again. "That's a good job," he said grudgingly. "Thank you! I can't tell you how much I appreciate this," Dana said excitedly. "I'm going to be the best reporter you ever had. You'll see. What I really want is to be a foreign correspondent, but I'm willing to work my way up to that, even if it takes a year." She saw the expression on his face. "Or maybe two." "The Tribune has no job openings, and there's a waiting list." She looked at him in astonishment. "But I assumed " "Hold it." Dana watched as he picked up a. pen and wrote out the letters of the word "assume," ASS u ME. He pointed to the word. "When a reporter assumes something, Miss Evans, it makes an oss out of you and me. Do you understand?" "Yes, sir." "Good." He was thoughtful for a moment, then came to a decision. "Do you ever watch WTE? The Tribune Enterprises television station." "No, sir. I can't say that I " "Well, you will now. You're in luck. There's a job opening there.
One of the writers just quit. You can take his place." "Doing what?" Dana asked tentatively. "Writing television copy." Her face fell. "Television copy? I don't know anything about " "It's simple. The producer of the news will give you the raw material from all the news services. You'll put it into English and put it on the TelePrompTer for the anchors to read."
Dana sat there, silent. "What?"
"Nothing, it's just that I'm a reporter."
"We have five hundred reporters here, and they've all spent years earning their stripes. Go over to Building Four. Ask for Mr. Hawkins. If you have to start somewhere, television isn't bad." Matt Baker reached for the phone. "I'll give Hawkins a call."
Dana sighed. "Right. Thank you, Mr. Baker. If you ever need " "Out."
The WTE television studios took up the entire sixth floor of Building Four. Tom Hawkins, the producer of the nightly news, led Dana into his office. "Have you ever worked in television?" "No, sir. I've worked on newspapers." "Dinosaurs. They're the past. We're the present.
And who knows what the future will be? Let me show you around." There were dozens of people working at desks and monitors. Wire copy from half a dozen news services was appearing on computers. "Here's where stories and news breaks come in from all over the world," Hawkins explained. "I decide which ones we're going with. The assignment desk sends out crews to cover those stories. Our reporters in the field send in their stories by microwave or transmitters. Besides our wire services, we have one hundred and sixty police channels, reporters with cell phones, scanners, monitors. Every story is planned to the second. The writers work with tape editors to get the timing exact. The average news story runs between a minute and a half and a minute and forty-five seconds."
"How many writers work here?" Dana asked.
"Six. Then you have a video coordinator, news tape editors, producers, directors, reporters, anchors ..." He stopped. A man and woman were approaching them. "Speaking of anchors, meet Julia Brinkman and Michael Tate."
Julia Brinkman was a stunning woman, with chestnut-colored hair, tinted contacts that made her eyes a sultry green, and a practiced, disarming smile. Michael Tate was an athletic-looking man with a burs tingly genial smile and an outgoing manner.
"Our new writer," Hawkins said. "Donna Evanston." "Dana Evans."
"Whatever. Let's get to work."
He took Dana back to his office. He nodded toward the assignment board on the wall. "Those are the stories I'll choose from. They're called slugs. We're on twice a day. We do the noon news from twelve to one and the nightly news from ten to eleven. When I tell you which stories I want to run with, you'll put them together and make everything sound so exciting that the viewers can't switch channels. The tape editor will feed you video clips, and you'll work them into the scripts and indicate where the clips go."
"Right."
"Sometimes there's a breaking story, and then we'll cut into our regular programming with a live feed."
"That's interesting," Dana said.
She had no idea that one day it was going to save her life.
The first night's program was a disaster. Dana had put the news leads in the middle instead of the beginning, and Julia Brinkman found herself reading Michael Tate's stories while Michael was reading hers. When the broadcast was over, the director said to Dana, "Mr. Hawkins would like to see you in his office. Now." Hawkins was sitting behind his desk, grim-faced. "I know," Dana said contritely. "It was a new low in television, and it's all my fault." Hawkins sat there watching her. Dana tried again. "The good news, Tom, is that from now on it can only get better. Right?" He kept staring at her. "And it will never happen again because" she saw the look on his face "I'm fired." "No," Hawkins said curtly. "That would be letting you off too easily. You're going to do this until you get it right. And I'm talking about the noon news tomorrow. Am I making myself clear?"
"Very."
"Good. I want you here at eight o'clock in the morning." "Right, Tom."
"And since we're going to be working together you can call me Mr. Hawkins."
The noon news the next day went smoothly. Tom Hawkins had been right, Dana decided. It was just a matter of getting used to the rhythm. Get your assignment... write the story ... work with the tape editor ... set up the TelePrompTer for the anchors to read.
From that point on, it became routine.
Dana's break came eight months after she had started working at WTE. She had just finished putting the evening news report on the TelePrompTer at nine forty-five and was preparing to leave. When she walked into the television studio to say good night, there was chaos. Everyone was talking at once.
Rob Cline, the director, was shouting, "Where the hell is she?" "I don't know."
"Hasn't anyone seen her?" "No."
"Did you phone her apartment?" "I got the answering machine."
"Wonderful. We're on the air" he looked at his watch "in twelve minutes." "Maybe Julia was in an accident," Michael Tate said. "She could be dead." "That's no excuse. She should have phoned." Dana
said, "Excuse me ..." The director turned to her impatiently. "Yes?" "If Julia doesn't show up, I could do the newscast." "Forget it." He turned back to his assistant. "Call security and see if she's come into the building." The assistant picked up the phone and dialed. "Has Julia Brinkman checked in yet... ? Well, when she does, tell her to get up here, fast." "Have him hold an elevator for her. We're on the air in" he looked at his watch again "seven damned minutes." Dana stood there, watching the growing panic. Michael Tate said, "I could do both parts." "No," the director snapped. "We need two of you up there." He looked at his watch again. "Three minutes. Goddammit.
How could she do this to us? We're on the air in " Dana spoke up. "I know all the words. I wrote them." He gave her a quick glance. "You have no makeup on. You're dressed wrong." A voice came from the sound engineer's booth. "Two minutes. Take your places, please." Michael Tate shrugged and took his seat on the platform in front of the cameras.
"Places, please!"
Dana smiled at the director. "Good night, Mr. Cline." She started toward the door.
"Wait a minute!" He was rubbing his hand across his forehead. "Are you sure you can do this?"
"Try me," Dana said.
"I don't have any choice, do I?" he moaned. "All right. Get up there. My God! Why didn't I listen to my mother and become a doctor?"
Dana hurried up to the platform and took the seat next to Michael Tate.
"Thirty seconds ... twenty... ten ... five ..."
The director signaled with his hand, and the red light on the camera flashed on.
"Good evening," Dana said smoothly. "Welcome to the WTE ten-o'clock news. We have a breaking story for you in Holland. There was an explosion at an Amsterdam school this afternoon and..."
The rest of the broadcast went smoothly.
The following morning, Rob Cline came into Dana's office. "Bad news. Julia was in an automobile accident last night. Her face is" he hesitated "disfigured." "I'm sorry," Dana said, concerned. "How bad is it?" "Pretty bad." "But today plastic surgery can "
He shook his head. "Not this time. She won't be coming back." "I'd like to go see her. Where is she?"
"They're taking her back to her family, in Oregon." "I'm so sorry."
"You win some, you lose some." He studied Dana a moment. "You were okay last night. We'll keep you on until we find someone permanent."
Dana went to see Matt Baker. "Did you see the news last night?" she asked.
"Yes," he grunted. "For God's sakes, try putting on some makeup and a more appropriate dress."
Dana felt deflated. "Right."
As she turned to leave, Matt Baker said grudgingly, "You weren't bad." Coming from him, it was a high compliment.
On the fifth night of the news broadcast, the director said to Dana, "By the way, the big brass said to keep you on."
She wondered if the big brass was Matt Baker.
Within six months, Dana became a fixture on the Washington scene. She was young and attractive and her intelligence shone through. At the end of the year, she was given a raise and special assignments. One of her shows, Here and Now, interviews with celebrities, had zoomed to the top of the ratings.
Her interviews were personal and sympathetic, and celebrities who hesitated to appear on other talk shows asked to be on Dana's show. Magazines and newspapers began interviewing Dana. She was becoming a celebrity herself.
At night, Dana would watch the international news. She envied the foreign correspondents. They were doing something important. They were reporting history, informing the world about the important events that were happening around the globe. She felt frustrated.
Dana's two-year contract with WTE was nearly up. Philip Cole, the chief of correspondents, called her in.
"You're doing a great job, Dana. We're all proud of you." "Thank you, Philip."
"It's time for us to be talking about your new contract. First of all "
"I'm quitting."
"I beg your pardon?"
"When my contract's up, I'm not doing the show anymore."
He was looking at her incredulously. "Why would you want to quit? Don't you like it here?"
"I like it a lot," Dana said. "I want to be with WTE, but I want to be a foreign correspondent."
"That's a miserable life," he exploded. "Why in God's name would you want to do that?" "Because I'm tired of hearing what celebrities want to cook for dinner and how they met their fifth husband. There are wars going on, and people are suffering and dying. The world doesn't give a damn. I want to make them care." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I can't stay on here." She rose and started toward the door. "Wait a minute! Are you sure this is what you want to do?" "It's what I've always wanted to do," Dana said quietly. He was thoughtful for a moment. "Where do you want to go?" It took her a moment for the import of his words to sink in. When Dana found her voice, she said, "Sarajevo."
Nine.
Being governor was even more exciting than Oliver Russell had anticipated. Power was a seductive mistress, and Oliver loved it. His decisions influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He became adept at swaying the state legislature, and his influence and reputation kept expanding. I really am making a difference, Oliver thought happily. He remembered Senator Davis's words: "This is just a stepping-stone, Oliver. Walk carefully." And he was careful. He had numerous affairs, but they were always handled with the greatest discretion. He knew that they had to be.
From time to time, Oliver checked with the hospital about Miriam's condition.
"She's still in a coma, Governor." "Keep me informed."
One of Oliver's duties as governor was hosting state dinners. The guests of honor were supporters, sports figures, entertainers, people with political clout, and visiting dignitaries. Jan was a gracious hostess, and Oliver enjoyed the way people reacted to her.
One day Jan came to Oliver and said, "I just talked to Father. He's giving a party next weekend at his home. He would like us to come. There are some people he wants you to meet."
That Saturday, at Senator Davis's sumptuous home in Georgetown, Oliver found himself shaking hands with some of the most important wheelers and dealers in Washington. It was a beautiful party, and Oliver was enjoying himself immensely. "Having a good time, Oliver?" "Yes. It's a wonderful party. You couldn't wish for a better one." Peter Tager said, "Speaking of wishes, that reminds me. The other day, Elizabeth, my six-year-old, was in a cranky mood and wouldn't get dressed. Betsy
was getting desperate. Elizabeth looked at her and said, "Mama, what are you thinking?" Betsy said, "Honey, I was just wishing that you were in a good mood, and that you would get dressed and have your breakfast like a good girl." And Elizabeth said, "Mama, your wish is not being granted!" Isn't that great? Those kids are fantastic. See you later, Governor."
A couple walked in the door and Senator Davis went to greet them.
The Italian ambassador, Atilio Picone, was an imposing-looking man in his sixties, with dark, Sicilian features. His wife, Sylva, was one of the most beautiful women Oliver had ever seen. She had been an actress before she married Atilio and was still popular in Italy. Oliver could see why. She had large, sensuous brown eyes, the face of a Madonna, and the voluptuous body of a Rubens nude. She was twenty-five years younger than her husband.
Senator Davis brought the couple over to Oliver and introduced them.
"I'm delighted to meet you," Oliver said. He could not take his eyes off her.
She smiled. "I've been hearing a great deal about you." "Nothing bad, I hope."
"I Her husband cut in. "Senator Davis speaks very highly of you." Oliver looked at Sylva and said, "I'm nattered."
Senator Davis led the couple away. When he returned to Oliver, he said, "That's off limits, Governor. Forbidden fruit. Take a bite of that, and you can kiss your future goodbye."
"Relax, Todd. I wasn't "
"I'm serious. You can alienate two countries at once."
At the end of the evening, when Sylva and her husband were leaving, Atilio said, "It was nice to meet you."
"It was a pleasure."
Sylva took Oliver's hand in hers and said softly, "We look forward to seeing you again."
Their eyes met. "Yes."
And Oliver thought, I must be careful.
Two weeks later, back in Frankfort, Oliver was working in his office when his secretary buzzed him.
"Governor, Senator Davis is here to see you."
"Senator Davis is here?" "Yes, sir."
"Send him in." Oliver knew that his father-in-law was fighting for an important bill in Washington, and Oliver wondered what he was doing in Frankfort. The door opened, and the senator walked in. Peter Tager was with him.
Senator Todd Davis smiled and put his arm around Oliver. "Governor, it's good to see you."
"It's great to see you, Todd." He turned to Peter Tager. "Morning, Peter."
"Morning, Oliver."
"Hope I'm not disturbing you," Senator Davis said. "No, not at all. Is is anything wrong?" Senator Davis looked at Tager and smiled. "Oh, I don't think you could say anything's wrong, Oliver. In fact, I would say that everything's just fine." Oliver was studying the two of them, puzzled. "I don't understand." "I have some good news for you, son.
May we sit down?" "Oh, forgive me. What would you like? Coffee? Whiskey ?" "No. We're pretty well stimulated already." Again, Oliver wondered what was going on. "I've just flown in from Washington.
There's a pretty influential group there who think you're going to be our next president." Oliver felt a small thrill go through him. "I really?" "As a matter of fact, the reason I flew down here is that it's time for us to start your campaign. The election is less than two years away." "It's perfect timing," Peter Tager said enthusiastically. "Before we're through, everyone in the world is going to know who you are." Senator Davis added, "Peter is going to take charge of your campaign. He'll handle everything for you. You know you won't find anyone better." Oliver looked at Tager and said warmly, "I agree." "It's my pleasure. We're going to have a lot of fun, Oliver."
Oliver turned to Senator Davis. "Isn't this going to cost a lot?"
"Don't worry about that. You'll go first-class all the way. I've convinced a lot of my good friends that you're the man to put their money on." He leaned forward in his chair. "Don't underestimate yourself, Oliver. The survey that came out a couple of months ago listed you as the third most effective governor in the country. Well, you have something that the other two don't have. I told you this before charisma. That is something that money can't buy. People like you, and they're going to vote for you."
Oliver was getting more and more excited. "When do we get started?"
"We've already started," Senator Davis told him. "We're going to build a strong campaign team, and we're going to start lining up delegates around the country."
"How realistic are my chances?"
"In the primaries, you're going to blow everyone away," Tager replied. "As for the general election, President Norton is riding pretty high. If you had to run against him, he'd be pretty tough to beat. The good news, of course, is that since this is his second term, he can't run again and Vice President Cannon is a pale shadow. A little sunshine will make him disappear."
The meeting lasted for four hours. When it was over, Senator Davis said to Tager, "Peter, would you excuse us for a minute?"
"Certainly, Senator."
They watched him go out the door.
Senator Davis said, "I had a talk with Jan this morning." Oliver felt a small fris son of alarm. "Yes?"
Senator Davis looked at Oliver and smiled. "She's very happy." Oliver breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm glad."
"So am I, son. So am I. Just keep the home fires burning. You know what I mean?"
"Don't worry about that, Todd. I "
Senator Davis's smile faded. "I do worry about it, Oliver.
I can't fault you for being horny just don't let it turn you into a toad."
As Senator Davis and Peter Tager were walking through the corridor of the state capitol, the senator said, "I want you to start putting a staff together. Don't spare any expense. To begin with, I want campaign offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, and San Francisco. Primaries begin in twelve months. The convention is eighteen months away. After that, we should have smooth sailing." They had reached the car. "Ride with me to the airport, Peter."
"He'll make a wonderful president."
Senator Davis nodded. And I'll have him in my pocket, he thought. He's going to be my puppet. I'll pull the strings, and the President of the United States will speak.
The senator pulled a gold cigar case from his pocket. "Ci gar?
The primaries around the country started well. Senator Davis had been right about Peter Tager. He was one of the best political managers in the world, and the organization he created was superb. Because Tager
was a strong family man and a deeply religious churchgoer, he attracted the religious right. Because he knew what made politics work, he was also able to persuade the liberals to put aside their differences and work together. Peter Tager was a brilliant campaign manager, and his raffish black eye patch became a familiar sight on all the networks.
Tager knew that if Oliver was to be successful, he would have to go into the convention with a minimum of two hundred delegate votes. He intended to see to it that Oliver got them.
The schedule Tager drew up included multiple trips to every state in the union.
Oliver looked at the program and said, "This this is impossible, Peter!"
"Not the way we've set it up," Tager assured him. "It's all been coordinated. The senator's lending you his Challenger. There will be people to guide you every step of the way, and I'll be at your side."
13it
Senator Davis introduced Sirne Lombardo to Oliver. Lombardo was a giant of a man, tall and burly, dark both physically and emotionally, a brooding man who spoke little.
"How does he fit into the picture?" Oliver asked the senator when they were alone.
Senator Davis said, "Sime is our problem-solver. Sometimes people need a little persuasion to go along. Sime is very convincing."
Oliver did not pursue it any further.
When the presidential campaign began in earnest, Peter Tager gave Oliver detailed briefings on what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. He saw to it that Oliver made appearances in all the key electoral states. And wherever Oliver went, he said what people wanted to hear.
In Pennsylvania: "Manufacturing is the lifeblood of this country. We're not going to forget that. We're going to open up the factories again and get America back on the track!"
Cheers.
In California: "The aircraft industry is one of America's most vital assets. There's no reason for a single one of your plants to be shut down. We're going to open them up again."
13Q
Cheers.
In Detroit: "We invented cars, and the Japanese took the technology away from us. Well, we're going to get back our rightful place as number one. Detroit's going to be the automobile center of the world again!"
Cheers.
At college campuses, it was federally guaranteed student loans. In speeches at army bases around the country, it was preparedness.
In the beginning, when Oliver was relatively unknown, the odds were stacked against him. As the campaign went on, the polls showed him moving up.
The first week in July, more than four thousand delegates and alternates, along with hundreds of party officials and candidates, gathered at the convention in Cleveland and turned the city upside down with parades and floats and parties. Television cameras from all over the world recorded the spectacle. Peter Tager and Sime Lombardo saw to it that Governor Oliver Russell was always in front of the lenses.
There were half a dozen possible nominees in Oliver's party, but Senator Todd Davis had worked behind the scenes to assure that, one by one, they were eliminated. He ruthlessly called in favors owed, some as old as twenty years.
"Toby, it's Todd. How are Emma and Suzy?... Good. I want to talk to you about your boy, Andrew. I'm worried about him, Toby. You know, in my opinion, he's too liberal. The South will never accept him. Here's what I suggest. "
"Alfred, it's Todd. How's Roy doing?... No need to thank me. I was happy to help him out. I want to talk to you about your candidate, Jerry. In my opinion, he's too right-wing. If we go with him, we'll lose the North. Now, here's what I would suggest. "
"Kenneth Todd. I just wanted to tell you that I'm glad that real estate deal worked out for you. We all did pretty well, didn't we? By the way, I think we ought to have a little talk about Slater. He's weak. He's a loser. We can't afford to back a loser, can we?. "
And so it went, until practically the only viable candidate left to the party was Governor Oliver Russell.
The nomination process went smoothly. On the first ballot, Oliver Russell had seven hundred votes: more than two hundred from six northeastern industrial states, one hundred and fifty from six New England states, forty from four southern states, another one hundred and eighty from two farm states, and the balance from three Pacific states. Peter Tager was working frantically to make sure the publicity train kept rolling. When the final tally was counted, Oliver Russell was the winner. And with the excitement of the circus atmosphere that had carefully been created, Oliver Russell was nominated by
acclamation. The next step was to choose a vice president. Melvin
Wicks was a perfect choice. He was a politically correct Californian a wealthy entrepreneur, and a personable congressman.
"They'll complement each other," Tager said. "Now the real work begins. We're going after the magic number two hundred and seventy." The number of electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Tager told Oliver, "The people want a young leader.... Good-looking, a little humor and a vision.... They want you to tell them how great they are and they want to believe it.... Let them know you're smart, but don't be too smart.... If you attack your opponent, keep it impersonal.... Never look down on a reporter. Treat them as friends, and they'll be your friends.... Try to avoid any show of pettiness.
Remember you're a statesman."
The campaign was nonstop. Senator Davis's jet carried Oliver to Texas for three days, California for a day, Michigan for half a day, Massachusetts for six hours. Every minute was accounted for. Some days Oliver would visit as many as ten towns and deliver ten speeches. There was a different hotel every night, the Drake in Chicago, the St. Regis in Detroit, the Carlyle in New York City, the Place dAmes in New Orleans, until, finally, they all seemed to blend into one. Wherever Oliver went, there were police cars leading the procession, large crowds, and cheering voters.
Jan accompanied Oliver on most of the trips, and he had to admit that she was a great asset. She was attractive and intelligent, and the reporters liked her. From time to time, Oliver read about Leslie's latest acquisitions: a newspaper in Madrid, a television station in Mexico, a radio station in Kansas. He was happy for her success. It made him feel less guilty about what he had done to her.
Everywhere Oliver went, the reporters photographed him, interviewed him, and quoted him. There were more than a hundred correspondents covering his campaign, some of them from countries at the far ends of the earth. As the campaign neared its climax, the polls showed that Oliver Russell was the front-runner. But unexpectedly, his opponent, Vice President Cannon, began overtaking him. Peter Tager became worried. "Cannon's moving up in the polls. We've got to stop him." Two television debates between Vice President Cannon and Oliver had been agreed upon. "Cannon is going to discuss the economy," Tager told Oliver, "and he'll do a good job. We have to fake him out. Here's my plan. "
The night of the first debate, in front of the television cameras, Vice President Cannon talked about the economy. "America has never been more economically sound. Business is flourishing." He spent the next ten minutes elaborating on his theme, proving his points with facts and figures. When it was Oliver Russell's turn at the microphone, he said, "That was very impressive. I'm sure we're all pleased that big business is doing so well and that corporate profits have never been higher." He turned to his opponent. "But you forgot to mention that
one of the reasons corporations are doing so well is because of what is euphemistically termed 'downsizing." To put it bluntly, downsizing simply means that people are being fired to make way for machines. More people are out of work than ever before. It's the human side of the picture we should be examining. I don't happen to share your view that corporate financial success is more important than people...." And so it went. Where Vice President Cannon had talked about business, Oliver Russell took a humanitarian approach and talked about emotions and opportunities. By the time he was through, Russell had managed to make Cannon sound like a coldblooded politician who cared nothing about the American people. The morning after the debate, the polls shifted, putting Oliver Russell within three points of the vice president. There was to be one more national debate.
Arthur Cannon had learned his lesson. At the final debate, he stood before the microphone and said, "Ours is a land where all people must have equal opportunities. America has been blessed with freedom, but that alone is not enough. Our people must have the freedom to work, and earn a decent living. "
He stole Oliver Russell's thunder by concentrating on all the wonderful plans he had in mind for the welfare of the people. But Peter Tager had anticipated that. When Cannon was finished, Oliver Russell stepped to the microphone.
"That was very touching. I'm sure we were all very moved by what you had to say about the plight of the unemployed, and, as you called him, the 'forgotten man." What disturbs me is that you forgot to say how you are going to do all those wonderful things for those people." And from then on, where Vice President Cannon had dealt in emotions, Oliver Russell talked about issues and his economic plans, leaving the vice president hanging high and dry.
Oliver, Jan, and Senator Davis were having dinner at the senator's mansion in Georgetown. The senator smiled at Jan. "I've just seen the latest polls. I think you can begin redecorating the White House." Her face lit up. "Do you really think we're going to win, Father?" "I'm wrong about a lot of things, honey, but never about politics.
That's my life's blood. In November, we're going to have a new president, and he's sitting right next to you."
Ten.
Fasten your seat belts, please." Here we go! Dana thought excitedly. She looked over at Benn Albertson and Wally Newman. Benn Al-bert son Dana's producer, was a hyperkinetic bearded man in his forties. He had produced some of the top-rated news shows in television and was highly respected. Wally Newman, the cameraman, was in his early fifties. He was talented and enthusiastic, and eagerly looking forward to his new assignment. Dana thought about the adventure that lay ahead. They would land in Paris and then fly to Zagreb, Croatia, and finally to Sarajevo.
During her last week in Washington, Dana had been briefed by Shelley
McGuire, the foreign editor. "You'll need a truck in Sarajevo to transmit your stories to the satellite," McGuire told her. "We don't own one there so we'll rent a truck and buy time from the Yugoslav company that owns the satellite. If things go well, we'll get our own truck later. You'll be operating on two different levels. Some stories you'll cover live, but most of them will be taped. Benn Albertson will tell you what he wants, and you'll shoot the footage and then do a sound track in a local studio. I've given you the best producer and cameraman in the business. You shouldn't have any problem." Dana was to remember those optimistic words later.
"The day before Dana left, Matt Baker had telephoned. "Get over to my office." His voice was gruff.
"I'll be right there." Dana had hung up with a feeling of Apprehension. He's changed his mind about approving my transfer ctnd he's not going to let me go. How could he do this to me? Well, she thought determinedly, I'm going to fight him.
Ten minutes later, Dana was marching into Matt Baker's office. "I know what you're going to say," she began, "but it "Won't do you any good.
I'm going! I've dreamed about this since I was a little girl. I think I can do some good over there. you've got to give me a chance to try." She took a deep breath. "All right," Dana said defiantly. "What did you want to say?"
Matt Baker looked at her and said mildly, "Bon voyage." Dana blinked. "What?"
"Bon voyage. It means 'good journey." "
"I know what it means. I didn't you send for me to ?"
"I sent for you because I've spoken to a few of our foreign correspondents. They gave me some advice to pass on to you."
This gruff bear of a man had taken the time and trouble to talk to some foreign correspondents so that he could help her! "I I don't know how to "
"Then don't," he grunted. "You're going into a shooting war. There's no guarantee you can protect yourself a hundred percent, because bullets don't give a damn who they kill. But when you're in the middle of action, the adrenaline starts to flow. It can make you reckless, and you do stupid things you wouldn't ordinarily do. You have to control that. Always play it safe. Don't wander around the streets alone. No news story is worth your life. Another thing ..."
The lecture had gone on for almost an hour. Finally, he said, "Well, that's it. Take care of yourself. If you let anything happen to you, I'm going to be damned mad."
Dana had leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
"Don't ever do that again," he snapped. He stood up. "It's going to be rough over there, Dana. If you should change your mind when you get there and want to come home, just let me know, and I'll arrange it."
"I won't change my mind," Dana said confidently. As it turned out, she was wrong.
The flight to Paris was uneventful. They landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport and the trio took an airport minibus to Croatia Airlines. There was a three-hour delay.
At ten o'clock that night, the Croatia Airlines plane landed at Butmir Airport in Sarajevo. The passengers were herded into a security building, where their passports were checked by uniformed guards and they were waved on. As Dana moved toward the exit, a short, unpleasant-looking man in civilian clothes stepped in front of her, blocking her way. "Passport."
"I showed them my "
"I am Colonel Gordan Divjak. Your passport."
Dana handed her passport to him, along with her press credentials.
He flipped through it. "A journalist?" He looked at her sharply. "Whose side are you on?"
"I'm not on anyone's side," Dana said evenly.
"Just be careful what you report," Colonel Divjak warned. "We do not treat espionage lightly."
Welcome to Sarajevo.
A bulletproof Land Rover was at the airport to meet them. The driver was a swarthy-looking man in his early twenties. "I am Jovan Tolj, for your pleasure. I will be your driver in Sarajevo." Jovan drove fast, swerving around corners and racing through deserted streets as though they were being pursued. "Excuse me," Dana said nervously. "Is there any special hurry?" "Yes, if you want to get there alive." "But " In the distance, Dana heard the sound of rumbling thunder, and it seemed to be coming closer. What she was hearing was not thunder. In the darkness, Dana could make out buildings with shattered fronts, apartments without roofs, stores without windows. Ahead, she could see the Holiday Inn, where they were staying. The front of the hotel was badly pockmarked, and a deep hole had been gouged in the driveway. The car sped past it. "Wait! This is our hotel," Dana cried. "Where are you going?" "The front entrance is too dangerous." Jovan said. He turned the corner and raced into an alley. "Everyone uses the back entrance." Dana's mouth was suddenly dry. "Oh." The lobby of the Holiday Inn was filled with people milling about and chatting. An attractive young Frenchman approached Dana. "Ah, we have been
expecting you. You are Dana Evans?" "Yes." "Jean Paul Hubert, M6, Metropole Television." "I'm happy to meet you. This is Benn Albertson and Wally Newman." The men shook hands. "Welcome to what's left of our rapidly disappearing city."
Others were approaching the group to welcome them. One by one, they stepped up and introduced themselves. "Steffan Mueller, Kabel Network." "Roderick Munn, BBC 2." "Marco Benelli, Italia I." "Akihiro Ishihara, TV Tokyo." "Juan Santos, Channel 6, Guadalajara." "Chun Qian, Shanghai Television." It seemed to Dana that every country in the world had a journalist there. The introductions seemed to go on forever. The last one was a burly Russian with a gleaming gold front tooth. "Nikolai Petrovich, Gorizont 22." "How many reporters are here?" Dana asked Jean Paul. "Over two hundred and fifty. We don't see many wars as colorful as this one. Is this your first?" He made it sound as though it were some kind of tennis match. "Yes." Jean Paul said, "If I can be of any help, please let me know." "Thank you." She hesitated. "Who is Colonel Gordan Div-jak?" "You don't want to know. We all think he is with the Serbian equivalent of the Gestapo, but we're not sure. I would suggest you stay out of his way." "I'll remember."
Later, as Dana got into her bed, there was a sudden loud explosion from across the street, and then another, and the room began to shake. It was terrifying, and at the same time exhilarating. It seemed unreal, something out of a movie. Dana lay awake all night, listening to the sounds of the terrible killing machines and watching the flashes of light reflected in the grimy hotel windows.
In the morning, Dana got dressed jeans, boots, flak jacket. She felt self-conscious, and yet: "Always play it safe.... No news story is worth your life."
Dana, Benn, and Wally were in the lobby restaurant, talking about their families.
"I forgot to tell you the good news," Wally said. "I'm going to have a grandson next month."
"That's great!" And Dana thought: Will I ever have a child and a grandchild? Que sera sera.
"I have an idea," Benn said. "Let's do a general story first on what's happening here and how the people's lives have been affected. I'll go with Wally and scout locations. Why don't you get us some satellite time, Dana?"
"Fine."
Jovan Tolj was in the alley, in the Land Rover. "Dobrojutro. Good morning."
"Good morning, Jovan. I want to go to the place where they rent satellite time."
As they drove, Dana was able to get a clear look at Sarajevo for the first time. It seemed to her that there was not a building that had been untouched. The sound of gunfire was continuous.
"Don't they ever stop?" Dana asked.
"They will stop when they run out of ammunition," Jovan said bitterly. "And they will never run out of ammunition."
The streets were deserted, except for a few pedestrians, and all the cafes were closed. Pavements were pockmarked with shell craters. They passed the Oslobodjenje building.
"That is our newspaper," Jovan said proudly. "The Serbs keep trying to destroy it, but they cannot."
A few minutes later, they reached the satellite offices. "I will wait for you," Jovan said.
Behind a desk in the lobby, there was a receptionist who appeared to be in his eighties. "Do you speak English?" Dana asked. He looked at her wearily. "I speak nine languages, madam. What do you wish?" "I'm with WTE. I want to book some satellite time and arrange " "Third floor."
The sign on the door read: YUGOSLAVIA SATELLITE DIVISION. The reception room was filled with men seated on wooden benches lined against the walls.
Dana introduced herself to the young woman at the reception desk. "I'm Dana Evans, with WTE. I want to book some satellite time."
"Take a seat, please, and wait your turn."
Dana looked around the room. "Are all these people here to book satellite time?"
The woman looked up at her and said, "Of course."
Almost two hours later, Dana was ushered into the office of the manager, a short, squat man with a cigar in his mouth; he looked like the old cliche prototype of a Hollywood producer. He had a heavy accent. "How can I help you?" "I'm Dana Evans, with WTE. I'd like to rent one of your trucks and book the satellite for half an hour. Six o'clock in Washington would be a good time. And I'll want that same time every day indefinitely." She looked at his expression. "Any problem?" "One. There are no satellite trucks available. They have all been booked. I will give you a call if someone cancels." Dana looked at him in dismay. "No ? But I need some satellite time," she said. "I'm " "So does everybody else, madam. Except for those who have their own trucks, of course."
When Dana returned to the reception room, it was full. I have to do
something about this, she thought.
When Dana left the satellite office, she said to Jovan, "I'd like you to drive me around the city."
He turned to look at her, then shrugged. "As you wish." He started the car and began to race through the streets.
"A little slower, please. I need to get a feel of this place."
Sarajevo was a city under siege. There was no running water or electricity, and more houses were being bombed every hour. The air raid alarm went on so frequently that people ignored it. A miasma of fatalism seemed to hang over the city. If the bullet had your name on it, there was nowhere to hide.
On almost every street corner, men, women, and children were peddling the few possessions they had left.
"They are refugees from Bosnia and Croatia," Jovan explained, "trying to get enough money to buy food."
Fires were raging everywhere. There were no firemen in sight. "Isn't there a fire department?" Dana asked.
He shrugged. "Yes, but they don't dare come. They make too good a target for Serb snipers."
In the beginning, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina had made little sense to Dana. It was not until she had been in Sarajevo for a week that she realized that it made no sense at all. No one could explain it. Someone had mentioned a professor from the university, who was a well-known historian. He had been wounded and was confined to his home. Dana decided to have a talk with him. Jovan drove her to one of the old neighborhoods in the city, where the professor lived. Professor Mladic Staka was a small, gray-haired man, almost ethereal in appearance. A bullet had shattered his spine and paralyzed him. "Thank you for coming," he said. "I do not get many visitors these days. You said you needed to talk to me." "Yes. I'm supposed to be covering this war," Dana told him. "But to tell the truth, I'm having trouble understanding it." "The reason is very simple, my dear. This war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is beyond understanding. For decades, the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Muslims lived together in peace, under Tito. They were friends and neighbors. They grew up together, worked together, went to the same schools, intermarried." "And now?" "These same friends are torturing and murdering one another. Their hatred has made them do things so disgusting that I cannot even speak about them." "I've heard some of the stories," Dana said. The stories she had heard were almost beyond belief: a well filled with bloody human testicles, babies raped and slaughtered, innocent villagers locked in churches that were then set on fire. "Who started this?" Dana asked. He shook his head. "It depends on whom you ask. During the Second World War, hundreds of thousand of Serbs, who were on the side of the Allies, were
wiped out by the Croats, who were on the side of the Nazis. Now the Serbs are taking their bloody revenge. They are holding the country hostage, and they are merciless. More than two hundred thousand shells have fallen on Sarajevo alone. At least ten thousand people have been killed and more than sixty thousand injured. The Bosnians and Muslims must bear the responsibility for their share of the torture and killing. Those who do not want war are being forced into it. No one can trust anyone. The only thing they have left is hate. What we have is a conflagration that keeps feeding on itself, and what fuels the fires is the bodies of the innocent."
When Dana returned to her hotel that afternoon, Benn Albert-son was waiting there to tell her that he had received a message that a truck and satellite time would be available to them the following day at 6:00
P.M. "I found the ideal place for us to shoot," Wally Newman told her. "There's a square with a Catholic church, a mosque, a Protestant church, and a synagogue, all within a block of one another. They've all been bombed out. You can write a story about equal-opportunity hatred, and what it has done to the people who live here, who don't want anything to do with the war but are forced to be a part of it." Dana nodded, excited. "Great. I'll see you at dinner. I'm going to work." She headed for her room.
At six o'clock the following evening, Dana and Wally and Benn were gathered in front of the square where the bombed-out churches and synagogue were located. Wally's television camera had been set up on a tripod, and Benn was waiting for confirmation from Washington that the satellite signal was good. Dana could hear sniper fire in the near background. She was suddenly glad she was wearing her flak jacket.
There's nothing to be afraid of. They're not shooting at us. They're shooting at one another. They need us to tell the world their story. Dana saw Wally signal. She took a deep breath, looked into the camera lens, and began. "The bombed-out churches you see behind me are a symbol of what is happening in this country. There are no walls for people to hide behind anymore, no place that is safe. In earlier times, people could find sanctuary in their churches. But here, the past and the present and the future have all blended together and " At that second, she heard a shrill approaching whistle, looked up, and saw Wally's head explode into a red melon. It's a trick of the light, was Dana's first thought. And then she watched, aghast, as Wally's body slammed to the pavement. Dana stood there, frozen, unbelieving. People around her were screaming. The sound of rapid sniper fire came closer, and Dana began to tremble uncontrollably. Hands grabbed her and rushed her down the street. She was fighting them, trying to free herself.
No! We have to go back. We haven't used up our ten minutes. Waste not, want not... it was wrong to waste things. "Finish your soup, darling. Children in China are starving." You think you're some kind of God up there, sitting on a white cloud? Well, let me tell you something. You're a fake. A real God would never, never, never let Watty's head be blown off. Wally was expecting his first grandson. Are you listening to me? Are you? Are you?
She was in a state of shock, unaware that she was being led through a
back street to the car.
When Dana opened her eyes, she was in her bed. Benn Al-bert son and Jean Paul Hubert were standing over her.
Dana looked up into their faces. "It happened, didn't it?" She squeezed her eyes tightly shut.
"I'm so sorry," Jean Paul said. "It's an awful thing to see. You're lucky you weren't killed."
The telephone jarred the stillness of the room. Benn picked it up. "Hello." He listened a moment "Yes. Hold on." He turned to Dana. "It's Matt Baker. Are you able to talk to him?"
"Yes." Dana sat up. After a moment, she rose and walked over to the telephone. "Hello." Her throat was dry, and it was difficult to speak.
Matt Baker's voice boomed over the line. "I want you to come home, Dana."
Her voice was a whisper. "Yes. I want to come home."
"I'll arrange for you to be on the first plane out of there." "Thank you." She dropped the telephone.
Jean Paul and Benn helped her back into bed. "I'm sorry," Jean Paul said, again. "There's there's nothing anyone can say." Tears were running down her cheeks. "Why did they kill him? He never harmed anyone. What's happening? People are being slaughtered like animals and no one cares. No one cares!" Benn said, "Dana, there's nothing we can do about " "There has to be!" Dana's voice was filled with fury. "We have to make them care. This war isn't about bombed-out churches or buildings or streets. It's about people innocent people getting their heads blown off. Those are the stories we should be doing.
That's the only way to make this war real." She turned to Benn and took a deep breath. "I'm staying, Benn. I'm not going to let them scare me away." He was watching her, concerned. "Dana, are you sure you ?" "I'm sure. I know what I have to do now. Will you call Matt and tell him?" He said reluctantly, "If that's what you really want." Dana nodded. "It's what I really want." She watched Benn leave the room. Jean Paul said, "Well, I had better go and let you " "No." For an instant, Dana's mind was filled with a vision of Wally's head exploding, and his body falling to the ground. "No," Dana said. She looked up at Jean Paul. "Please stay. I need you." Jean Paul sat down on the bed. And Dana took him in her arms and held him close to her.
The following morning, Dana said to Benn Albertson, "Can you get hold of a cameraman? Jean Paul told me about an orphanage in Kosovo that's just been bombed. I want to go there and cover it."
"I'll round up someone."
"Thanks, Benn. I'll go on ahead and meet you there." "Be careful."
"Don't worry."
Jovan was waiting for Dana in the alley. "We're going to Kosovo," Dana told him.
Jovan turned to look at her. "That is dangerous, madam. The only road there is through the woods, and "
"We've already had our share of bad luck, Jovan. We'll be all right."
"As you wish."
They sped through the city, and fifteen minutes later were driving through a heavily forested area. "How much farther?" Dana asked. "Not far. We should be there in " And at that moment, the Land Rover struck a land mine.
Eleven.
As election day approached, the presidential race became too close to call. "We've got to win Ohio," Peter Tager said. "That's twenty-one electoral votes. We're all right with Alabama that's nine votes and we have Florida's twenty-five votes." He held up a chart. "Illinois, twenty-two votes ... New York, thirty-three, and California,
forty-four. It's just too damned early to call it."
Everyone was concerned except Senator Davis. "I've got a nose," he said. "I can smell victory."
In a Frankfort hospital, Miriam Friedland was still in a coma.
On election day, the first Tuesday in November, Leslie stayed home to watch the returns on television. Oliver Russell won by more than two million popular votes and a huge majority of electoral votes. Oliver Russell was the president now, the biggest target in the world. No one had followed the election campaign more closely than Leslie Stewart Chambers. She had been busily expanding her empire and had acquired a chain of newspapers and television and radio stations across the United States, as well as in England, Australia, and Brazil. "When are you going to have enough?" her chief editor, Darin Solana, asked. "Soon," Leslie said. "Soon." There was one more step she had to take, and the last piece fell into place at a dinner party in Scortsdale. A guest said, "I heard confidentially that Margaret Port-man is getting a divorce." Margaret Portman was the owner of the Washington Tribune, in the nation's capital. Leslie had no comment, but early the following morning, she was on the telephone with Chad Morton, one of her
attorneys. "I want you to find out if the Washington Tribune is for sale." The answer came back later that day. "I don't know how you heard about it, Mrs. Chambers, but it looks as though you could be right. Mrs. Portman and her husband are quietly getting a divorce, and they're dividing up their property. I think Washington Tribune Enterprises is going up for sale."
"I want to buy it."
"You're talking about a mega deal Washington Tribune Enterprises owns a newspaper chain, a magazine, a television network, and "
"I want it."
That afternoon, Leslie and Chad Morton were on their way to Washington,
D.C.
Leslie telephoned Margaret Portman, whom she had met casually a few years earlier. "I'm in Washington," Leslie said, "and I " "I know." Word gets around fast, Leslie thought. "I heard that you might be interested in selling Tribune Enterprises." "Possibly." "I wonder if you would arrange a tour of the paper for me?" "Are you interested in buying it, Leslie?" "Possibly." Margaret Portman sent for Matt Baker. "Do you know who Leslie Chambers is?" "The Ice Princess. Sure." "She'll be here in a few minutes. I'd like you to take her on a tour of the plant."
Everyone at the Tribune was aware of the impending sale.
"It would be a mistake to sell the Tribune to Leslie Chambers," Matt Baker said flatly.
"What makes you say that?"
"First of all, I doubt if she really knows a damn thing about the newspaper business. Have you looked at what she's done to the other papers she bought? She's turned respectable newspapers into cheap tabloids. She'll destroy the Tribune. She's " He looked up. Leslie Chambers was standing in the doorway, listening.
Margaret Portman spoke up. "Leslie! How nice to see you. This is Matt Baker, our editor in chief of Tribune Enterprises."
They exchanged cool greetings. "Matt is going to show you around." "I'm looking forward to it."
Matt Baker took a deep breath. "Right. Let's get started."
At the beginning of the tour, Matt Baker said condescendingly, "The
structure is like this: At the top is the editor in chief " "That would be you, Mr. Baker." "Right. And under me, the managing editor and the editorial staff. That includes Metro, National, Foreign, Sports, Business, Life and Style, People, Calendar, Books, Real Estate, Travel, Food.... I'm probably leaving a few out." "Amazing. How many employees does Washington Tribune Enterprises have, Mr. Baker?" "Over five thousand."
They passed a copy desk. "Here's where the news editor lays out the pages. He's the one who decides where the photos are going to go and which stories appear on which pages. The copy desk writes the headlines, edits the stories, and then puts them together in the composing room." "Fascinating." "Are you interested in seeing the printing plants?" "Oh, yes. I'd like to see everything." He mumbled something under his breath. "I'm sorry?" "I said, "Fine." " They took the elevator down and walked over to the next building. The printing plant was four stories high and the size of four football fields. Everything in the huge space was automated. There were thirty robot carts in the building, carrying enormous rolls of paper that they dropped off at various stations. Baker explained, "Each roll of paper weighs about twenty-five hundred pounds. If you unrolled one, it would be eight miles long. The paper goes through the presses at twenty-one miles an hour. Some of the bigger carts can carry sixteen rolls at once." There were six presses, three on each side of the room. Leslie and Matt Baker stood there and watched as the newspapers were automatically assembled, cut, folded, put into bales, and delivered to the trucks waiting to carry them off. "In the old days it took about thirty men to do what one man can do today," Matt Baker said. "The age of technology."
Leslie looked at him a moment. "The age of downsizing." "I don't know if you're interested in the economics of the operation?" Matt Baker asked dryly. "Perhaps you'd prefer your lawyer or accountant to " "I'm very interested, Mr. Baker. Your editorial budget is fifteen million dollars. Your daily circulation is eight hundred and sixteen thousand, four hundred and seventy-four, and one million, one hundred and forty thousand, four hundred and ninety-eight on Sunday, and your advertising is sixty-eight point two." Matt looked at her and blinked. "With the ownership of all your newspapers, your daily circulation is over two million, with two million four Sunday circulation. Of course, that's not the largest paper in the world, is it, Mr. Baker? Two of the largest newspapers in the world are printed in London. The Sun is the biggest, with a circulation of four million daily. The Daily Mirror sells over three million." He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you " "In Japan, there are over two hundred dailies, including Asahi Shimbun, Mainchi Shimbun, and Yomiuri Shimbun. Do you follow me?" "Yes. I apologize if I seemed patronizing." "Accepted, Mr. Baker. Let's go back to Mrs. Portman's office."
The next morning, Leslie was in the executive conference room of the Washington Tribune, facing Mrs. Portman and half a dozen attorneys.
"Let's talk about price," Leslie said. The discussion lasted four hours, and when it was over, Leslie Stewart Chambers was the owner of
Washington Tribune Enterprises.
It was more expensive than Leslie had anticipated. It did not matter.
There was something more important.
The day the deal was finalized, Leslie sent for Matt Baker. "What are your plans?" Leslie asked. "I'm leaving." She looked at him curiously. "Why?" "You have quite a reputation. People don't like working for you. I think the word they use most is 'ruthless." I don't need that. This is a good newspaper, and I hate to leave it, but I have more job offers than I can handle." "How long have you worked here?" "Fifteen years." "And you're going to just throw that away?" "I'm not throwing anything away, I'm " She looked him in the eye. "Listen to me. I think the Tribune is a good newspaper, too, but I want it to be a great newspaper. I want you to help me." "No. I don't "
"Six months. Try it for six months. We'll start by doubling your salary." He studied her for a long moment. Young and beautiful and intelligent. And yet... He had an uneasy feeling about her. "Who will be in charge here?" She smiled. "You're the editor in chief of Washington Tribune Enterprises. You will be." And he believed her.
Twelve.
It had been six months since Dana's Land Rover had been blown up. She escaped with nothing worse than a concussion, a cracked rib, a broken wrist, and painful bruises. Jovan suffered a fractured leg and scrapes and bruises. Matt Baker had telephoned Dana that night and ordered her to return to Washington, but the incident had made Dana more determined than ever to stay. "These people are desperate," Dana told him. "I can't just walk away from this. If you order me home, then I quit." "Are you blackmailing me?" "Yes." "That's what I thought," Matt snapped. "I don't let anyone blackmail me. Do you understand?" Dana waited.
"What about a leave of absence?" he asked.
"I don't need a leave of absence." She could hear his sigh over the phone.
"All right. Stay there. But, Dana " "Yes?"
"Promise me that you'll be careful."
From outside the hotel, Dana could hear the sound of machine-gun fire. "Right."
The city had been under heavy attack all night. Dana had been unable to sleep. Each explosion of a mortar landing meant another building
destroyed, another family homeless, or worse, dead. Early in the morning, Dana and her crew were out on the street, ready to shoot. Benn Albertson waited for the thunder of a mortar to fade away, then nodded to Dana. "Ten seconds." "Ready," Dana said. Benn pointed a finger, and Dana turned away from the ruins behind her and faced the television camera. "This is a city that is slowly disappearing from the face of the earth. With its electricity cut off, its eyes have been put out.... Its television and radio stations have been shut down, and it has no ears.... All public transportation has come to a halt, so it has lost its legs...." The camera panned to show a deserted, bombed-out playground, with the rusty skeletons of swings and slides.
"In another life, children played here, and the sound of their laughter filled the air." Mortar fire could be heard again in the near distance. An air raid alarm suddenly sounded. The people walking the streets behind Dana continued as though they had heard nothing. "The sound you're hearing is another air raid alarm. It's the signal for people to run and hide. But the citizens of Sarajevo have found that there is no place to hide, so they walk on in their own silence. Those who can, flee the country, and give up their apartments and all their possessions. Too many who stay, die. It's a cruel choice. There are rumors of peace. Too many rumors, too little peace. Will it come? And when? Will the children come out of their cellars and use this playground again one day? Nobody knows. They can only hope. This is Dana Evans reporting from Sarajevo for WTE." The red light on the camera blinked off. "Let's get out of here," Benn said. Andy Casarez, the new cameraman, hurriedly started to pack up his gear. A young boy was standing on the sidewalk, watching Dana. He was a street urchin, dressed in filthy, ragged clothes and torn shoes. Intense brown eyes flashed out of a face streaked with dirt. His right arm was missing.
Dana watched the boy studying her. Dana smiled. "Hello." There was no reply. Dana shrugged and turned to Benn. "Let's go."
A few minutes later, they were on their way back to the Holiday Inn.
The Holiday Inn was filled with newspaper, radio, and television reporters, and they formed a disparate family. They were rivals, but because of the dangerous circumstances they found themselves in, they were always ready to help one another. They covered breaking stories together:
There was a riot in Montenegro.... There was a bombing in Vukovar. A
hospital had been shelled in Petrovo Selo.... Jean Paul Hubert was gone. He had been given another assignment, and Dana missed him terribly.
As Dana was leaving the hotel one morning, the little boy she had seen on the street was standing in the alley. Jovan opened the door of the replacement Land Rover for Dana. "Good morning, madam." "Good morning." The boy stood there, staring at Dana. She walked over to him. "Good morning." There was no reply. Dana said to Jovan, "How do you say 'good morning' in Slovene?" The little boy answered, "Dobro jutro." Dana turned to him. "So you understand English." "Maybe." "What's your name?"
"Kemal."
"How old are you, Kemal?" He turned and walked away.
"He's frightened of strangers," Jovan said.
Dana looked after the boy. "I don't blame him. So am I."
Four hours later, when the Land Rover returned to the alley in back of the Holiday Inn, Kemal was waiting near the entrance.
As Dana got out of the car, Kemal said, "Twelve."
"What?" Then Dana remembered. "Oh." He was small for his age. She looked at his empty right shirtsleeve and started to ask him a question, then stopped herself. "Where do you live, Kemal? Can we take you home?" She watched him turn and walk away.
Jovan said, "He has no manners."
Dana said quietly, "Maybe he lost them when he lost his arm."
That evening in the hotel dining room, the reporters were talking about the new rumors of an imminent peace. "The UN has finally gotten involved," Gabriella Orsi declared. "It's about time." "If you ask me, it's too late." "It's never too late," Dana said quietly. The following morning, two news stories came over the wires. The first one was about a peace agreement brokered by the United States and the United Nations. The second story was that Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo's newspaper, had been bombed out of existence.
"Our Washington bureaus are covering the peace agreement," Dana told Benn. "Let's do a story on Oslobodjenje."
Dana was standing in front of the demolished building that had once housed Oslobodjenje. The camera's red light was on. "People die here every day," Dana said into the lens, "and buildings are destroyed. But this building was murdered. It housed the only free newspaper in Sarajevo, Oslobodjenje. It was a newspaper that dared to tell the truth. When it was bombed out of its headquarters, it was moved into the basement, to keep the presses alive. When there were no more newsstands to sell the papers from, its reporters went out on the streets to peddle them themselves. They were selling more than newspapers. They were selling freedom. With the death of Oslobodjenje, another piece of freedom has died here."
In his office, Matt Baker was watching the news broadcast. "Dammit, she's good!" He turned to his assistant. "I want her to have her own satellite truck. Move on it." "Yes, sir."
When Dana returned to her room, there was a visitor waiting for her.
Colonel Gordan Divjak was lounging in a chair when Dana walked in. She stopped, startled. "They didn't tell me I had a visitor." "This is not a social visit." His beady black eyes focused on her. "I watched your broadcast about Oslobodjenje." Dana studied him warily. "Yes?" "You were permitted to come into our country to report, not to make judgments." "I didn't make any " "Do not interrupt me. Your idea of freedom is not necessarily our idea of freedom. Do you understand me?" "No. I'm afraid I " "Then let me explain it to you, Miss Evans. You are a guest in my country. Perhaps you are a spy for your government." "I am not a " "Do not interrupt me. I warned you at the airport. We are not playing games. We are at war. Anyone involved in espionage will be executed." His words were all the more chilling because they were spoken softly. He got to his feet. "This is your last warning." Dana watched him leave. I'm not going to kt him frighten me, she thought defiantly. She was frightened.
A care package arrived from Matt Baker. It was an enormous box filled with candy, granola bars, canned foods, and a dozen other nonperishable items. Dana took it into the lobby to share it with the other reporters. They were delighted.
"Now, that's what I call a boss," Satomi Asaka said.
"How do I get a job with the Washington Tribune?" Juan Santos joked.
Kemal was waiting in the alley again. The frayed, thin jacket he had on looked as though it was about to fall apart.
"Good morning, Kemal."
He stood there, silent, watching her from under half-closed lids. "I'm going shopping. Would you like to go with me?"
No answer.
"Let me put it another way," Dana said, exasperated. She opened the back door of the vehicle. "Get in the car. Now!"
The boy stood there a moment, shocked, then slowly moved toward the car.
Dana and Jovan watched him climb into the backseat.
Dana said to Jovan, "Can you find a department store or clothing shop that's open?"
"I know one." "Let's go there."
They rode in silence for the first few minutes. "Do you have a mother or father, Kemal?"
He shook his head.
"Where do you live?" He shrugged.
Dana felt him move closer to her as though to absorb the warmth of her body.
The clothing store was in the Bascarsija, the old market of Sarajevo. The front had been bombed out, but the store was open. Dana took Kemal's left hand and led him into the store. A clerk said, "Can I help you?" "Yes. I want to buy a jacket for a friend of mine." She looked at Kemal. "He's about his size." "This way, please." In the boy's section there was a rack of jackets. Dana turned to Kemal. "Which one do you like?" Kemal stood there, saying nothing. Dana said to the clerk, "We'll take the brown one." She looked at Kemal's trousers. "And I think we need a pair of trousers and some new shoes." When they left the store half an hour later, Kemal was dressed in his new outfit. He slid into the backseat of the car without a word. "Don't you know how to say thank you?" Jovan demanded angrily. Kemal burst into tears. Dana put her arms around him. "It's all right," she said. "It's all right." What kind of a world does this to children?
When they returned to the hotel, Dana watched Kemal turn and walk away without a word.
"Where does someone like that live?" Dana asked Jovan.
"On the streets, madam. There are hundreds of orphans in Sarajevo like him. They have no homes, no families. "
"How do they survive?"
He shrugged. "I do not know."
The next day, when Dana walked out of the hotel, Kemal was waiting for her, dressed in his new outfit. He had washed his face.
The big news at the luncheon table was the peace treaty and whether it would work. Dana decided to go back to visit Professor Mladic Staka and ask what he thought about it. He looked even more frail than the last time she had seen him. "I am happy to see you, Miss Evans. I hear you are doing wonderful broadcasts, but " He shrugged. "Unfortunately, I have no electricity for my television set. What can I do for you?" "I wanted to get your opinion of the new peace treaty, Professor." He leaned back in his chair and said thoughtfully, "It is interesting to me that in Dayton, Ohio, they made a decision about what is going to happen to the future of Sarajevo."
"They've agreed to a troika, a three-person presidency, composed of a Muslim, a Croat, and a Serb. Do you think it can work, Professor?"
"Only if you believe in miracles." He frowned. "There will be eighteen national legislative bodies and another hundred and nine
different local governments. It is a Tower of political Babel. It is what you Americans call a 'shotgun marriage." None of them wants to give up their autonomy. They insist on having their own flags, their own license plates, their own currency." He shook his head. "It is a morning peace. Beware of the night."
Dana Evans had gone beyond being a mere reporter and was becoming an international legend. What came through in her television broadcasts was an intelligent human being filled with passion. And because Dana cared, her viewers cared, and shared her feelings.
Matt Baker began getting calls from other news outlets saying that they wanted to syndicate Dana Evans's broadcasts. He was delighted for her. She went over there to do good, he thought, and she's going to wind up doing well.
With her own new satellite truck, Dana was busier than ever. She was no longer at the mercy of the Yugoslav satellite company She and Benn decided what stories they wanted to do, and Dana would write them and broadcast them. Some of the stories were broadcast live, and others were taped. Dana and Benn and Andy would go out on the streets and photograph whatever background was needed, then Dana would tape her commentary in an editing room and send it back on the line to Washington.
At lunchtime, in the hotel dining room, large platters of sandwiches were placed in the center of the table. Journalists were busily helping themselves. Roderick Munn, from the BBC, walked into the room with an AP clipping in his hand. "Listen to this, everybody." He read the clipping aloud. " "Dana Evans, a foreign correspondent for WTE, is now being syndicated by a dozen news stations. Miss Evans has been nominated for the coveted Peabody Award...." " The story went on from there. "Aren't we lucky to be associated with somebody so famous?" one of the reporters said sarcastically. At that moment, Dana walked into the dining room. "Hi, everybody. I don't have time for lunch today. I'm going to take some sandwiches with me." She scooped up several sandwiches and covered them with paper napkins. "See you later." They watched in silence as she left. When Dana got outside, Kemal was there, waiting. "Good afternoon, Kemal." No response.
"Get into the car."
Kemal slid into the backseat. Dana handed him a sandwich and sat there, watching him silently wolf it down. She handed him another sandwich, and he started to eat it.
"Slowly," Dana said. "Where to?" Jovan asked.
Dana turned to Kemal. "Where to?" He looked at her uncomprehendingly "We're taking you home, Kemal. Where do you live?"
He shook his head.
"I need to know. Where do you live?"
Twenty minutes later, the car stopped in front of a large vacant lot near the banks of the Miljacka. Dozens of big cardboard boxes were scattered around, and the lot was littered with debris of all kinds. Dana got out of the car and turned to Kemal. "Is this where you live?" He reluctantly nodded. "And other boys live here, too?" He nodded again. "I want to do a story about this, Kemal." He shook his head. "No." "Why not?" "The police will come and take us away. Don't." Dana studied him a moment. "All right. I promise."
The next morning, Dana moved out of her room at the Holiday Inn. When she did not appear at breakfast, Gabriella Orsi from the Altre Station in Italy asked, "Where's Dana?"
Roderick Munn replied, "She's gone. She's rented a farmhouse to live in. She said she wanted to be by herself."
Nikolai Petrovich, the Russian from Gorizont 22, said, "We would all like to be by ourselves. So we are not good enough for her?"
There was a general feeling of disapproval.
The following afternoon, another large care package arrived for Dana.
Nikolai Petrovich said, "Since she is not here, we might as well enjoy it, eh?"
The hotel clerk said, "I'm sorry. Miss Evans is having it picked up."
A few minutes later, Kemal arrived. The reporters watched him take the package and leave.
"She doesn't even share with us anymore," Juan Santos grumbled. "I think her publicity has gone to her head."
During the next week, Dana filed her stories, but she did not appear at the hotel again. The resentment against her was growing.
Dana and her ego were becoming the main topic of conversation. A few days later, when another huge care package was delivered to the hotel, Nikolai Petrovich went to the hotel clerk. "Is Miss Evans having this package picked up?" "Yes, sir." The Russian hurried back into the dining room. "There is another package," he said. "Someone is going to pick it up. Why don't we follow him and tell Miss Evans our opinion of reporters who think they're too good for everyone else?" There was a chorus of approval. When Kemal arrived to pick up the package, Nikolai said to him, "Are you taking that to Miss Evans?" Kemal nodded. "She asked to see us. We'll go along with you." Kemal looked at him a moment, then shrugged. "We'll take you in one of our cars," Nikolai Petrovich said. "You tell us where to go." Ten minutes later, a caravan of cars was making its way along deserted side streets. On
the outskirts of the city, Kemal pointed to an old bombed-out farmhouse. The cars came to a stop. "You go ahead and bring her the package," Nikolai said. "We're going to surprise her." They watched Kemal walk into the farmhouse. They waited a moment, then moved toward the farmhouse and burst in through the front door. They stopped, in shock. The room was filled with children of all ages, sizes, and colors. Most of them were crippled. A dozen army cots had been set up along the walls. Dana was parceling out the contents of the care package to the children when the door flew open. She looked up in astonishment as the group charged in. "What what are you doing here?" Roderick Munn looked around, embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Dana. We made a a mistake. We thought " Dana turned to face the group. "I see.
They're orphans. They have nowhere to go and no one to take care of them. Most of them were in a hospital when it was bombed. If the police find them, they'll be put in what passes for an orphanage, and they'll die there. If they stay here, they'll die. I've been trying to figure out a way to get them out of the country, but so far, nothing has worked." She looked at the group pleadingly. "Do you have any ideas?" Roderick Munn said slowly, "I think I have. There's a Red Cross plane leaving for Paris tonight. The pilot is a friend of mine." Dana asked hopefully, "Would you talk to him?" Munn nodded. "Yes." Nikolai Petrovich said, "Wait! We can't get involved in anything like that. They'll throw us all out of the country." "You don't have to be involved," Munn told him. "We'll handle it." "I'm against it," Nikolai said stubbornly. "It will place us all in danger." "What about the children?" Dana asked. "We're talking about their lives."
Late in the afternoon, Roderick Munn came to see Dana. "I talked to my friend. He said he would be happy to take the children to Paris, where they'll be safe. He has two boys of his own."
Dana was thrilled. "That's wonderful. Thank you so much." Munn looked at her. "It is we who should thank you."
At eight o'clock that evening, a van with the Red Cross insignia on its sides pulled up in front of the farmhouse. The driver blinked the lights, and under the cover of darkness, Dana and the children hurried into the van. Fifteen minutes later, it was rolling toward Butmir Airport. The airport had been temporarily closed except to the Red Cross planes that delivered supplies and took away the seriously wounded. The drive was the longest ride of Dana's life. It seemed to take forever. When she saw the lights of the airport ahead, she said to the children, "We're almost there." Kemal was squeezing her hand. "You'll be fine," Dana assured him. "All of you will be taken care of." And she thought, I'm going to miss you. At the airport, a guard waved the van through, and it drove up to a waiting cargo plane with the Red Cross markings painted on the fuselage. The pilot was standing next to the plane.
He hurried up to Dana. "For God's sake, you're late! Get them aboard, fast. We were due to take off twenty minutes ago." Dana herded the children up the ramp into the plane. Kemal was the last. He turned to Dana, his lips trembling. "Will I see you again?" "You bet you will,"
Dana said. She hugged him and held him close for a moment, saying a silent prayer. "Get aboard now." Moments later, the door closed.
There was a roar of the engines, and the plane began to taxi down the runway. Dana and Munn stood there, watching. At the end of the runway, the plane soared into the air and speared into the eastern sky, banking north toward Paris. "That was a wonderful thing you did," the driver said. "I want you to know " A car screeched to a stop behind them, and they turned. Colonel Gordan Divjak jumped out of the car and glared up at the sky where the plane was disappearing. At his side was Nikolai Petrovich, the Russian journalist. Colonel Divjak turned to Dana. "You are under arrest. I warned you that the punishment for espionage is death." Dana took a deep breath. "Colonel, if you're going to put me on trial for espionage " He looked into Dana's eyes and said softly, "Who said anything about a trial?"
Thirteen.
The inaugural celebrations, the parades, and the swearing-in ceremonies were over, and Oliver was eager to begin his presidency. Washington, D.C." was probably the only city anywhere completely devoted to and obsessed with politics. It was the power hub of the world, and Oliver Russell was the center of that hub. It seemed that everyone was connected in one way or another to the federal government. In the metropolitan area of Washington, there were fifteen thousand lobbyists and more than five thousand journalists, all of them nursing at the mother's milk of government. Oliver Russell remembered John Kennedy's sly put-down: "Washington, D.C." is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm."
On the first day of his presidency, Oliver wandered around the White House with Jan. They were familiar with its statistics: 132 rooms, 32 bathrooms, 29 fireplaces, 3 elevators, a swimming pool, putting green, tennis court, jogging track, exercise room, horseshoe pit, bowling alley, and movie theater, and eighteen acres of beautifully tended grounds. But actually living in it, being a part of it, was overwhelming.
"It's like a dream, isn't it?" Jan sighed.
Oliver took her hand. "I'm glad we're sharing it, darling." And he meant it. Jan had become a wonderful companion. She was always there for him, supportive and caring. More and more, he found that he enjoyed being with her.
When Oliver returned to the Oval Office, Peter Tager was waiting to see him. Oliver's first appointment had been to make Tager his chief of staff.
Oliver said, "I still can't believe this, Peter." Peter Tager smiled. "The people believe it. They voted you in, Mr. President."
Oliver looked up at him. "It's still Oliver." "All right. When we're alone. But you have to realize that from this moment on, anything you do can affect the entire world. Anything you say could shake up the
economy or have an impact on a hundred other countries around the globe. You have more power than any other person in the world."
The intercom buzzed. "Mr. President, Senator Davis is here."
"Send him in, Heather." Tager sighed. "I'd better get started. My desk looks like a paper mountain." The door opened and Todd Davis walked in. "Peter ..." "Senator ..." The two men shook hands. Tager said, "I'll see you later, Mr. President." Senator Davis walked over to Oliver's desk and nodded. "That desk fits you just fine, Oliver. I can't tell you what a real thrill it is for me to see you sitting there." "Thank you, Todd. I'm still trying to get used to it. I mean Adams sat here ... and Lincoln ... and Roosevelt..." Senator Davis laughed. "Don't let that scare you. Before they became legends, they were men just like you, sitting there trying to do the right thing.
Putting their asses in that chair terrified them all, in the beginning. I just left Jan. She's in seventh heaven. She's going to make a great First Lady." "I know she is." "By the way, I have a little list here I'd like to discuss with you, Mr. President." The emphasis on "Mr.
President" was jovial. "Of course, Todd." Senator Davis slid the list across the desk. "What is this?" "Just a few suggestions I have for your cabinet." "Oh. Well, I've already decided " "I thought you might want to look these over." "But there's no point in " "Look them over, Oliver." The senator's voice had cooled.
Oliver's eyes narrowed. "Todd ..."
Senator Davis held up a hand. "Oliver, I don't want you to think for one minute that I'm trying to impose my will or my wishes on you. You would be wrong. I put together that list because I think they're the best men who can help you serve your country. I'm a patriot, Oliver, and I'm not ashamed of it. This country means everything to me." There was a catch in his voice. "Everything. If you think I helped put you in this office just because you're my son-in-law, you're gravely mistaken. I fought to make sure you got here because I firmly believe you're the man best suited for the job. That's what I care most about." He tapped a finger on the piece of paper. "And these men can help you do that job."
Oliver sat there, silent.
"I've been in this town for a lot of years, Oliver. And do you know what I've learned? That there's nothing sadder than a one-term president. And do you know why? Because during the first four years, he's just beginning to get an idea of what he can do to make this country better. He has all those dreams to fulfill. And just when he's ready to do that just when he's ready to really make a difference" he glanced around the office "someone else moves in here, and those dreams just vanish. Sad to think about, isn't it? All those men with grand dreams who serve only one term. Did you know that since McKinley took office in 1897, more than half the presidents who followed him were one-term presidents? But you, Oliver I'm going to see to it that you're a two-term president. I want you to be able to fulfill all your dreams. I'm going to see to it that you're reelected."
Senator Davis looked at his watch and rose. "I have to go. We have a quorum call at the Senate. I'll see you at dinner tonight." He walked out the door.
Oliver looked after him for a long time. Then he reached down and picked up the list Senator Todd Davis had left.
In his dream, Miriam Friedland awakened and sat up in bed. A policeman was at her bedside. He looked down at her and said, "Now you can tell us who did this to you."
"Yes."
He woke up, soaked in perspiration.
Early the following morning, Oliver telephoned the hospital where Miriam was. "I'm afraid there's no change, Mr. President," the chief of staff told him. "Frankly, it doesn't look good." Oliver said hesitantly, "She has no family. If you don't think she's going to make it, would it be more humane to take her off the life-support systems?" "I think we should wait a little while longer and see what happens," the doctor said. "Sometimes there's a miracle."
Jay Perkins, chief of protocol, was briefing the president. "There are one hundred and forty-seven diplomatic missions in Washington, Mr.
President. The blue book the Diplomatic List lists the name of every representative of a foreign government and spouse. The green book the Social List names the top diplomats, Washington residents, and members of Congress."
He handed Oliver several sheets of paper. "This is a list of the potential foreign ambassadors you will receive."
Oliver looked down the list and found the Italian ambassador and his wife: Atilio Picone and Sylva. Sylva. Oliver asked innocently, "Will they bring their wives with them?"
"No. The wives will be introduced later. I would suggest that you begin seeing the candidates as quickly as possible."
"Fine."
Perkins said, "I'll try to arrange it so that by next Saturday, all the foreign ambassadors will be accredited. You might want to consider having a White House dinner to honor them."
"Good idea." OliVer glanced again at the list on his desk. Atilio and Sylva Picone.
Saturday evening, the State Dining Room was decorated with flags from the various countries represented by the foreign ambassadors. Oliver had spoken with Atilio Picone two days earlier when he had presented his credence papers. "How is Mrs. Picone?" Oliver had asked. There
was a small pause. "My wife is fine. Thank you, Mr. President."
The dinner was going beautifully. Oliver went from table to table, chatting with his guests and charming them all. Some of the most important people in the world were gathered in that room.
Oliver Russell approached three ladies who were socially prominent and married to important men. But they were movers and shakers in their own right. "Leonore ... Delores .. . Carol..."
As Oliver was making his way across the room, Sylva Pi-cone went up to him and held out her hand. "This is a moment I've been looking forward to." Her eyes were sparkling.
"I, too," Oliver murmured.
"I knew you were going to be elected." It was almost a whisper. "Can we talk later?"
There was no hesitation. "Of course."
After dinner, there was dancing in the grand ballroom to the music of the Marine Band. Oliver watched Jan dancing, and he thought: What a beautiful woman. What a great body. The evening was a huge success.
The following week, on the front page of the Washington Tribune, the headline blazed out: PRESIDENT ACCUSED OF CAMPAIGN FRAUD.
Oliver stared at it in disbelief. It was the worst timing possible. How could this have happened? And then he suddenly realized how it had happened. The answer was in front of him on the masthead of the newspaper: "Publisher, Leslie Stewart."
The following week, a front-page item in the Washington Tribune read: PRESIDENT TO BE QUESTIONED ABOUT FALSIFIED
KENTUCKY STATE INCOME TAX RETURNS.
Two weeks later, another story appeared on the front page of the Tribune: FORMER ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT RUSSELL PLANS
TO FILE LAWSUIT CHARGING SEXUAL HARASSMENT.
The door to the Oval Office flew open and Jan walked in. "Have you seen the morning paper?"
"Yes, I "
"How could you do this to us, Oliver? You "
"Wait a minute! Don't you see what's happening, Jan? Leslie Stewart is behind it. I'm sure she bribed that woman to do this. She's trying
to get her revenge because I jilted her for you. All right. She got it. It's over."
Senator Davis was on the telephone. "Oliver. I would like to see you in one hour." "I'll be here, Todd." Oliver was in the small library when Todd Davis arrived. Oliver rose to greet him. "Good morning." "Like hell it's a good morning." Senator Davis's voice was filled with fury. "That woman is going to destroy us."
"No, she's not. She just " "Everyone reads that damned gossip rag, and people believe what they read." "Todd, this is going to blow over and " "It's not going to blow over. Did you hear the editorial on WTE this morning? It was about who our next president is going to be. You were at the bottom of the list. Leslie Stewart is out to get you. You must stop her. What's the line 'hell hath no fury ..."?" "There's another adage, Todd, about freedom of the press. There's nothing we can do about this." Senator Davis looked at Oliver speculatively. "But there is." "What are you talking about?" "Sit down." The two men sat. "The woman is obviously still in love with you, Oliver. This is her way of punishing you for what you did to her. Never argue with someone who buys ink by the ton. My advice is to make peace." "How do I do that?" Senator Davis looked at Oliver's groin. "Use your head." "Wait a minute, Todd! Are you suggesting that I ?" "What I'm suggesting is that you cool her down. Let her know that you're sorry. I'm telling you she still loves you. If she didn't, she wouldn't be doing this." "What exactly do you expect me to do?" "Charm her, my boy. You did it once, you can do it again. You've got to win her over. You're having a State Department dinner here Friday evening. Invite her. You must persuade her to stop what she's doing."
"I don't know how I can "
"I don't care how you do it. Perhaps you could take her away somewhere, where you can have a quiet chat. I have a country house in Virginia. It's very private. I'm going to Florida for the weekend, and I've arranged for Jan to go with me." He took out a slip of paper and some keys and handed them to Oliver. "Here are the directions and the keys to the house."
Oliver was staring at him. "Jesus! You had this all planned? What if Leslie won't what if she's not interested? If she refuses to go?"
Senator Davis rose. "She's interested. She'll go. I'll see you Monday, Oliver. Good luck."
Oliver sat there for a long time. And he thought: No. I can't do this to her again. I won't.
That evening as they were getting dressed for dinner, Jan said, "Oliver, Father asked me to go to Florida with him for the weekend. He's getting some kind of award, and I think he wants to show off the president's wife. Would you mind very much if I went? I know there's a State Department dinner here Friday, so if you want me to stay ..." "No, no. You go ahead. I'll miss you." And I am going to miss her,
he thought. As soon as I solve this problem with Leslie, I'm going to start spending more time with Jan.
Leslie was on the telephone when her secretary came hurrying in. "Miss Stewart "
"Can't you see I'm "
"President Russell is on line three."
Leslie looked at her a moment, then smiled. "Right." She said into the phone, "I'll call you back."
She pressed the button on line three. "Hello." "Leslie?"
"Hello, Oliver. Or should I call you Mr. President?"
"You can call me anything you like." He added lightly, "And have." There was a silence. "Leslie, I want to see you."
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" "I'm very sure."
"You're the president. I can't say no to you, can I?"
"Not if you're a patriotic American. There's a State Department dinner at the White House Friday night. Please come."
"What time?" "Eight o'clock."
"All right. I'll be there."
She looked stunning in a long, clinging black knit Mandarin-necked St.
John gown fastened in front with buttons over-coated in
twenty-two-karat gold. There was a revealing fourteen-inch slit on the left side of the dress.
The instant Oliver looked at her, memories came flooding back. "Leslie
..."
i on
"Mr. President."
He took her hand, and it was moist. It's a sign, Oliver thought. But of what? Nervousness? Anger? Old memories? "I'm so glad you came, Leslie." "Yes. I am, too." "We'll talk later." Her smile warmed him. "Yes."
Two tables away from where Oliver was seated was a group of Arab diplomats. One of them, a swarthy man with sharply etched features and dark eyes, seemed to be staring intently at Oliver.
Oliver leaned over to Peter Tager and nodded toward the Arab. "Who's that?"
Tager took a quick look. "Ali al-Fulani. He's the secretary at one of the United Arab Emirates. Why do you ask?"
"No reason." Oliver looked again. The man's eyes were still focused on him.
Oliver spent the evening working the room, making his guests feel comfortable. Sylva was at one table, Leslie at another. It was not until the evening was almost over that Oliver managed to get Leslie alone for a moment. "We need to talk. I have a lot to tell you. Can we meet somewhere?"
There was the faintest hesitation in her voice. "Oliver, perhaps it would be better if we didn't "
"I have a house in Manassas, Virginia, about an hour out of Washington. Will you meet me there?"
She looked into his eyes. This time there was no hesitation. "If you want me to."
Oliver described the location of the house. "Tomorrow night at eight?"
Leslie's voice was husky. "I'll be there."
At a National Security Council meeting the following morning, Director of Central Intelligence James Frisch dropped a bombshell. "Mr.
President, we received word this morning that Libya is buying a variety of atomic weapons from Iran and China. There's a strong rumor that they're going to be used to attack Israel. It will take a day or two to get a confirmation." Lou Werner, the secretary of state, said, "I don't think we should wait. Let's protest now, in the strongest possible terms." Oliver said to Werner, "See what additional information you can get." The meeting lasted all morning. From time to time, Oliver found himself thinking about the rendezvous with Leslie. "Charm her, my boy.... You've got to win her over."
On Saturday evening, Oliver was in one of the White House staff cars, driven by a trusted Secret Service agent, heading for Manassas, Virginia. He was strongly tempted to cancel the rendezvous, but it was too late. I'm worrying for no reason. She probably won't even show up.
At eight o'clock, Oliver looked out the window and saw Leslie's car pull into the driveway of the senator's house. He watched her get out of the car and move toward the entrance. Oliver opened the front door.
The two of them stood there, silently staring at each other, and time disappeared and somehow it was as though they had never been apart.
Oliver was the first to find his voice. "My God! Last night when I saw you ... I had almost forgotten how beautiful you are." Oliver took Leslie's hand, and they walked into the living room. "What would you like to drink?" "I don't need anything. Thank you." Oliver sat down next to her on the couch. "I have to ask you something, Leslie. Do you hate me?" She shook her head slowly. "No. I thought I hated you." She smiled wryly. "In a way, I suppose that's the reason for my success." "I don't understand." "I wanted to get back at you, Oliver. I bought newspapers and television stations so that I could attack you. You're the only man I've ever loved. And when you when you deserted me, I I didn't think I could stand it." She was fighting back tears.
Oliver put his arm around her. "Leslie " And then his lips were on hers, and they were kissing passionately. "Oh, my God," she said. "I didn't expect this to happen." And they were in a fierce embrace, and he took her hand and led her into the bedroom. They began undressing each other. "Hurry, my darling," Leslie said. "Hurry..." And they were in bed, holding each other, their bodies touching, remembering.
Their lovemaking was gentle and fierce, as it had been in the beginning. And this was a new beginning. The two of them lay there, happy, spent. "It's so funny," Leslie said. "What?" "All those terrible things I published about you. I did it to get your attention." She snuggled closer. "And I did, didn't I?" He grinned. "I'll say." Leslie sat up and looked at him. "I'm so proud of you, Oliver. The President of the United States." "I'm trying to be a damn good one. That's what's really important to me. I want to make a difference." Oliver looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I have to get back." "Of course. I'll let you leave first." "When am I going to see you again, Leslie?" "Anytime you want to." "We're going to have to be careful." "I know. We will be."
Leslie lay there, dreamily watching Oliver as he dressed.
When Oliver was ready to leave, he leaned over and said, "You're my miracle."
"And you're mine. You always have been." He kissed her. "I'll call you tomorrow."
Oliver hurried out to the car and was driven back to Washington. The more things change, the more they stay the same, Oliver thought. I have to be careful never to hurt her again. He picked up the car telephone and dialed the number in Florida that Senator Davis had given him.
The senator answered the phone himself. "Hello." "It's Oliver."
"Where are you?"
"On my way back to Washington. I just called to tell you some good
news. We don't have to worry about that problem anymore. Everything is under control."
"I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that." There was a note of deep relief in Senator Davis's voice.
"I knew you would be, Todd."
The following morning, as Oliver was getting dressed, he picked up a copy of the Washington Tribune. On the front page was a photograph of Senator Davis's country home in Manassas The caption under it read:
PRESIDENT RUSSELL'S SECRET LOVE NEST.
Fourteen.
Oliver stared at the paper unbelievingly. How could she have done that? He thought about how passionate she had been in bed. And he had completely misread it. It was a passion filled with hate, not love.
There's no way I can ever stop her, Oliver thought despairingly.
Senator Todd Davis looked at the front-page story and was aghast. He understood the power of the press, and he knew how much this vendetta could cost him. I'll have to stop her myself, Senator Davis decided. When he got to his Senate office, he telephoned Leslie. "It's been a long time," Senator Davis said warmly. "Too long. I think about you a lot, Miss Stewart."
"I think about you, too, Senator Davis. In a way, everything I have I owe to you." He chuckled. "Not at all. When you had a problem, I was happy to be able to assist you." "Is there something I can do for you, Senator?" "No, Miss Stewart. But there's something I'd like to do for you. I'm one of your faithful readers, you know, and I think the Tribune is a truly fine paper. I just realized that we haven't been doing any advertising in it, and I want to correct that. I'm involved in several large companies, and they do a lot of advertising. I mean a lot of advertising. I think that a good portion of that should go to a fine paper like the Tribune." "I'm delighted to hear that, Senator.
We can always use more advertising. Whom shall I have my advertising manager talk to?" "Well, before he talks to anyone, I think you and I should settle a little problem between us." "What's that?" Leslie asked. "It concerns President Russell." "Yes?" "This is a rather delicate matter, Miss Stewart. You said a few moments ago that you owed everything you have to me. Now I'm asking you to do me a little favor." "I'll be happy to, if I can." "In my own small way, I helped the president get elected to office." "I know."
"And he's doing a fine job. Of course, it makes it more difficult for him when he's attacked by a powerful newspaper like the Tribune every time he turns around."
"What are you asking me to do, Senator?"
"Well, I would greatly appreciate it if those attacks would stop."
"And in exchange for that, I can count on getting advertising from some of your companies."
"A great deal of advertising, Miss Stewart."
"Thank you, Senator. Why don't you call me back when you have something more to offer?"
And the line went dead.
In his office at the Washington Tribune, Matt Baker was reading the story about President Russell's secret love nest. "Who the hell authorized this?" he snapped at his assistant. "It came from the White Tower." "Goddammit. She's not running this paper, I am." Why the hell do I put up with her? he wondered, not for the first time. Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year plus bonuses and stock options, he told himself wryly. Every time he was ready to quit, she seduced him with more money and more power. Besides, he had to admit to himself that it was fascinating working for one of the most powerful women in the world. There were things about her that he would never understand.
When she had first bought the Tribune, Leslie had said to Matt, "There's an astrologer I want you to hire. His name is Zoltaire."
"He's syndicated by our competition." "I don't care. Hire him."
Later that day, Matt Baker told her, "I checked on Zoltaire. It would be too expensive to buy out his contract."
"Buy it."
The following week, Zoltaire, whose real name Matt learned was David Hayworth, came to work for the Washington Tribune. He was in his fifties, small and dark and intense.
Matt was puzzled. Leslie did not seem like the kind of woman who would have any interest in astrology. As far as he could see, there was no contact between Leslie and David Hay-worth.
What he did not know was that Hayworth went to visit Leslie at her home whenever she had an important decision to make.
On the first day, Matt had had Leslie's name put on the masthead: "Leslie Chambers, Publisher." She had glanced at it and said, "Change it. It's Leslie Stewart." The lady is on an ego trip, Matt had thought. But he was wrong. Leslie had decided to revert to her maiden name because she wanted Oliver Russell to know exactly who was responsible for what was going to happen to him.
The day after Leslie took over the newspaper, she said, "We're going to
buy a health magazine." Matt looked at her curiously. "Why?" "Because the health field is exploding." She had proved to be right. The magazine was an instant success. "We're going to start expanding," Leslie told Baker. "Let's get some people looking for publications overseas." "All right." "And there's too much fat around here. Get rid of the reporters who aren't pulling their weight." "Leslie " "I want young reporters who are hungry." When an executive position became open, Leslie insisted on being there for the interview. She would listen to the applicant, and then would ask one question: "What's your golf score?" The job would often depend on the answer. "What the hell kind of question is that?" Matt Baker asked the first time he heard it. "What difference does a golf score make?" "I don't want people here who are dedicated to golf. If they work here, they're going to be dedicated to the Washington Tribune."
Leslie Stewart's private life was a subject of endless discussions at the Tribune. She was a beautiful woman, unattached, and as far as anyone knew, she was not involved with any man and had no personal life. She was one of the capital's preeminent hostesses, and important people vied for an invitation to her dinner parties. But people speculated about what she did when all the guests had left and she was alone. There were rumors that she was an insomniac who spent the nights working, planning new projects for the Stewart empire.
There were other rumors, more titillating, but there was no way of proving them.
Leslie involved herself in everything: editorials, news stories, advertising. One day, she said to the head of the advertising department, "Why aren't we getting any ads from Glea-son's?" an upscale store in Georgetown.
"I've tried, but "
"I know the owner. I'll give him a call."
She called him and said, "Allan, you're not giving the Tribune any ads. Why?"
He had laughed and said, "Leslie, your readers are our shoplifters."
Before Leslie went into a conference, she read up on everyone who would be there. She knew everyone's weaknesses and strengths, and she was a tough negotiator.
"Sometimes you can be too tough," Matt Baker warned her. "You have to leave them something, Leslie."
"Forget it. I believe in the scorched-earth policy."
In the course of the next year, Washington Tribune Enterprises acquired a newspaper and radio station in Australia, a television station in Denver, and a newspaper in Hammond, Indiana. Whenever there was a new acquisition, its employees were terrified of what was coming. Leslie's
reputation for being ruthless was growing.
Leslie Stewart was intensely jealous of Katharine Graham.
"She's just lucky," Leslie said. "And she has the reputation of being a bitch."
Matt Baker was tempted to ask Leslie what she thought her own reputation was, but he decided not to.
One morning when Leslie arrived at her office, she found that someone had placed a small wooden block with two brass balls on her desk.
Matt Baker was upset. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'll take " "No. Leave it."
"But " "Leave it."
Matt Baker was having a conference in his office when Leslie's voice came on over the intercom. "Matt, come up here."
No "please," no "good morning." Jt's going to be a bad-hair day, Matt Baker thought grimly. The Ice Princess was in one of her moods. "That's it for now," Matt said. He left his office and walked through the corridors, where hundreds of employees were busily at work. He took the elevator up to the White Tower and entered the sumptuous publisher's office. Half a dozen editors were already gathered in the room. Behind an enormous desk sat Leslie Stewart. She looked up as Matt Baker entered. "Let's get started." She had called an editorial meeting. Matt Baker remembered her saying, "You'll be running the newspaper. I'll keep my hands off." He should have known better. She had no business calling meetings like this. That was his job. On the other hand, she was the publisher and owner of the Washington Tribune, and she could damn well do anything she pleased. Matt Baker said, "I want to talk to you about the story about President Russell's love nest in Virginia." "There's nothing to talk about," Leslie said. She held up a copy of The Washington Post, their rival. "Have you seen this?" Matt had seen it. "Yes, it's just " "In the old days it was called a scoop, Matt. Where were you and your reporters when the Post was getting the news?" The headline in The Washington Post read: SECOND
LOBBYIST TO BE INDICTED FOR GIVING ILLEGAL GIFTS TO SECRETARY OF DEFENSE.
"Why didn't we get that story?" "Because it isn't official yet. I checked on it. It's just " "I don't like being scooped." Matt Baker sighed and sat back in his chair. It was going to be a stormy session. "We're number one, or we're nothing," Leslie Stewart announced to the group. "And if we're nothing, there won't be any jobs here for anyone, will there?" Leslie turned to Arnie Cohn, the editor of the Sunday
magazine section. "When people wake up Sunday morning, we want them to read the magazine section. We don't want to put our readers back to sleep. The stories we ran last Sunday were boring." He was thinking, If you were a man, I'd "Sorry," he mumbled. "I'll try to do better next time." Leslie turned to Jeff Connors, the sports editor. Connors was a good-looking man in his mid-thirties, tall, with an athletic build, blond hair, intelligent gray eyes. He had the easy manner of someone who knew that he was good at what he did. Matt had heard that Leslie had made a play for him, and he had turned her down. "You wrote that Fielding was going to be traded to the Pirates." "I was told "
"You were told wrong! The Tribune is guilty of printing a story that never happened." "I got it from his manager," Jeff Connors said, unperturbed. "He told me that " "Next time check out your stories, and then check them out again." Leslie turned and pointed to a framed, yellowed newspaper article hanging on the wall. It was the front page of the Chicago Tribune, dated November 3,1948. The banner headline read: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. "The worst thing a newspaper can do," Leslie said, "is to get the facts wrong. We're in a business where you always have to get it right." She glanced at her watch. "That's it for now. I'll expect you all to do a lot better." As they rose to leave, Leslie said to Matt Baker, "I want you to stay." "Right." He sank back into his chair and watched the others depart. "Was I rough on them?" she asked. "You got what you wanted. They're all suicidal." "We're not here to make friends, we're here to put out a newspaper." She looked up again at the framed front page on the wall. "Can you imagine what the publisher of that paper must have felt after that story hit the streets and Truman was president? I never want to have that feeling, Matt. Never." "Speaking of getting it wrong," Matt said, "that story on page one about President Russell was more suitable for a cheap tabloid publication. Why do you keep riding him? Give him a chance."
Leslie said enigmatically, "I gave him his chance." She stood up and began to pace. "I got a tip that Russell is going to veto the new communications bill. That means we'll have to call off the deal for the San Diego station and the Omaha station."
"There's nothing we can do about that."
"Oh, yes, there is. I want him out of office, Matt. We'll help put someone else in the White House, someone who knows what he's doing."
Matt had no intention of getting into another argument with Leslie Stewart about the president. She was fanatic on the subject.
"He's not fit to be in that office, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that he's defeated in the next election."
Philip Cole, chief of correspondents for WTE, hurried into Matt Baker's office as Matt was ready to leave. There was a worried expression on his face. "We have a problem, Matt." "Can it wait until tomorrow?
I'm late for a " "It's about Dana Evans." Matt said sharply, "What about her?" "She's been arrested."
"Arrested?" Matt asked incredulously. "What for?" "Espionage. Do you want me to ?" "No. I'll handle this." Matt Baker hurried back to his desk and dialed the State Department. Fifteen.
She was being dragged, naked, out of her cell into a cold, dark courtyard. She struggled wildly against the two men holding her, but she was no match for them. There were six soldiers with rifles outside, waiting for her as she was carried, screaming, to a wooden post hammered into the ground. Colonel Gordan Divjak watched his men tie her to the post. "You can't do this to me! I'm not a spy!" she yelled. But she could not make her voice heard above the sounds of mortar fire in the near distance. Colonel Divjak stepped away from her and nodded toward the firing squad. "Ready, aim " "Stop that screaming!" Rough hands were shaking her. Dana opened her eyes, her heart pounding. She was lying on the cot in her small, dark cell.
Colonel Divjak was standing over her.
Dana sat up, panicky, trying to blink away the nightmare. "What what are you going to do to me?"
Colonel Divjak said coldly, "If there were justice, you would be shot. Unfortunately, I have been given orders to release you."
Dana's heart skipped a beat.
"You will be put on the first plane out of here." Colonel Divjak looked into her eyes and said, "Don't ever come back."
It had taken all the pressure that the State Department and the president could muster to get Dana Evans released. When Peter Tager heard about the arrest, he had gone in to see the president. "I just got a call from the State Department. Dana Evans has been arrested on charges of espionage. They're threatening to execute her." "Jesus!
That's terrible. We can't let that happen." "Right. I'd like permission to use your name." "You've got it. Do whatever has to be done." "I'll work with the State Department. If we can pull this off, maybe the Tribune will go a little easier on you." Oliver shook his head. "I wouldn't count on it. Let's just get her the hell out of there."
Dozens of frantic telephone calls later, with pressure from the Oval Office, the secretary of state, and the secretary-general of the United Nations, Dana's captors reluctantly agreed to release her.
When the news came, Peter Tager hurried in to tell Oliver. "She's free. She's on her way home."
"Great."
He thought about Dana Evans on his way to a meeting that morning. I'm glad we were able to save her.
He had no idea that that action was going to cost him his life.
When Dana's plane landed at Dulles International Airport, Mart Baker and two dozen reporters from newspapers and television and radio stations were waiting to greet her. Dana looked at the crowd in disbelief. "What's ?" "This way, Dana. Smile!" "How were you treated? Was there any brutality?" "How does it feel to be back home?" "Let's have a picture." "Do you have any plans to go back?" They were all talking at once. Dana stood there, overwhelmed. Matt Baker hustled Dana into a waiting limousine, and they sped away.
"What's what's going on?" Dana asked. "You're a celebrity."
She shook her head. "I don't need this, Matt." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Thanks for getting me out."
"You can thank the president and Peter Tager. They pushed all the buttons. You also have Leslie Stewart to thank."
When Matt told Leslie the news, she had said, "Those bastards! They can't do that to the Tribune. I want you to see that they free her. Pull every string you can and get her out of there."
Dana looked out the window of the limousine. People were walking along the street, talking and laughing. There was no sound of gunfire or mortar shells. It was eerie.
"Our real estate editor found an apartment for you. I'm taking you there now. I want you to have some time off as much as you like. When you're ready, we'll put you back to work." He took a closer look at Dana. "Are you feeling all right? If you want to see a doctor, I'll arrange "
"I'm fine. Our bureau took me to a doctor in Paris."
The apartment was on Calvert Street, an attractively furnished place with one bedroom, living room, kitchen, bath, and small study.
"Will this do?" Matt asked.
"This is perfect. Thank you, Matt."
"I've had the refrigerator stocked for you. You'll probably OTA
want to go shopping for clothes tomorrow, after you get some rest. Charge everything to the paper."
"Thanks, Matt. Thank you for everything."
"You're going to be debriefed later. I'll set it up for you."
She was on a bridge, listening to the gunfire and watching bloated bodies float by, and she woke up, sobbing. It had been so real. It was a dream, but it was happening. At that moment, innocent victims men, women, and children were being senselessly and brutally slaughtered. She thought of Professor Staka's words. "This war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is beyond understanding." What was incredible to her was that the rest of the world didn't seem to care. She was afraid to go back to sleep, afraid of the nightmares that filled her brain. She got up and walked over to the window and looked out at the city. It was quiet no guns, no people running down the street, screaming. It seemed unnatural. She wondered how Kemal was, and whether she would ever see him again. He's probably forgotten me by now.
Dana spent part of the morning shopping for clothes. Wherever she went, people stopped to stare at her. She heard whispers: "That's Dana Evans!" The sales clerks all recognized her. She was famous. She hated it.
Dana had had no breakfast and no lunch. She was hungry, but she was unable to eat. She was too tense. It was as though she were waiting for some disaster to strike. When she walked down the street, she avoided the eyes of strangers. She was suspicious of everyone. She kept listening for the sound of gunfire. I can't go on like this, Dana thought.
At noon, she walked into Matt Baker's office.
"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be on vacation." "I need to go back to work, Matt."
He looked at her and thought about the young girl who had come to him a few years earlier. "I'm here for a job. Of course, I already have a job here. It's more like a transfer, isn't it? ... I can start right away...." And she had more than fulfilled her promise. If I ever had a daughter... "Your boss wants to meet you," Matt told Dana.
They headed for Leslie Stewart's office.
The two women stood there appraising each other. "Welcome back, Dana."
"Thank you."
"Sit down." Dana and Matt took chairs opposite Leslie's desk. "I want to thank you for getting me out of there," Dana said.
"It must have been hell. I'm sorry." Leslie looked at Matt. "What are we going to do with her now, Matt?"
He looked at Dana. "We're about to reassign our White House correspondent. Would you like the job?" It was one of the most
prestigious television assignments in the country. Dana's face lit up. "Yes. I would."
Leslie nodded. "You've got it." Dana rose. "Well thank you, again." "Good luck."
Dana and Matt left the office. "Let's get you settled," Matt said. He walked her over to the television building, where the whole staff was waiting to greet her. It took Dana fifteen minutes to work her way through the crowd of well-wishers.
"Meet your new White House correspondent," Matt said to Philip Cole. "That's great. I'll show you to your office."
"Have you had lunch yet?" Matt asked Dana. "No, I "
"Why don't we get a bite to eat?"
The executive dining room was on the fifth floor, a spacious, airy room with two dozen tables. Matt led Dana to a table in the corner, and they sat down. "Miss Stewart seemed very nice," Dana said. Matt started to say something. "Yeah. Let's order." "I'm not hungry." "You haven't had lunch?" "No."
"Did you have breakfast?" "No."
"Dana when did you eat last?"
She shook her head. "I don't remember. It's not important."
"Wrong. I can't have our new White House correspondent starving herself to death."
The waiter came over to the table. "Are you ready to order, Mr. Baker?"
"Yes." He scanned the menu. "We'll start you off light. Miss Evans will have a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich." He looked over at Dana. "Pastry or ice cream?"
"Noth "
"Pie a la mode. And I'll have a roast beef sandwich." "Yes, sir."
Dana looked around. "All this seems so unreal. Life is what's happening over there, Matt. It's horrible. No one here cares."
"Don't say that. Of course we care. But we can't run the world, and we can't control it. We do the best we can."
"It's not good enough," Dana said fiercely.
"Dana..." He stopped. She was far away, listening to distant sounds that he could not hear, seeing grisly sights that he could not see.
They sat in silence until the waiter arrived with their food. "Here we are."
"Mart, I'm not really hung "
O '1 A
"You're going to eat," Matt commanded. Jeff Connors was making his way over to the table. "Hi, Matt." "Jeff." Jeff Connors looked at Dana. "Hello." Mart said, "Dana, this is Jeff Connors. He's the Tribune's sports editor." Dana nodded. "I'm a big fan of yours, Miss Evans.
I'm glad you got out safely." Dana nodded again. Matt said, "Would you like to join us, Jeff?" "Love to." He took a chair and said to Dana, "I tried never to miss any of your broadcasts. I thought they were brilliant." Dana mumbled, "Thank you." "Jeff here is one of our great athletes. He's in the Baseball Hall of Fame." Another small nod. "If you happen to be free," Jeff said, "on Friday, the Orioles are playing the Yankees in Baltimore. It's " Dana turned to look at him for the first time. "That sounds really exciting. The object of the game is to hit the ball and then run around the field while the other side tries to stop you?" He looked at her warily. "Well " Dana got to her feet, her voice trembling. "I've seen people running around a field but they were running for their lives because someone was shooting at them and killing them!" She was near hysteria. "It wasn't a game, and it it wasn't about a stupid baseball."
The other people in the room were turning to stare at her. "You can go to hell," Dana sobbed. And she fled from the room. Jeff turned to Matt. "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to "
"It wasn't your fault. She hasn't come home yet. And God knows she's entitled to a bad case of nerves."
Dana hurried into her office and slammed the door. She went to her desk and sat down, fighting hysteria. Oh, Cod. I've made a complete fool of myself. They'll fire me, and I deserve it. Why did I attack that man? How could I have done anything so awful? I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere anymore. She sat there with her head on the desk, sobbing. A few minutes later, the door opened and someone came in. Dana looked up. It was Jeff Connors, carrying a tray with a
bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and a slice of pie a la mode. "You forgot your lunch," Jeff said mildly. Dana wiped away her tears, mortified. "I I want to apologize. I'm so sorry. I had no right to " "You had every right," he said quietly. "Anyway, who needs to watch a dumb old baseball game?" Jeff put the tray on the desk. "May I join you for lunch?" He sat down. "I'm not hungry. Thank you."
He sighed. "You're putting me in a very difficult position, Miss Evans. Mart says you have to eat. You don't want to get me fired, do you?"
Dana managed a smile. "No." She picked up half of the sandwich and took a small bite.
"Bigger."
Dana took another small bite. "Bigger."
She looked up at him. "You're really going to make me eat this, aren't you?"
"You bet I am." He watched her take a larger bite of the sandwich. "That's better. By the way, if you're not doing anything Friday night, I don't know if I mentioned it, but there's a game between the Orioles and the Yankees. Would you like to go?"
She looked at him and nodded. "Yes."
At three o'clock that afternoon, when Dana walked into the White House entrance, the guard said, "Mr. Tager would like to see you, Miss Evans. I'll have someone take you to his office." A few minutes later, one of the guides led Dana down a long corridor to Peter Tager's office. He was waiting for her. "Mr. Tager ..." "I didn't expect to see you so soon, Miss Evans. Won't your station give you any time off?" "I didn't want any," Dana said. "I I need to work."
"Please sit down." She sat across from him. "Can I offer you anything?" "No, thanks. I just had lunch." She smiled to herself at the recollection of Jeff Connors. "Mr. Tager, I want to thank you and President Russell so much for rescuing me." She hesitated. "I know the Tribune hasn't been too kind to the president, and I " Peter Tager raised a hand. "This was something above politics. There was no chance that the president was going to let them get away with this. You know the story of Helen of Troy?" "Yes." He smiled. "Well, we might have started a war over you. You're a very important person." "I don't feel very important." "I want you to know how pleased both the president and I are that you've been assigned to cover the White House." "Thank you." He paused for a moment. "It's unfortunate that the Tribune doesn't like President Russell, and there's nothing you can do about it. But in spite of that, on a very personal level, if there's anything the president or I can do to help ... we both have an enormous regard for you." "Thank you. I appreciate that." The door
opened and Oliver walked in. Dana and Peter Tager stood up. "Sit down," Oliver said. He walked over to Dana. "Welcome home."
"Thank you, Mr. President," Dana said. "And I do mean thank you."
Oliver smiled. "If you can't save someone's life, what's the point of being president? I want to be frank with you, Miss Evans. None of us here is a fan of your newspaper. All of us are your fans."
"Thank you."
"Peter is going to give you a tour of the White House. If you have any problems, we're here to help you."
"You're very kind."
"If you don't mind, I want you to meet with Mr. Werner, the secretary of state. I'd like to have him get a firsthand briefing from you on the situation in Herzegovina."
"I'd be happy to do that," Dana said.
There were a dozen men seated in the secretary of state's private conference room, listening to Dana describe her experiences. "Most of the buildings in Sarajevo have been damaged or destroyed.... There's no electricity, and the people there who still have cars unhook the car batteries at night to run their television sets.... "The streets of the city are obstructed by the wreckage of bombed automobiles, carts, and bicycles. The main form of transportation is walking.... "When there's a storm, people catch the water from the street gutters and put it into buckets.... "There's no respect for the Red Cross or for the journalists there. More than forty correspondents have been killed covering the Bosnian war, and dozens have been wounded.... Whether the present revolt against Slobodan Milosevic is successful or not, the feeling is that because of the popular uprising, his regime has been badly damaged. "
The meeting went on for two hours. For Dana it was both traumatic and cathartic, because as she described what happened, she found herself living the terrible scenes all over again; and at the same time, she found it a. relief to be able to talk about it. When she was finished, she felt drained.
The secretary of state said, "I want to thank you, Miss Evans. This has been very informative." He smiled. "I'm glad you got back here safely."
"So am I, Mr. Secretary."
Friday night, Dana was seated next to Jeff Connors in the press box at Camden Yards, watching the baseball game. And for the first time since she had returned, she was able to think about something other than the war. As Dana watched the players on the field, she listened to the announcer reporting the game. "... it's the top of the sixth inning
and Nelson is pitching. Alomar hits a line drive down the left-field line for a double. Palmeiro is approaching the plate. The count is two and one. Nelson throws a fastball down the middle and Palmeiro is going for it. What a hit! It looks like it's going to clear the right 9-30
field wall. It's over! Palmeiro is rounding the bases with a two-run homer that puts the Orioles in the lead. "
At the seventh-inning stretch, Jeff stood up and looked at Dana. "Are you enjoying yourself?"
Dana looked at him and nodded. "Yes."
Back in D.C. after the game, they had supper at Bistro Twenty Fifteen.
"I want to apologize again for the way I behaved the other day," Dana said. "It's just that I've been living in a world where " She stopped, not sure how to phrase it. "Where everything is a matter of life and death. Everything. It's awful. Because unless someone stops the war, those people have no hope."
Jeff said gently, "Dana, you can't put your life on hold because of what's happening over there. You have to begin living again. Here."
"I know. It's just... not easy."
"Of course it isn't. I'd like to help you. Would you let me?" Dana looked at him for a long time. "Please."
The next day, Dana had a luncheon date with Jeff Connors. "Can you pick me up?" he asked. He gave her the address. "Right." Dana wondered what Jeff was doing there. It was in a very troubled inner-city neighborhood. When Dana arrived, she found the answer.
Jeff was surrounded by two teams of baseball players, ranging in age from nine to thirteen, dressed in a creative variety of baseball uniforms. Dana parked at the curb to watch.
"And remember," Jeff was saying, "don't rush. When the pitcher throws the ball, imagine that it's coming at you very slowly, so that you have plenty of time to hit it. Feel your bat smacking the ball. Let your mind help guide your hands so "
Jeff looked over and saw Dana. He waved. "All right, fellows. That's it for now."
One of the boys asked, "Is that your girl, Jeff?"
"Only if I'm lucky." Jeff smiled. "See you later." He walked over to Dana's car.
"That's quite a ball club," Dana said. "They're good boys. I coach them once a week."
She smiled. "I like that." And she wondered how Kemal was and what he was doing.
As the days went on, Dana found herself coming to like Jeff Connors more and more. He was sensitive, intelligent, and amusing. She enjoyed being with him. Slowly, the horrible memories of Sarajevo were beginning to fade. The morning came when she woke up without having had nightmares. When she told Jeff about it, he took her hand and said, "That's my girl."
And Dana wondered whether she should read a deeper meaning into it.
There was a hand-printed letter waiting for Dana at the office. It read: "miss evans, don't worry about me. i'm happy, i am not lonely, i don't miss anybody, and i am going to send you back the clothes you bought me because i don't need them, i have my own clothes, goodbye." It was signed "kemal." The letter was postmarked Paris, and the letterhead read "Xavier's Home for Boys." Dana read the letter twice and then picked up the phone. It took her four hours to reach Kemal.
She heard his voice, a tentative "Hello ..." "Kemal, this is Dana Evans." There was no response. "I got your letter." Silence. "I just wanted to tell you that I'm glad you're so happy, and that you're having such a good time." She waited a moment, then went on, "I wish I were as happy as you are. Do you know why I'm not? Because I miss you. I think about you a lot." "No, you don't," Kemal said. "You don't care about me." "You're wrong. How would you like to come to Washington and live with me?" There was a long silence. "Do you do you mean that?" "You bet I do. Would you like that?" "I " He began to cry. "Would you, Kemal?" "Yes yes, ma'am." "I'll make the arrangements."
"Miss Evans?" "Yes?"
"I love you."
Dana and Jeff Connors were walking in West Potomac Park. "I think I'm going to have a roommate," Dana said. "He should be here in the next few weeks." Jeff looked at her in surprise. "He?" Dana found herself pleased at his reaction. "Yes. His name is Kemal. He's twelve years old." She told him the story. "He sounds like a great kid." "He is. He's been through hell, Jeff. I want to help him forget." He looked at Dana and said, "I'd like to help, too." That night they made love for the first time.
Sixteen.
There are two Washington, D.C."s. One is a city of inordinate beauty: imposing architecture, world-class museums, statues, monuments to the
giants of the past: Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington... a city of verdant parks, cherry blossoms, and velvet air.
The other Washington, D.C." is a citadel of the homeless, a city with one of the highest crime rates in the nation, a labyrinth of muggings and murders.
The Monroe Arms is an elegant boutique hotel discreetly tucked away not far from the corner of ayth and K streets. It does no advertising and caters mainly to its regular clientele.
The hotel was built a number of years ago by an enterprising young real estate entrepreneur named Lara Cameron. Jeremy Robinson, the hotel's general manager, had just arrived on his evening shift and was studying the guest register with a perplexed expression on his face. He checked the names of the occupants of the elite Terrace Suites once again to make certain someone had not made a mistake. In Suite 325, a faded actress was rehearsing for a play opening at the National Theater.
According to a story in The Washington Post, she was hoping to make a comeback. In 425, the suite above hers, was a well-known arms dealer who visited Washington regularly. The name on the guest register was
J. L. Smith, but his looks suggested one of the Middle East countries. Mr. Smith was an extraordinarily generous tipper. Suite 525 was registered to William Quint, a congressman who headed the powerful drug oversight committee. Above, Suite 625 was occupied by a computer software salesman who visited Washington once a month. Registered in Suite 725 was Pat Murphy, an international lobbyist. So far, so good, Jeremy Robinson thought. The guests were all well known to him. It was Suite 825, the Imperial Suite on the top floor, that was the enigma. It was the most elegant suite in the hotel, and it was always held in reserve for the most important VIPs. It occupied the entire floor and was exquisitely decorated with valuable paintings and antiques. It had its own private elevator leading to the basement garage, so that its guests who wished to be anonymous could arrive and depart in privacy.
What puzzled Jeremy Robinson was the name on the hotel register: Eugene Gant. Was there actually a person by that name, or had someone who enjoyed reading Thomas Wolfe selected it as an alias?
Carl Gorman, the day clerk who had registered the eponymous Mr. Gant, had left on his vacation a few hours earlier, and was unreachable.
Robinson hated mysteries. Who was Eugene Gant and why had he been given the Imperial Suite?
In Suite 325, on the third floor, Dame Gisella Barrett was rehearsing for a play. She was a distinguished-looking woman in her late sixties, an actress who had once mesmerized audiences and critics from London's West End to Manhattan's Broadway. There were still faint traces of beauty in her face, but they were overlaid with bitterness. She had read the article in The Washington Post that said she had come to Washington to make a comeback. A comeback! Dame Barrett thought indignantly. How dare they! I've never been away. True, it had been more than twenty years since she had last appeared onstage, but that
was only because a great actress needed a great part, a brilliant director, and an understanding producer. The directors today were too young to cope with the grandeur of real Theater, and the great English producers H. M. Tenant, Binkie Beaumont, C. B. Cochran were all gone. Even the reasonably competent American producers, Helburn, Belasco, and Golden, were no longer around. There was no question about it: The current theater was controlled by know-nothing parvenus with no background. The old days had been so wonderful. There were playwrights back then whose pens were dipped in lightning. Dame Barrett had starred in the part of Ellie Dunn in Shaw's Heartbreak House. How the critics raved about me. Poor George. He hated to be called George. He preferred Bernard. People thought of him as acerbic and bitter, but underneath it all, he was really a romantic Irishman.
He used to send me red roses. I think he was too shy to go beyond that. Perhaps he was afraid I would reject him. She was about to make her return in one of the most powerful roles ever written Lady Macbeth. It was the perfect choice for her. Dame Barrett placed a chair in front of a blank wall, so that she would not be distracted by the view outside. She sat down, took a deep breath, and began to get into the character Shakespeare had created. "Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep the peace between The effect and it!"
".. . For God's sake, how can they be so stupid? After all the years I have been staying in this hotel, you would think that..."
The voice was booming through the open window, from the suite above.
In Suite 425, J. L. Smith, the arms dealer, was loudly berating a waiter from room service. "... they would know by now that I order only Beluga caviar. Beluga!" He pointed to a plate of caviar on the room-service table. "That is a dish fit for peasants!"
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Smith. I'll go down to the kitchen and " "Never mind." J. L. Smith looked at his diamond-studded Rolex. "I
have no time. I have an important appointment." He rose and started
toward the door. He was due at his attorney's office. A day earlier, a federal grand jury had indicted him on fifteen counts of giving illegal gifts to the secretary of defense. If found guilty, he was facing three years in prison and a million-dollar fine.
In Suite 525, Congressman William Quint, a member of a prominent third-generation Washington family, was in conference with three members of his investigating staff. "The drug problem in this city is getting completely out of hand," Quint said. "We have to get it back under control He turned to Dalton Isaak. "What's your take on it?"
"It's the street gangs. The Brentwood Crew is undercutting the Fourteenth Street Crew and the Simple City Crew. That's led to four killings in the last month."
"We can't let this go on," Quint said. "It's bad for business. I've been getting calls from the DEA and the chief of police asking what we're planning to do about it."
"What did you tell them?"
"The usual. That we're investigating." He turned to his assistant. "Set up a meeting with the Brentwood Crew. Tell them if they want protection from us, they're going to have to get their prices in line with the others." He turned to another of his assistants. "How much did we take in last month?"
"Ten million here, ten million offshore."
"Let's bump that up. This city is getting too damned expensive." In 625, the suite above, Norman Haff lay naked in the dark in bed,
watching a porno film on the hotel's closed-circuit channel. He was a pale-skinned man with an enormous beer belly and a flabby body. He reached over and stroked the breast of his bed mate. "Look what they're doing, Irma." His voice was a strangled whisper. "Would you like me to do that to you?" He circled his fingers around her belly, his eyes fastened to the screen where a woman was making passionate love to a man. "Does that excite you, baby? It sure gets me hot."
He slipped two fingers between Irma's legs. "I'm ready," he groaned. He grabbed the inflated doll, rolled over, and pushed himself into her. The vagina of the battery-operated doll opened and closed on him, squeezing him tighter and tighter.
"Oh, my God!" he exclaimed. He gave a satisfied groan. "Yes! Yes!"
He switched off the battery and lay there panting. He felt wonderful. He would use Irma again in the morning before he deflated her and put her in a suitcase.
Norman was a salesman, and he was on the road most of the time in strange towns where he had no companionship. He had discovered Irma years ago, and she was all the female company he needed. His stupid salesmen friends traveled around the country picking up sluts and professional whores, but Norman had the last laugh.
Irma would never give him a disease.
On the floor above, in Suite 725, Pat Murphy's family had just come back from dinner. Tim Murphy, twelve, was standing on the balcony overlooking the park. "Tomorrow can we climb up to the top of the monument, Daddy?" he begged. "Please?" His younger brother said, "No. I want to go to the Smithsonian Institute." "Institution," his father corrected him.
"Whatever. I want to go." It was the first time the children had been in the nation's capital, although their father spent more than half of every year there. Pat Murphy was a successful lobbyist and had access
to some of the most important people in Washington. His father had been the mayor of a small town in Ohio, and Pat had grown up fascinated by politics. His best friend had been a boy named Joey. They had gone through school together, had gone to the same summer camps, and had shared everything. They were best friends in the truest sense of the phrase. That had all changed one holiday when Joey's parents were away and Joey was staying with the Murphys. In the middle of the night, Joey had come to Pat's room and climbed into his bed. "Pat," he whispered. "Wake up." Pat's eyes had flown open. "What? What's the matter?" "I'm lonely," Joey whispered. "I need you." Pat Murphy was confused. "What for?" "Don't you understand? I love you. I want you." And he had kissed Pat on the lips. And the horrible realization had dawned that Joey was a homosexual. Pat was sickened by it. He refused ever to speak to Jney again. Pat Murphy loathed homosexuals.
They were freaks, faggots, fairies, cursed by God, trying to seduce innocent children. He turned his hatred and disgust into a lifelong campaign, voting for anti homosexual candidates and lecturing about the evils and dangers of homosexuality. In the past, he had always come to Washington alone, but this time his wife had stubbornly insisted that he bring her and the children.
"We want to see what your life here is like," she said. And Pat had finally given in.
He looked at his wife and children now and thought, It's one of the last times I'll ever see them. How could I have ever made such a stupid mistake? Well, it's almost over now. His family had such grand plans for tomorrow. But there would be no tomorrow. In the morning, before they were awake, he would be on his way to Brazil.
Alan was waiting for him.
In Suite 825, the Imperial Suite, there was total silence. Breathe, he told himself. You must breathe ... slower, slower.... He was at the edge of panic. He looked at the slim, naked body of the young girl on the floor and thought, It wasn't my fault. She slipped. Her head had split open where she had fallen against the sharp edge of the
wrought-iron table, and blood was oozing from her forehead. He had felt her wrist. There was no pulse. It was incredible. One moment she had been so alive, and the next moment... I've got to get out of here. Now! He turned away from the body and hurriedly began to dress. This would not be just another scandal. This would be a scandal that rocked the world. They must never trace me to this suite. When he finished dressing, he went into the bathroom, moistened a towel, and began polishing the surfaces of every place he might have touched.
When he was finally sure he had left no fingerprints to mark his presence, he took one last look around. Her purse! He picked up the girl's purse from the couch, and walked to the far end of the apartment, where the private elevator waited.
He stepped inside, trying hard to control his breathing. He pressed G, and a few seconds later, the elevator door opened and he was in the garage. It was deserted. He started toward his car, then, suddenly
remembering, hurried back to the elevator. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his fingerprints from the elevator buttons. He stood in the shadows, looking around again to make sure he was still alone. Finally satisfied, he walked over to his car, opened the door, and sat behind the wheel. After a moment, he turned on the ignition and drove out of the garage.
It was a Filipina maid who found the dead girl's body sprawled on the floor. "O Dios ko, kawawa naman iyong babae!" She made the sign of the cross and hurried out of the room, screaming for help. Three minutes later, Jeremy Robinson and Thorn Peters, the hotel's head of security, were in the Imperial Suite staring down at the naked body of the girl. "Jesus," Thorn said. "She can't be more than sixteen or seventeen years old." He turned to the manager. "We'd better call the police."
"Wait!" Police. Newspapers. Publicity. For one wild moment, Robinson wondered whether it would be possible to spirit the girl's body out of the hotel. "I suppose so," he finally said reluctantly.
Thorn Peters took a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to pick up the telephone.
"What are you doing?" Robinson demanded. "This isn't a crime scene.
It was an accident."
"We don't know that yet, do we?" Peters said. He dialed a number and waited. "Homicide."
Detective Nick Reese looked like the paperback version of a
street-smart cop. He was tall and brawny, with a broken nose that was a memento from an early boxing career. He had paid his dues by starting as an officer in Washington's Metropolitan Police Department and had slowly worked his way through the ranks: Master Patrol Officer, Sergeant, Lieutenant. He had been promoted from Detective Da to Detective Di, and in the past ten years had solved more cases than anyone else in the department. Detective Reese stood there quietly studying the scene. In the suite with him were half a dozen men. "Has anyone touched her?" Robinson shuddered. "No." "Who is she?" "I don't know."
Reese turned to look at the hotel manager. "A young girl is found dead in your Imperial Suite, and you don't have any idea who she is? Doesn't this hotel have a guest register?" "Of course, Detective, but in this case " He hesitated. "In this case ... ?" "The suite is registered to a Eugene Gant." "Who's Eugene Gant?" "I have no idea." Detective Reese was getting impatient. "Look. If someone booked this suite, he had to have paid for it... cash, credit card sheep whatever. Whoever checked this Gant in must have gotten a look at him. Who checked him in?" "Our day clerk, Gorman." "I want to talk to him." "I I'm afraid that's impossible." "Oh? Why?" "He left on his vacation today." "Call him." Robinson sighed. "He didn't say where he was going." "When will he be back?" "In two weeks." "I'll let you in on a little
secret. I'm not planning to wait two weeks. I want some information now. Somebody must have seen someone entering or leaving this suite." "Not necessarily," Robinson said apologetically. "Besides the regular exit, this suite has a private elevator that goes directly to the basement garage.... I don't know what the fuss is all about. It it was obviously an accident. She was probably on drugs and took an overdose and tripped and fell." Another detective approached Detective Reese. "I checked the closets. Her dress is from the Gap, shoes from the Wild Pair. No help there." "There's nothing to identify her at all?" "No. If she had a purse, it's gone." Detective Reese studied the body again. He turned to a police officer standing there. "Get me some soap. Wet it." The police officer was staring at him. "I'm sorry?" "Wet soap." "Yes, sir." He hurried off. Detective Reese knelt down beside the body of the girl and studied the ring on her finger. "It looks like a school ring." A minute later, the police officer returned and handed Reese a bar of wet soap. Reese gently rubbed the soap along the girl's finger and carefully removed the ring. He turned it from side to side, examining it. "It's a class ring from Denver High.
There are initials on it, P.Y." He turned to his partner. "Check it out. Call the school and find out who she is. Let's get an ID on her as fast as we can." Detective Ed Nelson, one of the fingerprint men, came up to Detective Reese. "Something damned weird is going on, Nick. We're picking up prints all over the place, and yet someone took the trouble to wipe the fingerprints off all the doorknobs." "So someone was here with her when she died. Why didn't he call a doctor? Why did he bother wiping out his fingerprints? And what the hell is a young kid doing in an expensive suite like this?" He turned to Robinson. "How was this suite paid for?" "Our records show that it was paid for in cash. A messenger delivered the envelope. The reservation was made over the phone." The coroner spoke up. "Can we move the body now, Nick?" "Just hold it a minute. Did you find any marks of violence?" "Only the trauma to the forehead. But of course we'll do an autopsy." "Any track marks?" "No. Her arms and legs are clean." "Does it look like she's been raped?" "We'll have to check that out." Detective Reese sighed. "So what we have here is a schoolgirl from Denver who comes to Washington and gets herself killed in one of the most expensive hotels in the city. Someone wipes out his fingerprints and disappears. The whole thing stinks. I want to know who rented this suite." He turned to the coroner. "You can take her out now." He looked at Detective Nelson. "Did you check the fingerprints in the private elevator?" "Yes. The elevator goes from this suite directly to the basement. There are only two buttons. Both buttons have been wiped clean."
"You checked the garage?" "Right. Nothing unusual down there." "Whoever did this went to a hell of a lot of trouble to cover his tracks. He's either someone with a record, or a V.I.P who's been playing games out of school." He turned to Robinson. "Who usually rents this suite?" Robinson said reluctantly, "It's reserved for our most important guests. Kings, prime ministers ..." He hesitated. "... Presidents." "Have any telephone calls been placed from this phone in the last twenty-four hours?" "I don't know." Detective Reese was getting irritated. "But you would have a record if there was?" "Of course." Detective Reese picked up the telephone. "Operator, this
is Detective Nick Reese. I want to know if any calls were made from the Imperial Suite within the last twenty-four hours.... I'll wait." He watched as the white-coated coroner's men covered the naked girl with a sheet and placed her on a gurney. Jesus Christ, Reese thought. She hadn't even begun to live yet. He heard the operator's voice. "Detective Reese?" "Yes." "There was one call placed from the suite yesterday. It was a local call." Reese took out a notepad and pencil. "What was the number? ... Four-five-six-seven-zero-four-one?..." Reese started to write the numbers down, then suddenly stopped. He was staring at the notepad. "Oh, shit!" "What's the matter?" Detective Nelson asked. Reese looked up. "That's the number of the White House."
Seventeen.
The next morning at breakfast, Jan asked, "Where were you last night, Oliver?" Oliver's heart skipped a beat. But she could not possibly have known what happened. No one could. No one. "I was meeting with " Jan cut him short. "The meeting was called off. But you didn't get home until three o'clock in the morning. I tried to reach you. Where were you?" "Well, something came up. Why? Did you need ? Was something wrong?" "It doesn't matter now," Jan said wearily. "Oliver, you're not just hurting me, you're hurting yourself. You've come so far. I don't want to see you lose it all because because you can't " Her eyes filled with tears.
Oliver stood up and walked over to her. He put his arms around her. "It's all right, Jan. Everything's fine. I love you very much."
And I do, Oliver thought, in my own way. What happened last night wasn't my fault. She was the one who called. I never should have gone to meet her. He had taken every possible precaution not to be seen.
I'm in the clear, Oliver decided.
Peter Tager was worried about Oliver. He had learned that it was impossible to control Oliver Russell's libido, and he had finally worked out an arrangement with him. On certain nights, Peter Tager set up fictitious meetings for the president to attend, away from the White House, and arranged for the Secret Service escort to disappear for a few hours.
When Peter Tager had gone to Senator Davis to complain about what was happening, the senator had said calmly, "Well, after all, Oliver is a very hot-blooded man, Peter. Sometimes it's impossible to control passions like that. I deeply admire your morals, Peter. I know how much your family means to you, and how distasteful the president's behavior must seem to you. But let's not be too judgmental. You just keep on seeing that everything is handled as discreetly as possible."
Detective Nick Reese hated going into the forbidding, white-walled autopsy room. It smelled of formaldehyde and death.
When he walked in the door, the coroner, Helen Chuan, a petite, attractive woman, was waiting for him. "Morning," Reese said. "Have
you finished with the autopsy?" "I have a preliminary report for you, Nick. Jane Doe didn't die from her head injury. Her heart stopped before she hit the table. She died of an overdose of methylenedioxymethamphe-tami. He sighed. "Don't do this to me, Helen." "Sorry. On the streets, it's called Ecstasy." She handed him a coroner's report. "Here's what we have so far."
AUTOPSY PROTOCOL
NAME OF DECEDENT: JANE DOE FILE No: C-Ix6l ANATOMIC SUMMARY
I. DILATED AND HYPERTROPHIC CARDIOMYOPATHY
A. CARDIOMEGALY (750 GM)
B. LEFT VENTRICULAR HYPERTROPHY, HEART (2.3 CM)
C. CONGESTIVE HEPATOMEGALY (2750 GM
D. CONGESTIVE SPLENOMEGALY (350 MG>
II. ACUTE OPIATE INTOXICATION
A. ACUTE PASSIVE CONGESTION, ALL VISCERA
III. TOXICOLOGY (SEE SEPARATE REPORT)
IV. BRAIN HEMORRHAGE (SEE SEPARATE REPORT) CONCLUSION: (CAUSE OF DEATH)
DILATED AND HYPERTROPHIC CARDIOMYOPATHY ACUTE OPIATE INTOXICATION
Nick Reese looked up. "So if you translated this into English, she died of a drug overdose of Ecstasy?" "Yes." "Was she sexually assaulted?" Helen Chuan hesitated. "Her hymen had been broken, and there were traces of semen and a little blood along her thighs." "So she was raped." "I don't think so." "What do you mean you don't think so?" Reese frowned. "There were no signs of violence." Detective Reese was looking at her, puzzled. "What are you saying?" "I think that Jane Doe was a virgin. This was her first sexual experience." Detective Reese stood there, digesting the information. Someone had been able to persuade a virgin to go up to the Imperial Suite and have sex with him. It would have had to be someone she knew. Or someone famous or powerful. The telephone rang. Helen Chuan picked it up. "Coroner's office." She listened a moment, then handed the phone to the detective. "It's for you." Nick Reese took the phone. "Reese." His face brightened.
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Holbrook. Thanks for returning my call. It's a class
ring from your school with the initials P.Y. on it. Do you have a female student with those initials?... I'd appreciate it. Thank you. I'll wait." He looked up at the coroner. "You're sure she couldn't have been raped?" "I found no signs of violence. None." "Could she have been penetrated after she died?" "I would say no." Mrs.
Holbrook's voice came back on the phone. "Detective Reese?" "Yes." "According to our computer, we do have a female student with the initials P.Y. Her name is Pauline Young." "Could you describe her for me, Mrs. Holbrook?" "Why, yes. Pauline is eighteen. She's short and stocky, with dark hair...." "I see." Wrong girl. "And that's the only one?" "The only female, yes." He picked up on it. "You mean you have a male with those initials? "Yes. Paul Yerby. He's a senior.
As a matter of fact, Paul happens to be in Washington, D.C." right now." Detective Reese's heart began to beat faster. "He's here?" "Yes. A class of students from Denver High is on a trip to Washington to visit the White House and Congress and " "And they're all in the city now?"
"That's right."
"Do you happen to know where they're staying?"
"At the Hotel Lombardy. They gave us a group rate there. I talked with several of the other hotels, but they wouldn't "
"Thank you very much, Mrs. Holbrook. I appreciate it."
Nick Reese replaced the receiver and turned to the coroner. "Let me know when the autopsy is complete, will you, Helen?"
"Of course. Good luck, Nick."
He nodded. "I think I've just had it."
The Hotel Lombardy is located on Pennsylvania Avenue, two blocks from Washington Circle and within walking distance of the White House, some monuments, and a subway station. Detective Reese walked into the
old-fashioned lobby and approached the clerk behind the desk. "Do you have a Paul Yerby registered here?" "I'm sorry. We don't give out " Reese flashed his badge. "I'm in a big hurry, friend." "Yes, sir." The clerk looked through his guest register. "There's a Mr. Yerby in Room 315. Shall I ?" "No, I'll surprise him. Stay away from the phone." Reese took the elevator, got off on the third floor, and walked down the corridor. He stopped before Room 315. He could hear voices inside. He unfastened the button of his jacket and knocked on the door. It was opened by a boy in his late teens.
"Hello." "Paul Yerby?" "No." The boy turned to someone in the room. "Paul, someone for you." Nick Reese pushed his way into the room. A slim, tousle-haired boy in jeans and a sweater was coming out of the bathroom. "Paul Yerby?" "Yes. Who are you?" Reese pulled out his badge. "Detective Nick Reese. Homicide." The boy's complexion turned pale. "I what can I do for you?" Nick Reese could smell the fear. He took the dead girl's ring from his pocket and held it out. "Have you
ever seen this ring before, Paul?" "No," Yerby said quickly. "I " "It has your initials on it." "It has? Oh. Yeah." He hesitated. "I guess it could be mine. I must have lost it somewhere." "Or given it to someone?" The boy licked his lips, "Uh, yeah. I might have." "Let's go downtown, Paul." The boy looked at him nervously. "Am I under arrest?" "What for?" Detective Reese asked. "Have you committed a crime?" "Of course not. I..." The words trailed off.
"Then why would I arrest you?"
"I I don't know. I don't know why you want me to go downtown."
He was eyeing the open door. Detective Reese reached out and took a grip on Paul's arm. "Let's go quietly."
The roommate said, "Do you want me to call your mother or anybody, Paul?"
Paul Yerby shook his head, miserable. "No. Don't call anyone." His voice was a whisper.
The Henry I. Daly Building at 300 Indiana Avenue, NW, in downtown Washington is an unprepossessing six-story gray brick building that serves as police headquarters for the district. The Homicide Branch office is on the third floor. While Paul Yerby was being photographed and fingerprinted, Detective Reese went to see Captain Otto Miller. "I think we got a break in the Monroe Arms case." Miller leaned back in his chair. "Go on." "I picked up the girl's boyfriend. The kid's scared out of his wits. We're going to question him now. Do you want to sit in?" Captain Miller nodded toward a pile of papers heaped on his desk. "I'm busy for the next few months. Give me a report." "Right." Detective Reese started toward the door. "Nick be sure to read him his rights."
Paul Yerby was brought into an interrogation room. It was small, nine by twelve, with a battered desk, four chairs, and a video camera. There was a one-way mirror so that officers could watch the interrogation from the next room.
Paul Yerby was facing Nick Reese and two other detectives, Doug Hogan and Edgar Bernstein. "You're aware that we're videotaping this conversation?" Detective Reese "Yes, sir." "You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to represent you." "Would you like to have a lawyer present?" Detective Bernstein "I don't need a lawyer." "All right. You have a right to remain silent. If you waive that right, anything you say here can and will be used against you in a court of law. Is that clear?" "Yes, sir." "What's your legal name?" "Paul Yerby." "Your address?" "Three-twenty Marion Street, Denver, Colorado. Look, I haven't done anything wrong."
"No one says you have. We're just trying to get some information, Paul. You'd like to help us, wouldn't you?" "Sure, but I I don't know what it's all about." "Don't you have any idea?" "No, sir." "Do you
have any girlfriends, Paul?" "Well, you know..." "No, we don't know. Why don't you tell us?" "Well, sure. I see girls ..." "You mean you date girls? You take girls out?" "Yeah." "Do you date any one particular girl?" There was a silence. "Do you have a girlfriend, Paul?" "Yes." "What's her name?" Detective Bernstein "Chloe." "Chloe what?" Detective Reese "Chloe Houston." Reese made a note. "What's her address, Paul?" "Six-oh-two Oak Street, Denver." "What are her parents' names?" "She lives with her mother." "And her name?" "Jackie Houston. She's the governor of Colorado." The detectives looked at one another. Shit! That's all we need!
Reese held up a ring. "Is this your ring, Paul?" He studied it a moment, then said reluctantly, "Yeah." "Did you give Chloe this ring?" He swallowed nervously. "I I guess I did." "You're not sure?" "I remember now. Yes, I did." "You came to Washington with some classmates, right? Kind of a school group?" "That's right." "Was Chloe part of that group?" "Yes, sir." "Where's Chloe now, Paul?" Detective Bernstein "I I don't know." "When did you last see her?" Detective Hogan "I guess a couple of days ago." "Two days ago?" Detective Reese "Yeah." "And where was that?" Detective Bernstein "In the White House." The detectives looked at one another in surprise. "She was in the White House?" Reese asked. "Yes, sir. We were all on a private tour. Chloe's mother arranged it." "And Chloe was with you?" Detective Hogan "Yes." "Did anything unusual happen on the tour?" Detective Bernstein
"What do you mean?" "Did you meet or talk to anyone on the tour?" Detective Bernstein "Well, sure, the guide." "And that's all?" Detective Reese "That's right." "Was Chloe with the group all the time?" Detective Hogan "Yes " Yerby hesitated. "No. She slipped away to go to the ladies' room. She was gone about fifteen minutes. When she came back, she " He stopped. "She what?" Reese asked. "Nothing. She just came back." The boy was obviously lying. "Son," Detective Reese asked, "do you know that Chloe Houston is dead?" They were watching him closely. "No! My God! How?" The surprised look on his face could have been feigned. "Don't you know?" Detective Bernstein "No! I I can't believe it." "You had nothing to do with her death?" Detective Hogan "Of course not! I love ... I loved Chloe." "Did you ever go to bed with her?" Detective Bernstein "No. We we were waiting. We were going to get married." "But sometimes you did drugs together?" Detective Reese
"No! We never did drugs." The door opened and a burly detective, Harry Carter, came into the room. He walked over to Reese and whispered something in his ear. Reese nodded. He sat there staring at Paul Yerby. "When was the last time you saw Chloe Houston?" "I told you, in the White House." He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
Detective Reese leaned forward. "You're in a lot of trouble, Paul. Your fingerprints are all over the Imperial Suite at the Monroe Arms Hotel. How did they get there?" Paul Yerby sat there, pale-faced. "You can quit lying now. We've got you nailed." "I I didn't do anything." "Did you book the suite at the Monroe Arms?" Detective Bernstein "No, I didn't." The emphasis was on the "I." Detective Reese pounced on it. "But you know who did?" "No." The answer came
too quickly. "You admit you were in the suite?" Detective Hogan "Yes, but but Chloe was alive when I left." "Why did you leave?" Detective Hogan "She asked me to. She she was expecting someone." "Come on, Paul. We know you killed her." Detective Bernstein "No!" He was trembling. "I swear I had nothing to do with it. I I just went up to the suite with her. I only stayed a little while."
"Because she was expecting someone?" Detective Reese "Yes. She she was kind of excited." "Did she tell you who she was going to meet?" Detective Hogan He was licking his lips. "No." "You're lying. She did tell you." "You said she was excited. What about?" Detective Reese Paul licked his lips again. "About about the man she was going to meet there for dinner." "Who was the man, Paul?" Detective Bernstein "I can't tell you." "Why not?" Detective Hogan "I promised Chloe I would never tell anyone." "Chloe is dead." Paul Yerby's eyes filled with tears. "I just can't believe it." "Give us the man's name." Detective Reese "I can't do that. I promised." "Here's what's going to happen to you: You're going to spend tonight in jail. In the morning, if you give us the name of the man she was going to meet, we'll let you go. Otherwise, we're going to book you for murder one." Detective Reese They waited for him to speak. Silence. Nick Reese nodded to Bernstein. "Take him away."
Detective Reese returned to Captain Miller's office. "I have bad news and I have worse news." "I haven't time for this, Nick." "The bad news is that I'm not sure it was the boy who gave her the drug. The worse news is that the girl's mother is the governor of Colorado." "Oh, God! The papers will love this." Captain Miller took a deep breath. "Why don't you think the boy's guilty?" "He admits he was in the girl's suite, but he said she told him to leave because she was expecting someone. I think the kid's too smart to come up with a story that stupid. What I do believe is that he knows who Chloe Houston was expecting. He won't say who it was." "Do you have any idea?" "It was her first time in Washington, and they were on a tour of the White House. She didn't know anyone here. She said she was going to the ladies' room. There is no public rest room in the White House. She would have had to go outside to the Visitor's Pavilion on the Ellipse at I5th and E streets or to the White House Visitor Center. She was gone about fifteen minutes. What I think happened is that while trying to find a ladies' room, she ran into someone in the White House, someone she might have recognized. Maybe someone she saw on TV. Anyway, it must have been somebody important. He led her to a private washroom and impressed her enough that she agreed to meet him at the Monroe Arms." Captain Miller was thoughtful. "I'd better call the White
House. They asked to be kept up-to-date on this. Don't let up on the kid. I want that name."
"Right."
As Detective Reese walked out the door, Captain Miller reached for the telephone and dialed a number. A few minutes later, he was saying, "Yes, sir. We have a material witness in custody. He's in a holding
cell at the Indiana Avenue police station.... We won't, sir. I think the boy will give us the man's name tomorrow.... Yes, sir. I understand." The line went dead.
Captain Miller sighed and went back to the pile of papers on his desk.
At eight o'clock the following morning, when Detective Nick Reese went to Paul Yerby's cell, Yerby's body was hanging from one of the top bars.
Eighteen.
DEAD 16-YEAR-OLD IDENTIFIED AS DAUGHTER OF COLORADO GOVERNOR BOYFRIEND
IN POLICE CUSTODY HANGS HIMSELF POLICE HUNT MYSTERY WITNESS
He stared at the headlines and felt suddenly faint. Sixteen years old. She had looked older than that. What was he guilty of? Murder?
Manslaughter, maybe. Plus statutory rape. He had watched her come out of the bathroom of the suite, wearing only a shy smile. "I've never done this before." And he had put his arms around her and stroked her. "I'm glad the first time is with me, honey." Earlier, he had shared a glass of liquid Ecstasy with her. "Drink this. It will make you feel good." They had made love, and afterward she had complained about not feeling well. She had gotten out of bed, stumbled, and hit her head against the table. An accident. Of course, the police would not see it that way. But there's nothing to connect me with her. Nothing.
The whole episode had an air of unreality, a nightmare that had happened to someone else. Somehow, seeing it in print made it real.
Through the walls of the office, he could hear the sound of traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue, outside the White House, and he became aware again of his surroundings. A cabinet meeting was scheduled to begin in a few minutes. He took a deep breath. Pull yourself together.
In the Oval Office were gathered Vice President Melvin Wicks, Sime Lombardo, and Peter Tager. Oliver walked in and sat behind his desk. "Good morning, gentlemen." There were general greetings. Peter Tager said, "Have you seen the Tribune, Mr. President?" "No." "They've identified the girl who died at the Monroe Arms Hotel. I'm afraid it's bad news." Oliver unconsciously stiffened in his chair. "Yes?" "Her name is Chloe Houston. She's the daughter of Jackie Houston."
"Oh, my God!" The words barely escaped the president's lips. They were staring at him, surprised at his reaction. He recovered quickly. "I I knew Jackie Houston ... a long time ago. This this is terrible news. Terrible." Sime Lombardo said, "Even though Washington crime is not our responsibility, the Tribune is going to hammer us on this." Melvin Wicks spoke up. "Is there any way we can shut Leslie Stewart up?" Oliver thought of the passionate evening he had spent with her. "No," Oliver said. "Freedom of the press, gentlemen." Peter Tager
turned to the president. "About the governor ... ?" "I'll handle it." He flicked down an intercom key. "Get me Governor Houston in Denver." "We've got to start some damage control," Peter Tager was saying. "I'll get together statistics on how much crime has gone down in this country, you've asked Congress for more money for our police departments, et cetera." The words sounded hollow even to his own ears. "This is terrible timing," Melvin Wicks said. The intercom buzzed. Oliver picked up the telephone. "Yes?" He listened a moment, then replaced the receiver. "The governor is on her way to Washington." He looked at Peter Tager. "Find out what plane she's on, Peter. Meet her and bring her here."
"Right. There's an editorial in the Tribune. It's pretty rough." Peter Tager handed Oliver the editorial page of the newspaper.
PRESIDENT UNABLE TO CONTROL CRIME IN THE CAPITAL. "It goes on from
there."
"Leslie Stewart is a bitch," Sime Lombardo said quietly. "Someone should have a little talk with her."
In his office at the Washington Tribune, Matt Baker was rereading the editorial attacking the president for being soft on crime when Frank Lonergan walked in. Lonergan was in his early forties, a bright, street-smart journalist who had at one time worked on the police force. He was one of the best investigative journalists in the business.
"You wrote this editorial, Frank?" "Yes," he said.
"This paragraph about crime going down twenty-five percent in Minnesota, that's still bothering me. Why did you just talk about Minnesota?"
Lonergan said, "It was a suggestion from the Ice Princess." "That's ridiculous," Matt Baker snapped. "I'll talk to her."
Leslie Stewart was on the telephone when Matt Baker walked into her office. "I'll leave it to you to arrange the details, but I want us to raise as much money for him as we can. As a matter of fact,
Senator Embry of Minnesota is stopping by for lunch today, and I'll get a list of names from him. Thank you." She replaced the receiver. "Matt." Matt Baker walked over to her desk. "I want to talk to you about this editorial." "It's good, isn't it?" "It stinks, Leslie.
It's propaganda. The president's not responsible for controlling crime in Washington, D.C. We have a mayor who's supposed to do that, and a police force. And what's this crap about crime going down twenty-five percent in Minnesota? Where did you come up with those statistics?" Leslie Stewart leaned back and said calmly, "Matt, this is my paper, f'll say anything I want to say. Oliver Russell is a lousy president, and Gregory Embry would make a great one. We're going to help him get into the White House." She saw the expression on Mart's face and
softened. "Come on, Matt. The Tribune is going to be on the side of the winner. Embry will be good for us. He's on his way here now.
Would you like to join us for lunch?" "No. I don't like people who eat with their hands out." He turned and left the office. In the corridor outside, Matt Baker ran into Senator Embry. The senator was in his fifties, a self-important politician. "Oh, Senator!
Congratulations." Senator Embry looked at him, puzzled, "Thank you. Er for what?"
"For bringing crime down twenty-five percent in your state." And Matt Baker walked away, leaving the senator looking after him with a blank expression on his face.
Lunch was in Leslie Stewart's antique-furnished dining room. A chef was working in the kitchen preparing lunch as Leslie and Senator Embry walked in. The captain hurried up to greet them. "Luncheon is ready whenever you wish, Miss Stewart. Would you care for a drink?" "Not for me," Leslie said. "Senator?" "Well, I don't usually drink during the day, but I'll have a martini." Leslie Stewart was aware that Senator Embry drank a lot during the day. She had a complete file on him. He had a wife and five children and kept a Japanese mistress.
His hobby was secretly funding a paramilitary group in his home state. None of this was important to Leslie. What mattered was that Gregory Embry was a man who believed in letting big business alone and Washington Tribune Enterprises was big business. Leslie intended to make it bigger, and when Embry was president, he was going to help her. They were seated at the dining table. Senator Embry took a sip of his second martini. "I want to thank you for the fundraiser, Leslie.
That's a nice gesture." She smiled warmly. "It's my pleasure. I'll do everything I can to help you beat Oliver Russell."
"Well, I think I stand a pretty good chance."
"I think so, too. The people are getting tired of him and his scandals. My guess is that if there's one more scandal between now and election, they'll throw him out."
Senator Embry studied her a moment. "Do you think there will be?" Leslie nodded and said softly, "I wouldn't be surprised."
The lunch was delicious.
The call came from Antonio Valdez, an assistant in the coroner's office. "Miss Stewart, you said you wanted me to keep you informed about the Chloe Houston case?" "Yes ..." "The cops asked us to keep a lid on it, but since you've been such a good friend, I thought " "Don't worry. You'll be taken care of. Tell me about the autopsy." "Yes, ma'am. The cause of death was a drug called Ecstasy." "What?" "Ecstasy. She took it in liquid form." "I have a little surprise for you that I want you to try.... This is liquid Ecstasy.... A friend of mine gave me this...." And the woman who had been found in the Kentucky River had died of an overdose of liquid Ecstasy. Leslie sat there motionless, her heart pounding. There is a God.
Leslie sent for Frank Lonergan, "I want you to follow up on the death of Chloe Houston. I think the president is involved."
Frank Lonergan was staring at her incredulously. "The president?"
"There's a cover-up going on. I'm convinced of it. That boy they arrested, who conveniently committed suicide ... dig into that. And I want you to check on the president's movements the afternoon and evening of her death. I want this to be a private investigation. Very private. You'll report only to me."
Frank Lonergan took a deep breath. "You know what this could mean?" "Get started. And Frank?"
"Yes?"
"Check the Internet for a drug called Ecstasy. And look for a connection with Oliver Russell."
In a medical Internet site devoted to the hazards of the drug, Lonergan found the story of Miriam Friedland, the former secretary to Oliver Russell. She was in a hospital in Frankfort, Kentucky. Lonergan telephoned to inquire about her. A doctor said, "Miss Friedland passed away two days ago. She never recovered from her coma."
Frank Lonergan put in a telephone call to the office of Governor Houston.
"I'm sorry," her secretary told him, "Governor Houston is on her way to Washington."
Ten minutes later, Frank Lonergan was on his way to National Airport. He was too late.
As the passengers descended from the plane, Lonergan saw Peter Tager approach an attractive blonde in her forties and greet her. The two of them talked for a moment, and then Tager led her to a waiting limousine.
Watching in the distance, Lonergan thought, I've got to talk to that lady. He headed back toward town and began making calls on his car phone. On the third call, he learned that Governor Houston was expected at the Four Seasons Hotel.
When Jackie Houston was ushered into the private study next to the Oval Office, Oliver Russell was waiting for her. He took her hands in his and said, "I'm so terribly sorry, Jackie. There are no words." It had been almost seventeen years since he had last seen her. They had met at a lawyers' convention in Chicago. She had just gotten out of law school. She was young and attractive and eager, and they had had a brief, torrid affair. Seventeen years ago. And Chloe was sixteen years old.
He dared not ask Jackie the question in his mind. I don't want to know. They looked at each other in silence, and for a moment Oliver thought she was going to speak of the past. He looked away. Jackie Houston said, "The police think Paul Yerby had something to do with Chloe's death." "That's right." "No." "No?" "Paul was in love with Chloe. He never would have harmed her." Her voice broke. "They they were going to get married one day." "According to my information, Jackie, they found the boy's fingerprints in the hotel room where she was killed." Jackie Houston said, "The newspapers said that it... that it happened in the Imperial Suite at the Monroe Arms." "Yes." "Oliver, Chloe was on a small allowance. Paul's father was a retired clerk. Where did Chloe get the money for the Imperial Suite?" "I I don't know." "Someone has to find out. I won't leave until I know who is responsible for the death of my daughter." She frowned. "Chloe had an appointment to see you that afternoon. Did you see her?" There was a brief hesitation. "No. I wish I had. Unfortunately, an emergency came up, and I had to cancel our appointment."
In an apartment at the other end of town, lying in bed, their naked bodies spooned together, he could feel the tension in her. "Are you okay, Jo Ann?" "I'm fine, Alex." "You seem far away, baby. What are you thinking about?" "Nothing," JoAnn McGrath said. "Nothing?" "Well, to tell the truth, I was thinking about that poor little girl who was murdered at the hotel." "Yeah, I read about it. She was some governor's daughter." "Yes." "Do the police know who she was with?" "No. They were all over the hotel questioning everybody." "You, too?" "Yeah. All I could tell them was about the telephone call." "What telephone call?" "The one someone in that suite made to the White House." He was suddenly still. He said casually, "That doesn't mean anything. Everybody gets a kick out of calling the White House. Do that to me again, baby. Got any more maple syrup?"
Frank Lonergan had just returned to his office from the airport when the phone rang. "Lonergan."
"Hello, Mr. Lonergan. This is Shallow Throat." Alex Cooper, a small-time parasite who fancied himself a Watergate-class tipster. It was his idea of a joke. "Are you still paying for hot tips?"
"Depends on how hot."
"This one will burn your ass. I want five thousand dollars for it." "Goodbye."
"Wait a minute. Don't hang up. It's about that girl who was murdered at the Monroe Arms."
Frank Lonergan was suddenly interested. "What about her?" "Can you and me meet somewhere?"
"I'll see you at Ricco's in half an hour."
At two o'clock, Frank Lonergan and Alex Cooper were in a booth at Ricco's. Alex Cooper was a thin weasel of a man, and Lonergan hated doing business with him. Lonergan wasn't sure where Cooper got his information, but he had been very helpful in the past. "I hope you're not wasting my time," Lonergan said. "Oh, I don't think it's a waste of time. How would you feel if I told you there's a White House connection to the girl's murder?" There was a smug smile on his face.
Frank Lonergan managed to conceal his excitement. "Go on." "Five thousand dollars?"
"One thousand." "Two."
"You have a deal. Talk."
"My girlfriend's a telephone operator at the Monroe Arms." "What's her name?"
"JoAnn McGrath."
Lonergan made a note. "So?"
"Someone in the Imperial Suite made a telephone call to the White House during the time the girl was there."
"I think the president is involved," Leslie Stewart had said. "Are you sure about this?"
"Horse's mouth."
"I'll check it out. If it's true, you'll get your money. Have you mentioned this to anyone else?"
"Nope."
"Good. Don't." Lonergan rose. "We'll keep in touch." "There's one more thing," Cooper said.
Lonergan stopped. "Yes?"
"You've got to keep me out of this. I don't want JoAnn to know that I talked to anyone about it."
"No problem."
And Alex Cooper was alone, thinking about how he was going to spend the two thousand dollars without JoAnn's knowing about it.
T7O
The Monroe Arms switchboard was in a cubicle behind the lobby reception desk. When Lonergan walked in carrying a clipboard, JoAnn McGrath was on duty. She was saying into the mouthpiece, "I'm ringing for you." She connected a call and turned to Lonergan. "Can I help you?" "Telephone Company," Lonergan said. He flashed some identification. "We have a problem here." JoAnn McGrath looked at him, surprised. "What kind of problem?" "Someone reported that they're being charged for calls they didn't make." He pretended to consult the clipboard. "October fifteenth. They were charged for a call to Germany, and they don't even know anyone in Germany. They're pretty teed off." "Well, I don't know anything about that," JoAnn said indignantly. "I don't even remember placing any calls to Germany in the last month." "Do you have a record of the fifteenth?" "Of course." "I'd like to see it." "Very well." She found a folder under a pile of papers and handed it to him. The switchboard was buzzing. While she attended to the calls, Lonergan quickly went through the folder. October I2th ... i3th ... i4th ... i6th ... The page for the fifteenth was missing.
Frank Lonergan was waiting in the lobby of the Four Seasons when Jackie Houston returned from the White House. "Governor Houston?" She turned. "Yes?" "Frank Lonergan. I'm with the Washington Tribune. I want to tell you how sorry all of us are, Governor." "Thank you." "I wonder if I could talk to you for a minute?" "I'm really not in the " "I might be able to be helpful." He nodded toward the lounge off the main lobby. "Could we go in there for a moment?" She took a deep breath. "All right." They walked into the lounge and sat down. "I understand that your daughter went on a tour of the White House the day she..." He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence. "Yes. She she was on a tour with her school friends. She was very excited about meeting the president." Lonergan kept his voice casual. "She was going to see President Russell?" "Yes. I arranged it. We're old friends." "And did she see him, Governor Houston?" "No. He wasn't able to see her." Her voice was choked. "There's one thing I'm sure of." "Yes, ma'am."
"Paul Yerby didn't kill her. They were in love with each other." "But the police said "
"I don't care what they said. They arrested an innocent boy, and he he was so upset that he hanged himself. It's awful."
Frank Lonergan studied her for a moment. "If Paul Yerby didn't kill your daughter, do you have any idea who might have? I mean, did she say anything about meeting anyone in Washington?"
"No. She didn't know a soul here. She was so looking forward to ... to ..." Her eyes brimmed with tears. "I'm sorry. You'll have to excuse me."
"Of course. Thanks for your time, Governor Houston."
Lonergan's next stop was at the morgue. Helen Chuan was just coming out of the autopsy room. "Well, look who's here." "Hi, Doc." "What brings you down here, Frank?" "I wanted to talk to you about Paul Yerby." Helen Chuan sighed. "It's a damn shame. Those kids were both so young." "Why would a boy like that commit suicide?" Helen Chuan shrugged. "Who knows?" "I mean are you sure he committed suicide?" "If he didn't, he gave a great imitation. His belt was wrapped around his neck so tightly that they had to cut it in half to bring him down."
"There were no other marks or anything on his body that might have suggested foul play?"
She looked at him, curious. "No."
Lonergan nodded. "Okay. Thanks. You don't want to keep your patients waiting."
"Very funny."
There was a phone booth in the outside corridor. From the Denver information operator, Lonergan got the number of Paul Yerby's parents. Mrs. Yerby answered the phone. Her voice sounded weary. "Hello." "Mrs. Yerby?" "Yes." "I'm sorry to bother you. This is Frank Lonergan. I'm with the Washington Tribune. I wanted to " "I can't..." A moment later, Mr. Yerby was on the line. "I'm sorry. My wife is
... Newspapers have been bothering us all morning. We don't want to " "This will only take a minute, Mr. Yerby. There are some people in Washington who don't believe your son killed Chloe Houston." "Of course he didn't!" His voice suddenly became stronger. "Paul could never, never have done anything like that."
"Did Paul have any friends in Washington, Mr. Yerby?" "No. He didn't know anyone there." "I see. Well, if there's anything I can do ..." "There is something you can do for us, Mr. Lonergan. We've arranged to have Paul's body shipped back here, but I'm not sure how to get his possessions. We'd like to have whatever he ... If you could tell me who to talk to ..." "I can handle that for you." "We'd appreciate it. Thank you."
In the Homicide Branch office, the sergeant on duty was opening a carton containing Paul Yerby's personal effects. "There's not much in it," he said. "Just the kid's clothes and a camera."
Lonergan reached into the box and picked up a black leather belt. It was uncut.
When Frank Lonergan walked into the office of President Russell's appointments secretary, Deborah Kanner, she was getting ready to leave for lunch. "What can I do for you, Frank?" "I've got a problem, Deborah." "What else is new?" Frank Lonergan pretended to look at some notes. "I have information that on October fifteenth the
president had a secret meeting here with an emissary from China to talk about Tibet."
"I don't know of any such meeting." "Could you just check it out for me?" "What did you say the date was?"
"October fifteenth." Loriergan watched as Deborah pulled an appointment book from a drawer and skimmed through it.
"October fifteenth? What time was this meeting supposed to be?" "Ten P.M." here in the Oval Office."
She shook her head. "Nope. At ten o'clock that night the president was in a meeting with General Whitman."
Lonergan frowned. "That's not what I heard. Could I have a look at that book?"
"Sorry. It's confidential, Frank."
"Maybe I got a bum steer. Thanks, Deborah." He left.
Thirty minutes later, Frank Lonergan was talking to General Steve Whitman. "General, the Tribune would like to do some coverage on the meeting you had with the president on October fifteenth. I understand some important points were discussed." The general shook his head. "I don't know where you get your information, Mr. Lonergan. That meeting was called off. The president had another appointment." "Are you sure?"
"Yes. We're going to reschedule it." "Thank you, General."
Frank Lonergan returned to the White House. He walked into Deborah Kanner's office again. "What is it this time, Frank?" "Same thing," Lonergan said ruefully. "My informant swears that at ten o'clock on the night of October fifteenth the president was here in a meeting with a Chinese emissary to discuss Tibet." She looked at him, exasperated. "How many times do I have to tell you that there was no such meeting?" Lonergan sighed. "Frankly, I don't know what to do. My boss really wants to run that story. It's big news. I guess we'll just have to go with it." He started toward the door. "Wait a minute!" He turned. "Yes?" "You can't run that story. It's not true. The president will be furious." "It's not my decision." Deborah hesitated. "If I can prove to you that he was meeting with General Whitman, will you forget about it?" "Sure. I don't want to cause any problems." Lonergan watched Deborah pull the appointment book out again and flip the pages. "Here's a list of the president's appointments for that date. Look.
October fifteenth." There were two pages of listings. Deborah pointed to a 10:00 P.M. entry. "There it is, in black and white." "You're right," Lonergan said. He was busy scanning the page. There was an
entry at three o'clock. Chloe Houston. Nineteen.
The hastily called meeting in the Oval Office had been going on for only a few minutes and the air was already crackling with dissension. The secretary of defense was saying, "If we delay any longer, the situation is going to get completely out of control. It will be too late to stop it." "We can't rush into this." General Stephen Gossard turned to the head of the CIA. "How hard is your information?" "It's difficult to say. We're fairly certain that Libya is buying a variety of weapons from Iran and China." Oliver turned to the secretary of state. "Libya denies it?" "Of course. So do China and Iran." Oliver asked, "What about the other Arab states?"
The CIA chief responded. "From the information I have, Mr. President, if a serious attack is launched on Israel, I think it's going to be the excuse that all the other Arab states have been waiting for. They'll join in to wipe Israel out."
They were all looking at Oliver expectantly. "Do you have reliable assets in Libya?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"I want an update. Keep me informed. If there are signs of an attack, we have no choice but to move."
The meeting was adjourned.
Oliver's secretary's voice came over the intercom. "Mr. Tager would like to see you, Mr. President."
"Have him come in."
"How did the meeting go?" Peter Tager asked. "Oh, it was just your average meeting," Oliver said bitterly, "about whether I want to start a war now or later." Tager said sympathetically, "It goes with the territory." "Right." "Something of interest has come up." "Sit down." Peter Tager took a seat. "What do you know about the United Arab Emirates?" "Not a lot," Oliver said. "Five or six Arab states got together twenty years ago or so and formed a coalition." "Seven of them. They joined together in 1971. Abu Dhabi, Fujaira, Dubai, Sharjah, Ras al-Khaimah, Umm al-Qaiwan, and
Ajman. When they started out, they weren't very strong, but the Emirates have been incredibly well run. Today they have one of the world's highest standards of living. Their gross domestic product last year was over thirty-nine billion dollars."
Oliver said impatiently, "I assume there's a point to this, Peter?"
"Yes, sir. The head of the council of the United Arab Emirates wants to meet with you."
"All right. I'll have the secretary of defense " "Today. In private."
"Are you serious? I couldn't possibly "
"Oliver, the Majus their council is one of the most important Arab influences in the world. It has the respect of every other Arab nation. This could be an important breakthrough. I know this is unorthodox, but I think you should meet with them."
"State would have a fit if I " "I'll make the arrangements."
There was a long silence. "Where do they want to meet?"
"They have a yacht anchored in Chesapeake Bay, near Annapolis. I can get you there quietly."
Oliver sat there, studying the ceiling. Finally, he leaned forward and pressed down the intercom switch. "Cancel my appointments for this afternoon."
The yacht, a 212-foot Feadship, was moored at the dock. They were waiting for him. All the crew members were Arabs.
"Welcome, Mr. President." It was Ali al-Fulani, the secretary at one of the United Arab Emirates. "Please come aboard." Oliver stepped aboard and Ali al-Fulani signaled to one of the men. A few moments later, the yacht was underway. "Shall we go below?" Right. Where I can be killed or kidnapped. This is the stupidest thing I have ever done, Oliver decided. Maybe they brought me here so they can begin their attack on Israel, and I won't be able to give orders to retaliate. Why the hell did I let Tager talk me into this? Oliver followed Ali al-Fulani downstairs into the sumptuous main saloon, which was decorated in Middle Eastern style. There were four muscular Arabs standing on guard in the saloon. An imposing-looking man seated on the couch rose as Oliver came in. Ali al-Fulani said, "Mr. President, His Majesty King Hamad of Ajman." The two men shook hands. "Your Majesty." "Thank you for coming, Mr. President. Would you care for some tea?" "No, thank you." "I believe you will find this visit well worth your while." King Hamad began to pace. "Mr. President, over the centuries, it has been difficult, if not impossible, to bridge the problems that divide us philosophical, linguistic, religious, cultural. Those are the reasons there have been so many wars in our part of the world. If Jews confiscate the land of Palestinians, no one in Omaha or Kansas is affected. Their lives go on the same. If a synagogue in Jerusalem is bombed, the Italians in Rome and Venice pay no attention." Oliver wondered where this was heading. Was it a warning of a coming war? "There is only one part of the world that suffers from all the wars and bloodshed in the Middle East. And that is the Middle East." He sat down across from Oliver. "It is time for us to put a stop to
this madness." Here it comes, Oliver thought. "The heads of the Arab states and the Majlis have authorized me to make you an offer." "What kind of an offer?" "An offer of peace." Oliver blinked. "Peace?" "We want to make peace with your ally, Israel. Your embargoes against Iran and other Arab countries have cost us untold billions of dollars. We want to put an end to that. If the United States will act as a sponsor, the Arab countries including Iran, Libya, and Syria have agreed to sit down and negotiate a permanent peace treaty with Israel." Oliver was stunned. When he found his voice, he said, "You're doing this because " "I assure you it is not out of love for the Israelis or for the Americans. It is in our own interests. Too many of our sons have been killed in this madness. We want it to end. It is enough. We want to be free to sell all our oil to the world again. We are prepared to go to war if necessary, but we would prefer peace."
Oliver took a deep breath. "I think I would like some tea."
"I wish you had been there," Oliver said to Peter Tager. "It was incredible. They're ready to go to war, but they don't want to. They're pragmatists. They want to sell their oil to the world, so they want peace."
"That's fantastic," Tager said enthusiastically. "When this gets out, you're going to be a hero."
"And I can do this on my own," Oliver told him. "It doesn't have to go through Congress. I'll have a talk with the Prime Minister of Israel. We'll help him make a deal with the Arab countries." He looked at Tager and said ruefully, "For a few minutes there, I thought I was going to be kidnapped."
"No chance," Peter Tager assured him. "I had a boat and a helicopter following you."
"Senator Davis is here to see you, Mr. President. He has no appointment, but he says it's urgent."
"Hold up my next appointment and send the senator in." The door opened and Todd Davis walked into the Oval
Office.
"This is a nice surprise, Todd. Is everything all right?" Senator Davis took a seat. "Fine, Oliver. I just thought you and I should have a little chat."
9Q4
Oliver smiled. "I have a pretty full schedule today, but for you " "This will take only a few minutes. I ran into Peter Tager. He told me about your meeting with the Arabs." Oliver grinned. "Isn't that wonderful? It looks like we're finally going to have peace in the Middle East." He slammed a fist on the desk. "After all these decades! That's what my administration is going to be remembered for,
Todd." Senator Davis asked quietly, "Have you thought this through, Oliver?" Oliver frowned. "What? What do you mean?" "Peace is a simple word, but it has a lot of ramifications. Peace doesn't have any financial benefits. When there's a war, countries buy billions of dollars' worth of armaments that are made here in the United States. In peacetime, they don't need any. Because Iran can't sell its oil, oil prices are up, and the United States gets the benefit of that." Oliver was listening to him unbelievingly. "Todd this is the opportunity of a lifetime!" "Don't be naive, Oliver. If we had really wanted to make peace between Israel and the Arab countries, we could have done it long ago. Israel is a tiny country. Any one of the last half-dozen presidents could have forced them to make a deal with the Arabs, but they preferred to keep things as they were. Don't misunderstand me.
Jews are fine people. I work with some of them in the Senate." "I don't believe that you can " "Believe what you like, Oliver. A peace treaty now would not be in the best interest of this country. I don't want you to go ahead with it."
"I have to go ahead with it."
"Don't tell me what you have to do, Oliver." Senator Davis leaned forward. "I'll tell you. Don't forget who put you in that chair."
Oliver said quietly, "Todd, you may not respect me, but you must respect this office. Regardless of who put me here, I'm the president."
Senator Davis got to his feet. "The president? You're a fucking
blow-up toy! You're my dummy, Oliver. You take orders, you don't give them."
Oliver looked at him for a long moment. "How many oil fields do you and your friends own, Todd?"
"That's none of your goddam business. If you go through with this, you're finished. Do you hear me? I'm giving you twenty-four hours to come to your senses."
At dinner that evening, Jan said, "Father asked me to talk to you, Oliver. He's very upset." He looked across the table at his wife and thought, I'm going to have to fight you, too. "He told me what was happening." "Did he?" "Yes." She leaned across the table. "And I think what you're going to do is wonderful."
It took a moment for Oliver to understand. "But your father's against it."
"I know. And he's wrong. If they're willing to make peace you have to help."
Oliver sat there listening to Jan's words, studying her. He thought about how well she had handled herself as the First Lady. She had become involved in important charities and had been an advocate for a half-dozen major causes. She was lovely and intelligent and caring and
it was as though Oliver were seeing her for the first time. Why have I been running around? Oliver thought. I have everything I need right here.
"Will it be a long meeting tonight?"
"No," Oliver said slowly. "I'm going to cancel it. I'm staying home."
That evening, Oliver made love to Jan for the first time in weeks, and it was wonderful. And in the morning, he thought, I'm going to have Peter get rid of the apartment.
The note was on his desk the next morning. I want you to know that I am a real fan of yours, and I would not do anything to harm you. I was in the garage of the Monroe Arms on the iph, and I was very surprised to see you there. The next day when I read about the murder of that young girl, I knew why you went back to wipe your fingerprints off the elevator but tons. I'm sure that all the newspapers would be interested in my story and would pay me a lot of money. But like I said, I'm a fan of yours. I certainly would not want to do anything to hurt you. I could use some financial help, and if you are interested, this will be just between us. I will get in touch with you in a few days while you think about it.
Sincerely, A friend
"Jesus," Sime Lombardo said softly. "This is incredible. How was it delivered?"
"It was mailed," Peter Tager told him. "Addressed to the president, "Personal." "
Sime Lombardo said, "It could be some nut who's just trying to "
"We can't take a chance, Sime. I don't believe for a minute that it's true, but if even a whisper of this gets out, it would destroy the president. We must protect him."
"How do we do that?"
"First, we have to find out who sent this."
Peter Tager was at the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters at loth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, talking to Special Agent Clay Jacobs. "You said it was urgent, Peter?" "Yes." Peter Tager opened a briefcase and took out a single sheet of paper. He slid it across the desk. Clay Jacobs picked it up and read it aloud:
" "I want you to know that I'm a real fan of yours.... I will get in touch with you in a few days while you think about it." "
Everything in between had been whited out.
Jacobs looked up. "What is this?"
"It involves the highest security," Peter Tager said. "The president asked me to try to find out who sent it. He would like you to check it for fingerprints."
Clay Jacobs studied the paper again, frowning. "This is highly unusual, Peter."
"Why?"
"It just smells wrong."
"All the president wants is for you to give him the name of the individual who wrote it."
"Assuming his fingerprints are on it."
Peter Tager nodded. "Assuming his fingerprints are on it." "Wait here." Jacobs rose and left the office.
Peter Tager sat there looking out the window, thinking about the letter and its possible terrible consequences.
Exactly seven minutes later, Clay Jacobs returned. "You're in luck," he said.
Peter Tager's heart began to race. "You found something?"
"Yes." Jacobs handed Tager a slip of paper. "The man you're looking for was involved in a traffic accident about a year ago. His name is Carl Gorman. He works as a clerk at the Monroe Arms." He stood there a moment, studying Tager. "Is there anything else you'd like to tell me about this?" "No," Peter Tager said sincerely. "There isn't."
"Frank Lonergan is on line three, Miss Stewart. He says it's urgent."
"I'll take it." Leslie picked up the telephone and pressed a button. "Frank?"
"Are you alone?" "Yes."
She heard him take a deep breath. "Okay. Here we go." He spoke for the next ten minutes without interruption.
Leslie Stewart hurried into Matt Baker's office. "We have to talk, Matt." She sat down across from his desk. "What if I told you that Oliver Russell is involved in the murder of Chloe Houston?" "For openers, I'd say you are paranoid and that you've gone over the edge."
"Frank Lonergan just phoned in. He talked to Governor Houston, who doesn't believe that Paul Yerby killed her daughter. He talked to Paul Yerby's parents. They don't believe it either." "I wouldn't expect them to," Matt Baker said. "If that's the only " "That's just the beginning. Frank went down to the morgue and spoke to the coroner. She told him that the kid's belt was so tight that they had to cut it away from his throat." He was listening more intently now. "And ?" "Frank went down to pick up Yerby's belongings. His belt was there. Intact." Matt Baker drew a deep breath. "You're telling me that he was murdered in prison and that there was a cover-up?" "I'm not telling you anything. I'm just reporting the facts. Oliver Russell tried to get me to use Ecstasy once. When he was running for governor, a woman who was a legal secretary died from Ecstasy. While he was governor, his secretary was found in a park in an Ecstasy-induced coma. Lonergan learned that Oliver called the hospital and suggested they take her off life-support systems." Leslie leaned forward. "There was a telephone call from the Imperial Suite to the White House the night Chloe Houston was murdered. Frank checked the hotel telephone records. The page for the fifteenth was missing. The president's appointments secretary told Lonergan that the president had a meeting with General Whitman that night. There was no meeting. Frank spoke to Governor Houston, and she said that Chloe was on a tour of the White House and that she had arranged for her daughter to meet the president." There was a long silence. "Where's Frank Lonergan now?" Matt Baker asked. "He's tracking down Carl Gorman, the hotel clerk who booked the Imperial Suite."
Jeremy Robinson was saying, "I'm sorry. We don't give out personal information about our employees." Frank Lonergan said, "All I'm asking for is his home address so I can " "It wouldn't do you any good. Mr.
Gorman is on vacation." Lonergan sighed. "That's too bad. I was hoping he could fill in a few blank spots." "Blank spots?" "Yes. We're doing a big story on the death of Governor Houston's daughter in your hotel. Well, I'll just have to piece it together without Gorman." He took out a pad and a pen. "How long has this hotel been here? I want to know all about its background, its clientele, its " Jeremy Robinson frowned. "Wait a minute! Surely that's not necessary. I mean she could have died anywhere." Frank Lonergan said sympathetically, "I know, but it happened here. Your hotel is going to become as famous as Watergate." "Mr. ?" "Lonergan." "Mr. Lonergan, I would appreciate it if you could I mean this kind of publicity is very bad. Isn't there some way ?" Lonergan was thoughtful for a moment. "Well, if I spoke to Mr. Gorman, I suppose I could find a different angle." "I would really appreciate that. Let me get you his address."
Frank Lonergan was becoming nervous. As the outline of events began to take shape, it became clear that there was a murder conspiracy and a cover-up at the highest level. Before he went to see the hotel clerk, he decided to stop at his apartment house. His wife, Rita, was in the kitchen preparing dinner. She was a petite redhead with sparkling green eyes and a fair complexion. She turned in surprise as her husband walked in. "Frank, what are you doing home in the middle of the day?" "Just thought I'd drop in and say hello." She looked at his
face. "No. There's something going on. What is it?" He hesitated. "How long has it been since you've seen your mother?" "I saw her last week. Why?" "Why don't you go visit her again, honey?" "Is anything wrong?" He grinned. "Wrong?" He walked over to the mantel. "You'd better start dusting this off. We're going to put a Pulitzer Prize here and a Peabody Award here." "What are you talking about?" "I'm on to something that's going to blow everybody away and I mean people in high places. It's the most exciting story I've ever been involved
in."
"Why do you want me to go see my mother?"
He shrugged. "There's just an outside chance that this could get to be a little dangerous. There are some people who don't want this story to get out. I'd feel better if you were away for a few days, just until this breaks."
"But if you're in danger " "I'm not in any danger."
"You're sure nothing's going to happen to you?" "Positive. Pack a few things, and I'll call you tonight." "All right," Rita said reluctantly.
Lonergan looked at his watch. "I'll drive you to the train station."
One hour later, Lonergan stopped in front of a modest brick house in the Wheaton area. He got out of the car, walked to the front door, and rang the bell. There was no answer. He rang again and waited. The door suddenly swung open and a heavyset middle-aged woman stood in the doorway, regarding him suspiciously. "Yes?" "I'm with the Internal Revenue Service," Lonergan said. He flashed a piece of identification. "I want to see Carl Gorman." "My brother's not here." "Do you know where he is?" "No." Too fast. Lonergan nodded. "That's a shame.
Well, you might as well start packing up his things. I'll have the department send over the vans." Lonergan started back down the driveway toward his car. "Wait a minute! What vans? What are you talking about?" Lonergan stopped and turned. "Didn't your brother tell you?" "Tell me what?" Lonergan took a few steps back toward the house. "He's in trouble." She looked at him anxiously. "What kind of trouble?" "I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss it." He shook his head. "He seems like a nice guy, too." "He is," she said fervently. "Carl is a wonderful person." Lonergan nodded. "That was my feeling when we were questioning him down at the bureau." She was panicky. "Questioning him about what?" "Cheating on his income tax. It's too bad. I wanted to tell him about a loophole that could have helped him out, but " He shrugged. "If he's not here..." He turned to go again. "Wait! He's he's at a fishing lodge. I I'm not supposed to tell anybody." He shrugged. "That's okay with me." "No ... but this is different. It's the Sunshine Fishing Lodge on the lake in Richmond, Virginia." "Fine. I'll contact him there." "That would be wonderful.
You're sure he'll be all right?" "Absolutely," Lonergan said. "I'll see that he's taken care of."
Lonergan took 1-95, heading south. Richmond was a little over a hundred miles away. On a vacation, years ago, Lonergan had fished the lake, and he had been lucky.
He hoped he would be as lucky this time.
It was drizzling, but Carl Gorman did not mind. That's when the fish were supposed to bite. He was fishing for striped bass, using large minnows on slip bobbers, far out behind the row-boat. The waves lapped against the small boat in the middle of the lake, and the bait drifted behind the boat, untouched. The fish were in no hurry. It did not matter. Neither was he. He had never been happier. He was going to be rich beyond his wildest dreams. It had been sheer luck. You have to be at the right place at the right time. He had returned to the Monroe Arms to pick up a jacket he had forgotten and was about to leave the garage when the private elevator door opened. When he saw who got out, he had sat in his car, stunned. He had watched the man return, wipe off his fingerprints, then drive away. It was not until he read about the murder the following day that he had put it all together. In a way, he felt sorry for the man. I really am a fan of his. The trouble is, when you're that famous, you can never hide. Wherever you go, the world knows you. He'll pay me to be quiet. He has no choice. I'll start with a hundred thousand. Once he pays that, he'll have to keep paying.
Maybe I'll buy a chateau in France or a chalet in Switzerland.
He felt a tug at the end of his line and snapped the rod toward him. He could feel the fish trying to get away. You're not going anywhere.
I've got you hooked.
In the distance, he heard a large speedboat approaching. They shouldn't allow power boats on the lake. They'll scare all the fish away. The speedboat was bearing down on him.
"Don't get too close," Carl shouted.
The speedboat seemed to be heading right toward him.
"Hey! Be careful. Watch where you're going. For God's sake "
The speedboat plowed into the rowboat, cutting it in half, the water sucking Gorman under.
Damn drunken fool! He was gasping for air. He managed to get his head above water. The speedboat had circled and was heading straight for him again. And the last thing Carl Gorman felt before the boat smashed into his skull was the tug of the fish on his line.
When Frank Lonergan arrived, the area was crowded with police cars, a fire engine, and an ambulance. The ambulance was just pulling away.
Frank Lonergan got out of his car and said to a bystander, "What's all the excitement?" "Some poor guy was in an accident on the lake.
There's not much left of him." And Lonergan knew.
At midnight, Frank Lonergan was working at his computer, alone in his apartment, writing the story that was going to destroy the President of the United States. It was a story that would earn him a Pulitzer Prize. There was no doubt about it in his mind. This was going to make him more famous than Woodward and Bernstein. It was the story of the century. He was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell. He got up and walked over to the front door. "Who is it?" "A package from Leslie Stewart." She's found some new information. He opened the door. There was a glint of metal, and an unbearable pain tore his chest apart. Then nothing.
Twenty.
Frank Lonergan's living room looked as if it had been struck by a miniature hurricane. All the drawers and cabinets had been pulled open and their contents had been scattered over the floor. Nick Reese watched Frank Lonergan's body being removed. He turned to Detective Steve Brown. "Any sign of the murder weapon?" "No." "Have you talked to the neighbors?" "Yeah. The apartment building is a zoo, full of monkeys. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Nada. Mrs.
Lonergan is on her way back here. She heard the news on the radio. There have been a couple other robberies here in the last six months, and "
"I'm not so sure this was a robbery." "What do you mean?"
"Lonergan was down at headquarters the other day to check on Paul Yerby's things. I'd like to know what story Lonergan was working on. No papers in the drawers?"
"Nope." "No notes?" "Nothing."
"So either he was very neat, or someone took the trouble to clean everything out." Reese walked over to the work table. There was a cable dangling off the table, connected to nothing. Reese held it up. "What's this?"
Detective Brown walked over. "It's a power cable for a computer. There must have been one here. That means there could be backups somewhere."
"They may have taken the computer, but Lonergan might have saved copies of his files. Let's check it out."
They found the backup disk in a briefcase in Lonergan's automobile. Reese handed it to Brown. "I want you to take this down to headquarters. There's probably a password to get into it. Have Chris Colby look at it. He's an expert." The front door of the apartment opened and Rita Lonergan walked in. She looked pale and distraught.
She stopped when she saw the men. "Mrs. Lonergan?" "Who are ?"
"Detective Nick Reese, Homicide. This is Detective Brown." Rita Lonergan looked around. "Where is ?"
"We had your husband's body taken away, Mrs. Lonergan. I'm terribly sorry. I know it's a bad time, but I'd like to ask you a few questions."
She looked at him, and her eyes suddenly filled with fear. The last reaction Reese had expected. What was she afraid of?
"Your husband was working on a story, wasn't he?"
His voice echoed in her mind. "I'm on to something that's going to blow everybody away and I mean people in high places. It's the most exciting story I've ever been involved in."
"Mrs. Lonergan?"
"I I don't know anything,"
"You don't know what assignment he was working on?" "No. Frank never discussed his work with me."
She was obviously lying.
"You have no idea who might have killed him?"
She looked around at the open drawers and cabinets. "It it must have been a burglar."
Detective Reese and Detective Brown looked at each other.
"If you don't mind, I'd I'd like to be alone. This has been a terrible shock."
"Of course. Is there anything we can do for you?" "No. Just... just leave."
"We'll be back," Nick Reese promised.
When Detective Reese returned to police headquarters, he telephoned Matt Baker. "I'm investigating the Frank Lonergan murder," Reese said.
"Can you tell me what he was working on?"
"Yes. Frank was investigating the Chloe Houston killing." "I see. Did he file a story?"
"No. We were waiting for it, when " He stopped. "Right. Thank you, Mr. Baker."
"If you get any information, will you let me know?" "You'll be the first," Reese assured him.
The following morning, Dana Evans went into Tom Hawkins's office. "I want to do a story on Frank's death. I'd like to go see his widow."
"Good idea. I'll arrange for a camera crew."
Late that afternoon, Dana and her camera crew pulled up in front of Frank Lonergan's apartment building. With the crew following her, Dana approached Lonergan's apartment door and rang the bell. This was the kind of interview Dana dreaded. It was bad enough to show on television the victims of horrible crimes, but to intrude on the grief of the stricken families seemed even worse to her.
The door opened and Rita Lonergan stood there. "What do you ?" "I'm sorry to bother you, Mrs. Lonergan. I'm Dana Evans, with WTE. We'd like to get your reaction to " Rita Lonergan froze for a moment, and then screamed, "You murderers!" She turned and ran inside the apartment. Dana looked at the cameraman, shocked. "Wait here." She went inside and found Rita Lonergan in the bedroom. "Mrs. Lonergan " "Get out! You killed my husband!" Dana was puzzled. "What are you talking about?" "Your people gave him an assignment so dangerous that he made me leave town because he... he was afraid for my life." Dana looked at her, appalled. "What what story was he working on?" "Frank wouldn't tell me." She was fighting hysteria. "He said it was too too dangerous. It was something big. He talked about the Pulitzer Prize and the " She started to cry. Dana went over to her and put her arms around her. "I'm so sorry. Did he say anything else?" "No. He said I should get out, and he drove me to the train station. He was on his way to see some some hotel clerk." "Where?" "At the Monroe Arms."
"I don't know why you're here, Miss Evans," Jeremy Robinson protested. "Lonergan promised me that if I cooperated, there would be no bad publicity about the hotel."
"Mr. Robinson, Mr. Lonergan is dead. All I want is some information."
Jeremy Robinson shook his head. "I don't know anything." "What did you tell Mr. Lonergan?"
Robinson sighed. "He asked for the address of Carl Gorman, my hotel clerk. I gave it to him."
"Did Mr. Lonergan go to see him?" "I have no idea."
"I'd like to have that address."
Jeremy looked at her a moment and sighed again. "Very well. He lives with his sister."
A few minutes later, Dana had the address in her hands. Robinson watched her leave the hotel, and then he picked up the phone and dialed the White House.
He wondered why they were so interested in the case.
Chris Colby, the department's computer expert, walked into Detective Reese's office holding a floppy disk. He was almost trembling with excitement. "What did you get?" Detective Reese asked. Chris Colby took a deep breath. "This is going to blow your mind. Here's a printout of what's on this disk."
Detective Reese started to read it and an incredulous expression came over his face. "Mother of God," he said. "I've got to show this to Captain Miller."
When Captain Otto Miller finished reading the printout, he looked up at Detective Reese. "I I've never seen anything like this."
"There's never been anything like this," Detective Reese said. "What the hell do we do with it?"
Captain Miller said slowly, "I think we have to turn it over to the
U.S. attorney general."
They were gathered in the office of Attorney General Barbara Gatlin. With her in the room were Scott Brandon, director of the FBI; Dean Bergstrom, the Washington chief of police; James Frisch, director of Central Intelligence, and Edgar Graves, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Barbara Gatlin said, "I asked you gentlemen here because I need your advice. Frankly, I don't know how to proceed. We have a situation that's unique. Frank Lonergan was a reporter for the Washington Tribune. When he was killed, he was in the middle of an investigation into the murder of Chloe Houston. I'm going to read you a transcript of what the police found on a disk in Lonergan's car." She looked at the printout in her hand and started to read aloud:
" "I have reason to believe that the President of the United States has committed at least one murder and is involved in four more " "What?" Scott Brandon exclaimed. "Let me go on." She started to read again.
" "I obtained the following information from various sources. Leslie Stewart, the owner and publisher of the Washington Tribune, is willing
to swear that at one time, Oliver Russell tried to persuade her to take an illegal drug called liquid Ecstasy. " "When Oliver Russell was running for governor of Kentucky, Lisa Burnette, a legal secretary who worked in the state capitol building, threatened to sue him for sexual harassment. Russell told a colleague that he would have a talk with her. The next day, Lisa Burnette's body was found in the Kentucky River. She had died of an overdose of liquid Ecstasy. "
"Then-Governor Oliver Russell's secretary, Miriam Friedland, was found unconscious on a park bench late at night. She was in a coma induced by liquid Ecstasy. The police were waiting for her to come out of it so that they could find out who had given it to her. Oliver Russell telephoned the hospital and suggested they take her off life support. Miriam Fried-land passed away without coming out of the coma. " "Chloe Houston was killed by an overdose of liquid Ecstasy. I learned that on the night of her death, there was a phone call from the hotel suite to the White House. When I looked at the hotel telephone records to check it, the page for that day was missing.
" "I was told that the president was at a meeting that night, but I discovered that the meeting had been canceled. No one knows the president's whereabouts that night. " "Paul Yerby was detained as a suspect in Chloe Houston's murder. Captain Otto Miller told the White House where Yerby was being held. The following morning Yerby was found hanging in his cell. He was supposed to have hanged himself with his belt, but when I looked through his effects at the police station, his belt was there, intact. " "Through a friend at the FBI, I learned that a blackmail letter had been sent to the White House. President Russell asked the FBI to check it for fingerprints. Most of the letter had been whited out, but with the aid of an infra scope the FBI was able to decipher it. " "The fingerprints on the letter were identified as belonging to Carl Gorman, a clerk at the Monroe Arms Hotel, probably the only one who might have known the identity of the person who booked the suite where the girl was killed. He was away at a fishing camp, but his name had been revealed to the White House. When I arrived at the camp, Gorman had been killed in what appeared to be an accident. " "There are too many connections for these killings to be a coincidence. I am going ahead with the investigation, but frankly, I'm frightened.
At least I have this on the record, in case anything should happen to me. More later." " "My God," James Frisch exclaimed. "This is ... horrible." "I can't believe it." Attorney General Gatlin said, "Lonergan believed it, and he was probably killed to stop this information from getting out."
"What do we do now?" Chief Justice Graves asked. "How do you ask the President of the United States if he's killed half a dozen people?"
"That's a good question. Impeach him? Arrest him? Throw him in jail?"
"Before we do anything," Attorney General Gatlin said, "I think we have to present this transcript to the president himself and give him an opportunity to comment."
There were murmurs of agreement.
"In the meantime, I'll have a warrant for his arrest drawn up. Just in case it's necessary."
One of the men in the room was thinking, I've got to inform Peter Tager.
Peter Tager put the telephone down and sat there for a long time, thinking about what he had just been told. He rose and walked down the corridor to Deborah Kanner's office. "I have to see the president." "He's in a meeting. If you can " "I have to see him now, Deborah. It's urgent." She saw the look on his face. "Just a moment." She picked up the telephone and pressed a button. "I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. President. Mr. Tager is here, and he said he must see you." She listened a moment. "Thank you." She replaced the receiver and turned to Tager. "Five minutes."
Five minutes later, Peter Tager was alone in the Oval Office with President Russell.
"What's so important, Peter?"
Tager took a deep breath. "The Attorney General and the FBI think you're involved in six murders."
Oliver smiled. "This is some kind of joke. "
"Is it? They're on their way here now. They believe you killed Chloe Houston and "
Oliver had gone pale. "What?"
"I know it's crazy. From what I was told, all the evidence is circumstantial. I'm sure you can explain where you were the night the girl died."
Oliver was silent.
Peter Tager was waiting. "Oliver, you can explain, can't you?" Oliver swallowed. "No. I can't."
"You have to!"
Oliver said heavily, "Peter, I need to be alone."
Peter Tager went to see Senator Davis in the Capitol. "What is it that's so urgent, Peter?" "It's it's about the president." "Yes?" "The attorney general and the FBI think that Oliver is a murderer."
Senator Davis sat there staring at Tager. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"They're convinced Oliver's committed several murders. I got a tip
from a friend at the FBI."
Tager told Senator Davis about the evidence.
When Tager was through, Senator Davis said slowly, "That dumb son of a bitch! Do you know what this means?"
"Yes, sir. It means that Oliver "
"Fuck Oliver. I've spent years putting him where I want him. I don't care what happens to him. I'm in control now, Peter. I have the power. I'm not going to let Oliver's stupidity take it away from me. I'm not going to let anyone take it away from me!"
"I don't see what you can "
"You said the evidence was all circumstantial?"
"That's right. I was told they have no hard proof. But he has no alibi."
"Where is the president now?" "In the Oval Office."
"I've got some good news for him," Senator Todd Davis said.
Senator Davis was facing Oliver in the Oval Office. "I've been hearing some very disturbing things, Oliver. It's insane, of course. I don't know how anyone could possibly think you " "I don't, either. I haven't done anything wrong, Todd."
"I'm sure you haven't. But if word got out that you were even suspected of horrible crimes like these well, you can see how this would affect the office, can't you?" "Of course, but " "You're too important to let anything like this happen to you. This office controls the world, Oliver. You don't want to give this up." "Todd I'm not guilty of anything." "But they think you are. I'm told you have no alibi for the evening of Chloe Houston's murder?" There was a momentary silence. "No." Senator Davis smiled. "What happened to your memory, son? You were with me that evening. We spent the whole evening together." Oliver was looking at him, confused. "What?" "That's right. I'm your alibi. No one's going to question my word. No one. I'm going to save you, Oliver." There was a long silence.
Oliver said, "What do you want in return, Todd?" Senator Davis nodded. "We'll start with the Middle Eastern peace conference. You'll call that off. After that, we'll talk. I have great plans for us. We're not going to let anything spoil them." Oliver said, "I'm going ahead with the peace conference." Senator Davis's eyes narrowed. "What did you say?" "I've decided to go ahead with it. You see, what's important is not how long a president stays in this office, Todd, but what he does when he's in it."
Senator Davis's face was turning red. "Do you know what you're doing?"
"Yes." The senator leaned across the desk. "I don't think you do. They're on their way here to accuse you of murder, Oliver. Where are you going to make your goddam deals from the penitentiary? You've just thrown your whole life away, you stupid " A voice came over the intercom. "Mr. President, there are some people here to see you.
Attorney General Gatlin, Mr. Brandon from the FBI, Chief Justice Graves, and " "Send them in." Senator Davis said savagely, "It looks like I should stick to judging horseflesh. I made a big mistake with you, Oliver. But you just made the biggest mistake of your life. I'm going to destroy you." The door opened and Attorney General Gatlin entered, followed by Brandon, Justice Graves, and Bergstrom. Justice Graves said, "Senator Davis ..." Todd Davis nodded curtly and strode out of the room. Barbara Gatlin closed the door behind him. She walked up to the desk. "Mr. President, this is highly embarrassing, but I hope you will understand. We have to ask you some questions." Oliver faced them. "I've been told why you're here. Of course, I had nothing to do with any of those deaths." "I'm sure we're all relieved to hear that, Mr. President," Scott Brandon said, "and I assure you that none of us really believes that you could be involved. But an accusation has been made, and we have no choice but to pursue it."
"I understand."
"Mr. President, have you ever taken the drug Ecstasy?" "No."
The group looked at one another.
"Mr. President, if you could tell us where you were on October fifteenth, the evening of Chloe Houston's death ..."
There was a silence. "Mr. President?" "I'm sorry. I can't."
"But surely you can remember where you were, or what you were doing on that evening?"
Silence.
"Mr. President?"
"I I can't think right now. I'd like you to come back later." "How much later?" Bergstrom asked.
"Eight o'clock."
Oliver watched them leave. He got up and slowly walked into the small sitting room where Jan was working at a desk. She looked up as Oliver entered.
He took a deep breath and said, "Jan, I I have a confession to make."
Senator Davis was in an icy rage. How could I have been so stupid? I picked the wrong man. He's trying to destroy everything
I've worked for. I'll teach him what happens to people who try to double-cross me. The Senator sat at his desk for a long time, deciding what he was going to do. Then he picked up a telephone and dialed.
"Miss Stewart, you told me to call you when I had something more for you."
"Yes, Senator?"
"Let me tell you what I want. From now on, I'll expect the full support of the Tribune campaign contributions, glowing editorials, the works."
"And what do I get in exchange for all this?" Leslie asked.
"The President of the United States. The attorney general has just sworn out a warrant for his arrest for a series of murders."
There was a sharp intake of breath. "Keep talking."
Leslie Stewart was speaking so fast that Matt Baker could not understand a word. "For God's sake, calm down," he said. "What are you trying to say?" "The president! We've got him, Matt! I just talked to Senator Todd Davis. The chief justice of the Supreme Court, the chief of police, the director of the FBI, and the U.S. attorney general are in the president's office now with a warrant for his arrest on charges of murder. There's a pile of evidence against him, Matt, and he has no alibi. It's the story of the goddam century!"
"You can't print it." She looked at him in surprise. "What do you mean?" "Leslie, a story like this is too big to just I mean the facts have to be checked and rechecked " "And rechecked again until it becomes a headline in The Washington Post? No, thank you. I'm not going to lose this one." "You can't accuse the President of the United States of murder without " Leslie smiled. "I'm not going to, Matt. All we have to do is print the fact that there is a warrant for his arrest. That's enough to destroy him." "Senator Davis " " is turning in his own son-in-law. He believes the president is guilty. He told me so." "That's not enough. We'll verify it first, and " "With whom Katharine Graham? Are you out of your mind? We run this right now, or we lose it." "I can't let you do this, not without verifying everything that " "Who do you think you're talking to? This is my paper, and I'll do anything I like with it." Matt Baker rose. "This is irresponsible. I won't let any of my people write this story." "They don't have to.
I'll write it myself." "Leslie, if you do this, I'm leaving. For good." "No, you're not, Matt. You and I are going to share a
Pulitzer Prize." She watched him turn and walk out of the office.
"You'll be back."
Leslie pressed down the intercom button. "Have Zoltaire come in here."
She looked at him and said, "I want to know my horoscope for the next twenty-four hours." "Yes, Miss Stewart. I'll be happy to do that." From his pocket, Zoltaire took a small ephemeris, the astrological bible, and opened it. He studied the positions of the stars and the planets for a moment, and his eyes widened. "What is it?" Zoltaire looked up. "I something very important seems to be happening." He pointed to the ephemeris. "Look. Transiting Mars is going over your ninth house Pluto for three days, setting off a square to your " "Never mind that," Leslie said impatiently. "Cut to the chase." He blinked. "The chase? Ah, yes." He looked at the book again. "There is some kind of major event happening. You are in the middle of it. You're going to be even more famous than you are now, Miss Stewart. The whole world is going to know your name." Leslie was filled with a feeling of intense euphoria. The whole world was going to know her name. She was at the awards ceremonies and the speaker was saying, "And now, the recipient of this year's Pulitzer Prize for the most important story in newspaper history. I give you Miss Leslie Stewart." There was a standing ovation, and the roar was deafening.
"Miss Stewart..."
Leslie shook away the dream. "Will there be anything else?"
No," Leslie said. "Thank you, Zoltaire. That's enough."
At seven o'clock that evening, Leslie was looking at a proof of the story she had written. The headline read: MURDER WARRANT
SERVED ON PRESIDENT RUSSELL. PRESIDENT ALSO TO BE QUESTIONED IN INVESTIGATION OF SIX DEATHS.
Leslie skimmed her story under it and turned to Lyle Bannister, her managing editor. "Run it," she said. "Put it out as an extra. I want it to hit the streets in an hour, and WTE can broadcast the story at the same time."
Lyle Bannister hesitated. "You don't think Matt Baker should take a look at ?"
"This isn't his paper, it's mine. Run it. Now."
"Yes, ma'am." He reached for the telephone on Leslie's desk and dialed a number. "We're going with it."
At seven-thirty that evening, Barbara Gatlin and the others in the group were preparing to return to the White House. Barbara Gatlin said
heavily, "I hope to God it isn't going to be necessary to use it, but just to be prepared, I'm bringing the warrant for the president's arrest."
Thirty minutes later, Oliver's secretary said, "Attorney General Gatlin and the others are here." "Send them in." Oliver watched, pale-faced, as they walked into the Oval Office. Jan was at his side, holding his hand tightly. Barbara Gatlin said, "Are you prepared to answer our questions now, Mr. President?" Oliver nodded. "I am." "Mr.
President, did Chloe Houston have an appointment to see you on October fifteenth?" "She did." "And did you see her?" "No. I had to cancel." The call had come in just before three o'clock. "Darling, it's me. I'm lonely for you. I'm at the lodge in Maryland. I'm sitting by the pool, naked." "We'll have to do something about that." "When can you get away?" "I'll be there in an hour." Oliver turned to face the group. "If what I'm about to tell you should ever leave this office, it would do irreparable damage to the presidency and to our relations with another country.
I'm doing this with the greatest reluctance, but you leave me no choice." As the group watched in wonder, Oliver walked over to a side door leading to a den and opened it. Sylva Picone stepped into the room. "This is Sylva Picone, the wife of the Italian ambassador. On the fifteenth, Mrs. Picone and I were together at her lodge in Maryland from four o'clock in the afternoon until two o'clock in the morning. I know absolutely nothing about the murder of Chloe Houston, or any of the other deaths."
Twenty-One.
Dana walked into Tom Hawkins's office. "Tom, I'm on to something interesting. Before Frank Lonergan was murdered, he went to the home of Carl Gorman, a clerk who worked at the Monroe Arms. Gorman was killed in a supposed boating accident. He lived with his sister. I'd like to take a crew over there to do a taped segment for the
ten-o'clock news tonight." "You don't think it was a boating accident?" "No. Too many coincidences." Tom Hawkins was thoughtful for a moment. "Okay. I'll set it up." "Thanks. Here's the address. I'll meet the camera crew there. I'm going home to change."
When Dana walked into her apartment, she had a sudden feeling that something was wrong. It was a sense she had developed in Sarajevo, a warning of danger. Somebody had been here. She walked through the apartment slowly, warily checking the closets. Nothing was amiss. It's my imagination, Dana told herself. But she did not believe it.
When Dana arrived at the house that Carl Gorman's sister lived in, the electronic news-gathering vehicle had arrived and was parked down the street. The ENG was an enormous van with a large antenna on the roof and sophisticated electronic equipment inside. Waiting for Dana were Andrew Wright, the sound man and Vernon Mills, the cameraman. "Where are we doing the interview?" Mills asked. "I want to do it inside the house. I'll call you when we're ready." "Right." Dana went up to the front door and knocked. Marianne Gorman opened the door. "Yes?" "I'm
" "Oh! I know who you are. I've seen you on television." "Right," Dana said. "Could we talk for a minute?" Marianne Gorman hesitated. "Yes. Come in." Dana followed her into the living room.
Marianne Gorman offered Dana a chair. "It's about my brother, isn't it? He was murdered. I know it." "Who killed him?" Marianne Gorman looked away. "I don't know." "Did Frank Longergan come here to see you?" The woman's eyes narrowed. "He tricked me. I told him where he could find my brother and " Her eyes filled with tears. "Now Carl is dead." "What did Lonergan want to talk to your brother about?" "He said he was from the IRS." Dana sat there watching her. "Would you mind if I did a brief television interview with you? You can just say a few words about your brother's murder and how you feel about the crime in this city." Marianne Gorman nodded. "I guess that will be all right." "Thank you." Dana went to the front door, opened it, and waved to Vernon Mills. He picked up his camera equipment and started toward the house, followed by Andrew Wright. "I've never done this kind of thing before," Marianne said. "There's nothing to be nervous about. It will only take a few minutes." Vernon entered the living room with the camera. "Where do you want to shoot this?" "We'll do it here, in the living room." She nodded toward a corner. "You can put the camera there." Vernon placed the camera, then walked back to Dana. He pinned a lavaliere microphone on each woman's jacket. "You can turn it on whenever you're ready." He set it down on a table.
Marianne Gorman said, "No! Wait a minute! I'm sorry. I I can't do this." "Why?" Dana asked. "It's ... it's dangerous. Could could I talk to you alone?" "Yes." Dana looked at Vernon and Wright. "Leave the camera where it is. I'll call you." Vernon nodded, "We'll be in the van." Dana turned to Marianne Gorman. "Why is it dangerous for you to be on television?" Marianne said reluctantly, "I don't want them to see me." "You don't want who to see you?" Marianne swallowed. "Carl did something he... he shouldn't have done. He was killed because of it. And the men who killed him will try to kill me." She was trembling. "What did Carl do?" "Oh, my God," Marianne moaned. "I begged him not to." "Not to what?" Dana persisted. "He he wrote a blackmail letter." Dana looked at her in surprise. "A blackmail letter?" "Yes. Believe me, Carl was a good man. It's just that he liked he had expensive tastes, and on his salary, he couldn't afford to live the way he wanted to. I couldn't stop him. He was murdered because of that letter. I know it. They found him, and now they know where I am. I'm going to be killed." She was sobbing. "I I don't know what to do."
"Tell me about the letter." Marianne Gorman took a deep breath. "My brother was going away on a vacation. He had forgotten a jacket that he wanted to take with him, and he went back to the hotel. He got his jacket and was back in his car in the garage when the private elevator door to the Imperial Suite opened. Carl told me he saw a man get out. He was surprised to see him there. He was even more surprised when the man walked back to the elevator and wiped off his fingerprints. Carl couldn't figure out what was going on. Then the the next day, he read about that poor girl's murder, and he knew that this man had killed her." She hesitated. "That's when he sent the letter to the White House." Dana said slowly, "The White House?" "Yes." "Who did he send
the letter to?" "The man he saw in the garage. You know the one with the eye patch. Peter Tager."
Twenty-Two.
Through the walls of the office, he could hear the sound of traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue, outside the White House, and he became aware again of his surroundings. He reviewed everything that was happening, and he was satisfied that he was safe. Oliver Russell was going to be arrested for murders he hadn't committed, and Melvin Wicks, the vice president, would become president. Senator Davis would have no problem controlling Vice President Wicks. And there's nothing to link me to any of the deaths, Tager thought. There was a prayer meeting that evening, and Peter Tager was looking forward to it. The group enjoyed hearing him talk about religion and power.
Peter Tager had become interested in girls when he was fourteen. God had given him an extraordinarily strong libido, and Peter had thought that the loss of his eye would make him unattractive to the opposite sex. Instead, girls found his eye patch intriguing. In addition, God had given Peter the gift of persuasion, and he was able to charm diffident young girls into the backseats of cars, into barns, and into beds. Unfortunately, he had gotten one of them pregnant and had been forced to marry her. She bore him two children. His family could have become an onerous burden, tying him down. But it turned out to be a marvelous cover for his extracurricular activities. He had seriously thought of going into the ministry, but then he had met Senator Todd Davis, and his life had changed. He had found a new and bigger forum. Politics.
In the beginning, there had been no problems with his secret relationships. Then a friend had given him a drug called Ecstasy, and Peter had shared it with Lisa Burnette, a fellow church member in Frankfort. Something had gone wrong, and she had died. They found her body in the Kentucky River. The next unfortunate incident had occurred when Miriam Friedland, Oliver Russell's secretary, had had a bad reaction and lapsed into a coma. Not my fault, Peter Tager thought. It had not harmed him. Miriam had obviously been on too many other drugs. Then, of course, there was poor Chloe Houston. He had run into her in a corridor of the White House where she was looking for a rest room.
She had recognized him instantly and was impressed. "You're Peter Tager! I see you on television all the time." "Well, I'm delighted. Can I help you with something?" "I was looking for a ladies' room." She was young and very pretty. "There are no public rest rooms in the White House, miss." "Oh, dear." He said conspiratorially, "I think I can help you out. Come with me." He had led her upstairs to a private bathroom and waited outside for her. When she came out, he asked, "Are you just visiting Washington?" "Yes." "Why don't you let me show you the real Washington? Would you like that?" He could feel that she was attracted to him. "I I certainly would if it isn't too much trouble." "For someone as pretty as you? No trouble at all. We'll start with dinner tonight." She smiled. "That sounds exciting." "I promise you it will be. Now, you mustn't tell anyone we're meeting. It's our secret." "I won't. I promise." "I have a high-level meeting with the
Russian government at the Monroe Arms Hotel tonight." He could see that she was impressed. "We can have dinner at the Imperial Suite there,
afterward. Why don't you meet me there about seven o'clock?" She looked at him and nodded excitedly. "All right." He had explained to her what she had to do to get inside the suite. "There won't be any problem. Just call me to let me know you're there." And she had.
In the beginning, Chloe Houston had been reluctant. When Peter took her in his arms, she said, "Don't. I I'm a virgin." That made him all the more excited. "I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do," he assured her. "We'll just sit and talk." "Are you disappointed?" He squeezed her hand. "Not at all, my dear." He took out a bottle of liquid Ecstasy and poured some into two glasses. "What is that?" Chloe asked. "It's an energy booster. Cheers." He raised his glass in a toast and watched as she finished the liquid in her glass. "It's good," Chloe said. They had spent the next half hour talking, and Peter had waited as the drug began to work. Finally, he moved next to Chloe and put his arms around her, and this time there was no resistance. "Get undressed," he said. "Yes."
Peter's eyes followed her into the bathroom, and he began to undress. Chloe came out a few minutes later, naked, and he became excited at the sight of her young, nubile body. She was beautiful. Chloe got into bed beside him, and they made love. She was inexperienced, but the fact that she was a virgin gave Peter the extra excitement that he needed. In the middle of a sentence, Chloe had sat up in bed, suddenly dizzy. "Are you all right, my dear?" "I I'm fine. I just feel a little " She held on to the side of the bed for a moment. "I'll be right back." She got up. And as Peter watched, Chloe stumbled, fell, and smashed her head against the sharp corner of the iron table. "Chloe!" He leaped out of bed and hurried to her side. "Chloe!" He could feel no pulse. Oh, God, he thought. How could you do this to me? It wasn't my fault. She slipped. He looked around. They mustn't trace me to this suite. He had quickly gotten dressed, gone into the bathroom, moistened a towel, and begun polishing the surfaces of every place he might have touched. He picked up Chloe's purse, looked around to make sure there were no signs that he had been there, and took the elevator down to the garage. The last thing he had done was to wipe his fingerprints off the elevator buttons. When Paul Yerby had surfaced as a threat, Tager had used his connections to dispose of him.
There was no way anyone could connect Tager to Chloe's death.
And then the blackmail letter had come. Carl Gorman, the hotel clerk, had seen him. Peter had sent Sime to get rid of Gorman, telling him that it was to protect the president. That should have been the end of the problem. But Frank Lonergan had started asking questions, and it had been necessary to dispose of him, too. Now there was another nosy reporter to deal with. So there were only two threats left: Marianne Gorman and Dana Evans. And Sime was on his way to kill them both.
Twenty-Three.
Marianne Gorman repeated, "You know the one with the eye patch. Peter Tager." Dana was stunned. "Are you sure?" "Well, it's hard not to recognize someone who looks like that, isn't it?" "I need to use your phone." Dana hurried over to the telephone and dialed Matt Baker's number. His secretary answered. "Mr. Baker's office." "It's Dana. I have to talk to him. It's urgent." "Hold on, please." A moment later, Matt Baker was on the line. "Dana is anything wrong?"
She took a deep breath. "Matt, I just found out who was with Chloe Houston when she died." "We know who it was. It was " "Peter Tager." "What?" It was a shout. "I'm with the sister of Carl Gorman, the hotel clerk who was murdered. Carl Gorman saw Tager wiping his fingerprints off the elevator in the hotel garage the night Chloe Houston died. Gorman sent Tager a blackmail letter, and I think Tager had him murdered. I have a camera crew here. Do you want me to go on the air with this?" "Don't do anything right now!" Matt ordered. "I'll handle it. Call me back in ten minutes." He slammed down the receiver and headed for the White Tower. Leslie was in her office. "Leslie, you can't print " She turned and held up the mock-up of the headline: MURDER WARRANT SERVED ON PRESIDENT RUSSELL. "Look at this,
Matt." Her voice was filled with exaltation. "Leslie I have news for you. There's " "This is all the news I need." She nodded smugly. "I told you you'd come back. You couldn't stay away, could you? This was just too big to walk away from, wasn't it, Matt? You need me. You'll always need me." He stood there, looking at her, wondering: What happened to turn her into this kind of woman? It's still not too late to save her. "Leslie "
"Don't be embarrassed because you made a mistake," Leslie said complacently. "What did you want to say?" Matt Baker looked at her for a long time. "I wanted to say goodbye, Leslie." She watched him turn and walk out the door.
Twenty-Three.
Wlat's going to happen to me?" Marianne Gorman asked. "Don't worry," Dana told her. "You'll be protected." She made a quick decision. "Marianne, we're going to do a live interview, and I'll turn the tape of it over to the FBI. As soon as we finish the interview, I'll get you away from here." Outside, there was the sound of a car screaming to a stop. Marianne hurried over to the window. "Oh, my God!" Dana moved to her side. "What is it?" Sime Lombardo was getting out of the car. He looked at the house, then headed toward the door. Marianne stammered, "That's the the other man who was here asking about Carl, the day Carl was killed. I'm sure he had something to do with his murder."
Dana picked up the phone and hastily dialed a number. "Mr. Hawkins's office."
"Nadine, I have to talk to him right away." "He's not in. He should be back in about "
"Let me talk to Nate Erickson."
Nate Erickson, Hawkins's assistant, came on the phone. "Dana?"
"Nate I need help fast. I have a breaking news story. I want you to put me on live, immediately."
"I can't do that," Erickson protested. "Tom would have to authorize it."
"There's no time for that," Dana exploded.
Outside the window, Dana saw Sime Lombardo moving toward the front door.
In the news van, Vernon Mills looked at his watch. "Are we going to do this interview or not? I have a date."
Inside the house, Dana was saying, "It's a matter of life and death, Nate. You've got to put me on live. For God's sake, do it now!" She slammed the receiver down, stepped over to the television set, and turned it on Channel Six. A soap opera was in progress. An older man was talking to a young woman.
"You never really understood me, did you, Kristen?" "The truth is that I understand you too well. That's why I want a divorce, George." "Is there someone else?" Dana hurried into the bedroom and turned on the set there. Sime Lombardo was at the front door. He knocked. "Don't open it," Dana warned Marianne. Dana checked to make sure that her microphone was live. The knocking at the door became louder. "Let's get out of here," Marianne whispered. "The back " At that moment, the front door splintered open and Sime charged into the room. He closed the door behind him and looked at the two women. "Ladies. I see that I have both of you." Desperately, Dana glanced toward the television set. "If there is someone else, it's your fault, George." "Perhaps I am at fault, Kristen." Sime Lombardo took a .22 caliber semiautomatic pistol out of his pocket and started screwing a silencer onto the barrel. "No!" Dana said. "You can't " Sime raised the gun. "Shut up. Into the bedroom go on." Marianne mumbled, "Oh, my God!" "Listen
..." Dana said. "We can " "I told you to shut up. Now move." Dana looked at the television set.
"I've always believed in second chances, Kristen. I don't want to lose what we had what we could have again." The same voices echoed from the television set in the bedroom. Sime commanded, "I told you two to move! Let's get this over with." As the two panicky women took a tentative step toward the bedroom, the red light on the camera in the corner suddenly turned on. The images of Kristen and George faded from the screen and an announcer's voice said, "We interrupt this program to take you now live to a breaking story in the Whea-ton area." As the soap opera faded, the Gorman living room suddenly appeared on the screen. Dana and Marianne were in the foreground, Sime in the background. Sime stopped, confused, as he saw himself on the
television set. "What what the hell is this?" In the van, the technicians watched the new image flash on the screen. "My God," Vernon Mills said. "We're live!" Dana glanced at the screen and breathed a silent prayer. She turned to face the camera. "This is Dana Evans coming to you live from the home of Carl Gorman, who was murdered a few days ago. We're interviewing a man who has some information about his murder." She turned to face him. "So would you like to tell us exactly what happened?" Lombardo stood there, paralyzed, watching himself on the screen, licking his lips. "Hey!" From the television set, he heard himself say, "Hey!"
and he saw his image move, as he swung toward Dana. "What what the hell are you doing? What kind of trick is this?"
"It's not a trick. We're on the air, live. There are two million people watching us."
Lombardo saw his image on the screen and hastily put the gun back into his pocket.
Dana glanced at Marianne Gorman, then looked Sime Lombardo square in the eye. "Peter Tager is behind the murder of Carl Gorman, isn't he?"
In the Daly Building, Nick Reese was in his office when an assistant rushed in. "Quick! Take a look at this! They're at Gorman's house." He turned the television set to Channel Six, and the picture flashed on the screen.
"Did Peter Tager tell you to kill Carl Gorman?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. Turn that damned television set off before I "
"Before you what? Are you going to kill us in front of two million people?"
"Jesus!" Nick Reese shouted. "Get some patrol cars out there, fast!"
In the Blue Room in the White House, Oliver and Jan were watching station WTE, stunned. "Peter?" Oliver said slowly. "I can't believe it!"
Peter Tager's secretary hurried into his office. "Mr. Tager, I think you had better turn on Channel Six." She gave him a nervous look and hurried out again. Peter Tager looked after her, puzzled. He picked up the remote and pressed a button, and the television set came to life.
Dana was saying, "... and was Peter Tager also responsible for the death of Chloe Houston?"
"I don't know anything about that. You'll have to ask Tager."
Peter Tager looked at the television set unbelievingly. This can't be happening! God wouldn't do this to me! He sprang to his feet and hurried toward the door. I'm not going to let them get me. I'll hide! And then he stopped. Where? Where can I hide? He walked slowly back to his desk and sank into a chair. Waiting.
In her office, Leslie Stewart was watching the interview, in shock. Peter Tager? No! No! No! No! Leslie snatched up the phone and pressed a number. "Lyle, stop that story! It must not go out! Do you hear me? It " Over the phone she heard him say, "Miss Stewart, the papers hit the streets half an hour ago. You said..." Slowly, Leslie replaced the receiver. She looked at the headline of the Washington Tribune: MURDER WARRANT SERVED
ON PRESIDENT RUSSELL.
Then she looked up at the framed front page on the wall: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.
"You're going to be even more famous than you are now, Miss Stewart. The whole world is going to know your name."
Tomorrow she would be the laughingstock of the world.
At the Gorman home, Sime Lombardo took one last, frantic look at himself on the television screen and said, "I'm getting out of here." He hurried to the front door and opened it. Half a dozen squad cars were screaming to a stop outside.
Twenty-Four.
Jeff Connors was at Dulles International Airport with Dana, waiting for Kemal's plane to arrive. "He's been through hell," Dana explained nervously. "He he's not like other little boys. I mean don't be surprised if he doesn't show any emotion." She desperately wanted Jeff to like Kemal. Jeff sensed her anxiety. "Don't worry, darling. I'm sure he's a wonderful boy." "Here it comes!" They looked up and watched the small speck in the sky grow larger and larger until it became a shining 747. Dana squeezed Jeffs hand tightly. "He's
here."
The passengers were deplaning. Dana watched anxiously as they exited one by one. "Where's ?"
And there he was. He was dressed in the outfit that Dana had bought him in Sarajevo, and his face was freshly washed. He came down the ramp slowly, and when he saw Dana, he stopped. The two of them stood there, motionless, staring at each other. And then they were running toward each other, and Dana was holding him, and his good arm was squeezing her tightly, and they were both crying.
When Dana found her voice, she said, "Welcome to America, Kemal."
He nodded. He could not speak.
"Kemal, I want you to meet my friend. This is Jeff Connors."
Jeff leaned down. "Hello, Kemal. I've been hearing a lot about you."
Kemal clung to Dana fiercely.
"You'll be coming to live with me," Dana said. "Would you like that?"
Kemal nodded. He would not let go of her.
Dana looked at her watch. "We have to leave. I'm covering a speech at the White House."
It was a perfect day. The sky was a deep, clear blue, and a cooling breeze was blowing in from the Potomac River. They stood in the Rose Garden, with three dozen other television and newspaper reporters.
Dana's camera was focused on the president, who stood on a podium with Jan at his side. President Oliver Russell was saying, "I have an important announcement to make. At this moment, there is a meeting of the heads of state of the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Iran, and Syria, to discuss a lasting peace treaty with Israel. I received word this morning that the meeting is going extremely well and that the treaty should be signed within the next day or two. It is of the utmost importance that the Congress of the United States solidly support us in helping this vital effort." Oliver turned to the man standing next to him. "Senator Todd Davis." Senator Davis stepped up to the microphone, wearing his trademark white suit and white, broad-brimmed leghorn hat, beaming at the crowd. "This is truly a historic moment in the history of our great country. For many years, as you know, I have been striving to bring about peace between Israel and the Arab countries. It has been a long and difficult task, but now, at last, with the help and guidance of our wonderful president, I am happy to say that our efforts are finally coming to fruition." He turned to Oliver. "We should all congratulate our great president on the magnificent part he has played in helping us to bring this about. "
Dana was thinking, One war is coming to an end. Perhaps this is a beginning. Maybe one day we'll have a world where adults learn to settle their probkms with love instead of hate, a world where children can grow up without ever hearing the obscene sounds of bombs and machine-gunfire, without fear of their limbs being torn apart by faceless strangers. She turned to look at Kemal, who was excitedly whispering to Jeff. Dana smiled. Jeff had proposed to her. Kemal would have a father. They were going to be a family. How did I get so lucky? Dana wondered. The speeches were winding down. The cameraman swung the camera away from the podium and moved into a close-up of Dana. She looked into the lens. "This is Dana Evans, reporting for WTE, Washington, D.C."
SIDNEY SHELDON is the author of The Other Side of Midnight, A Stranger
in the Mirror, Bloodline, Rage of Angels, Master of the Game, If Tomorrow Comes, Windmills of the Gods, The Sands of Time, Memories of Midnight, The Doomsday Conspiracy, The Stars Shine Down, Nothing Lasts Forever and Morning, Noon & Night, all international bestsellers. His first book, The Naked Face, was acclaimed by the New York Times as 'the best first mystery novel of the year'. Mr. Sheldon has won a Tony Award for Broadway's Redhead and an Academy Award for The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer. Most of his number one bestsellers have been made into highly successful theatrical films or television mini series.
He has written the screenplays for twenty-three motion pictures, including Easter Parade (with Judy Garland) and Annie Get Your Gun. He also created four long-running television series, including Hart to Hart and I Dream ofJeannie, which he produced. In 1993 he was awarded the Prix Litteraire de Deauville, from the Deauville Film Festival, and he is now in the Guinness Book of Records as "The Most Translated Author'. Mr. Sheldon and his wife live in southern California.
👁 :
No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.
Luke 11: 33
Before these statements left my desk and followed the fate I eventually chose for them, I considered using them as the basis for a traditional, painstakingly researched biography, recounting a true story. And so I read various biographies, thinking this would help me, only to realise that the biographer's view of his subject inevitably influences the results of his research. Since it wasn't my intention to impose my own opinions on the reader, but to set down the story of the 'Witch of Portobello' as seen by its main protagonists, I soon abandoned the idea of writing a straight biography and decided that the best approach would be simply to transcribe what people had told me.
Heron Ryan, 44, journalist
No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people's eyes, to reveal the marvels around.
No one sacrifices the most important thing she possesses: love.
No one places her dreams in the hands of those who might destroy them. No one, that is, but Athena.
A long time after Athena's death, her former teacher asked me to go with her to the town of Prestonpans in Scotland. There, taking advantage of certain ancient feudal powers which were due to be abolished the following month, the town had granted official pardons to 81 people – and their cats – who were executed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for practising witchcraft.
According to the official spokeswoman for the Barons Courts of Prestoungrange & Dolphinstoun: 'Most of those persons condemned…were convicted on the basis of spectral evidence – that is to say, prosecuting witnesses declared that they felt the presence of evil spirits or heard spirit voices.'
There's no point now in going into all the excesses committed by the Inquisition, with its torture chambers and its bonfires lit by hatred and vengeance; however, on our way to Prestonpans, Edda said several times that there was something about that gesture which she found unacceptable: the town and the 14th Baron of Prestoungrange & Dolphinstoun were 'granting pardons' to people who had been brutally executed.
'Here we are in the twenty-first century, and yet the descendants of the real criminals, those who killed the innocent victims, still feel they have the right to grant pardons. Do you know what I mean, Heron?'
I did. A new witch-hunt is starting to gain ground. This time the weapon isn't the red-hot iron, but irony and repression. Anyone who happens to discover a gift and dares to speak of their abilities is usually regarded with distrust. Generally speaking, their husband, wife, father or child, or whoever, instead of feeling proud, forbids
all mention of the matter, fearful of exposing their family to ridicule.
Before I met Athena, I thought all such gifts were a dishonest way of exploiting people's despair. My trip to Transylvania to make a documentary on vampires was also a way of proving how easily people are deceived. Certain superstitions, however absurd they may seem, remain in the human imagination and are often used by unscrupulous people. When I visited Dracula's castle, which has been reconstructed merely to give tourists the feeling that they're in a special place, I was approached by a government official, who implied that I would receive a 'significant' (to use his word) gift when the film was shown on the BBC. In the mind of that official, I was helping to propagate the myth, and thus deserved a generous reward. One of the guides said that the number of visitors increased each year, and that any mention of the place would prove positive, even a programme saying that the castle was a fake, that Vlad Dracula was a historical figure who had nothing to do with the myth, and that it was all merely a product of the wild imaginings of one Irishman (Editor's note: Bram Stoker), who had never even visited the region.
I knew then that, however rigorous I was with the facts, I was unwittingly collaborating with the lie; even if the idea behind my script was to demythologise the place, people would believe what they wanted to believe; the guide was right, I would simply be helping to generate more publicity. I immediately abandoned the project, even though I'd already spent quite a lot of money on the trip and on my research.
And yet my journey to Transylvania was to have a huge impact on my life, for I met Athena there when she was trying to track down her mother. Destiny – mysterious, implacable Destiny – brought us face to face in the insignificant foyer of a still more insignificant hotel. I was witness to her first conversation with Deidre – or Edda, as she likes to be called. I watched, as if I were a spectator of my own life, as my heart struggled vainly not to allow itself to be seduced by a woman who didn't belong to my world. I applauded when reason lost the battle, and all I could do was surrender and accept that I was in love.
That love led me to see things I'd never imagined could exist – rituals, materialisations, trances. Believing that I was blinded by love, I doubted everything, but doubt, far from paralysing me, pushed me in the direction of oceans whose very existence I couldn't admit. It was this same energy which, in difficult times, helped me to confront the cynicism ofjournalist colleagues and to write about Athena and her work. And since that love remains alive, the energy remains, even though Athena is dead, even though all I want now is to forget what I saw and learned. I could only navigate that world while hand in hand with Athena.
These were her gardens, her rivers, her mountains. Now that she's gone, I need everything to return as quickly as possible to how it used to be. I'm going to concentrate more on traffic problems, Britain's foreign policy, on how we administer taxes. I want to go back to thinking that the world of magic is merely a clever trick, that people are superstitious, that anything science cannot explain has no right to exist.
When the meetings in Portobello started to get out of control, we had endless arguments about how she was behaving, although I'm glad now that she didn't listen to me. If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it's the necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best.
I wake and fall asleep with that certainty; it's best that Athena left when she did rather than descend into the infernos of this world. She would never have regained her peace of mind after the events that earned her the nickname 'the witch of Portobello'. The rest of her life would have been a bitter clash between her personal dreams and collective reality. Knowing her as I did, she would have battled on to the end, wasting her energy and her joy on trying to prove something that no one, absolutely no one, was prepared to believe.
Who knows, perhaps she sought death the way a shipwreck victim seeks an island. She must have stood late at night in many a Tube station, waiting for muggers who never came. She must have walked through the most dangerous parts of London in search of a murderer who never appeared, or perhaps tried to provoke the anger of the physically strong, who refused to get angry.
Until, finally, she managed to get herself brutally murdered. But, then, how many of us will be saved the pain of seeing the most important things in our lives disappearing from one moment to the next? I don't just mean people, but our
ideas and dreams too: we might survive a day, a week, a few years, but we're all condemned to lose. Our body remains alive, yet, sooner or later, our soul will receive the mortal blow. The perfect crime – for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were or where the guilty parties are to be found.
Are they aware of what they've done, those nameless guilty parties? I doubt it, because they, too the depressed, the arrogant, the impotent and the powerful – are the victims of the reality they created.
They don't understand and would be incapable of understanding Athena's world. Yes, that's the best way to think of it – Athena's world. I'm finally coming to accept that I was only a temporary inhabitant, there as a favour, like someone who finds themselves in a beautiful mansion, eating exquisite food, aware that this is only a party, that the mansion belongs to someone else, that the food was bought by someone else, and that the time will come when the lights will go out, the owners will go to bed, the servants will return to their quarters, the door will close, and we'll be out in the street again, waiting for a taxi or a bus to restore us to the mediocrity of our everyday lives.
I'm going back, or, rather, part of me is going back to that world where only what we can see, touch and explain makes sense. I want to get back to the world of speeding tickets, people arguing with bank cashiers, eternal complaints about the weather, to horror films and Formula 1 racing. This is the universe I'll have to live with for the rest of my days. I'll get married, have children, and the past will become a distant memory, which will, in the end, make me ask myself: How could I have been so blind? How could I have been so ingenuous?
I also know that, at night, another part of me will remain wandering in space, in contact with things as real as the pack of cigarettes and the glass of gin before me now. My soul will dance with Athena's soul; I'll be with her while I sleep; I'll wake up sweating and go into the kitchen for a glass of water. I'll understand that in order to combat ghosts you must use weapons that form no part of reality. Then, following the advice of my grandmother, I'll place an open pair of scissors on my bedside table to snip off the end of the dream.
The next day, I'll look at the scissors with a touch of regret, but I must adapt to living in the world again or risk going mad.
Andrea McCain, 32, actress
'No one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they're doing, even if one of them complains later on that they were used.'
That's what Athena used to say, but she herself behaved quite differently, because she used and manipulated me with no consideration for my feelings. And given that we're talking about magic here, this makes the accusation an even more serious one; after all, she was my teacher, charged with passing on the sacred mysteries, with awakening the unknown force we all possess. When we venture into that unfamiliar sea, we trust blindly in those who guide us, believing that they know more than we do.
Well, I can guarantee that they don't. Not Athena, not Edda, nor any of the people I came to know through them. She told me she was learning through teaching, and although, at first, I refused to believe this, later, I came to think that perhaps it was true. I realised it was one of her many ways of getting us to drop our guard and surrender to her charm.
People who are on a spiritual quest don't think, they simply want results. They want to feel powerful and superior to the anonymous masses. They want to be special. Athena played with other people's feelings in a quite terrifying way.
I understand that she once felt a profound admiration for St Thérèse of Lisieux. I have no interest in the Catholic faith, but, from what I've heard, Thérèse experienced a kind of mystical and physical union with God. Athena mentioned once that she would like to share a similar fate. Well, in that case, she should have joined a convent and devoted her life to prayer or to the service of the poor. That would have been much more useful to the world and far less dangerous than using music and rituals to induce in people a kind of intoxicated state that brought them
into contact with both the best and the worst of themselves.
I sought her out when I was looking for some meaning to my life, although I didn't say as much at our first meeting. I should have realised from the start that Athena wasn't very interested in that; she wanted to live, dance, make love, travel, to gather people around her in order to demonstrate how wise she was, to show off her gifts, to provoke the neighbours, to make the most of all that is profane in us – although she always tried to give a spiritual gloss to that search.
Whenever we met, whether it was to perform some magical ceremony or to meet for a drink, I was conscious of her power. It was so strong I could almost touch it. Initially, I was fascinated and wanted to be like her. But one day, in a bar, she started talking about the 'Third Rite', which has to do with sexuality. She did this in the presence of my boyfriend. Her excuse was that she was teaching me something. Her real objective, in my opinion, was to seduce the man I loved.
And, of course, she succeeded.
It isn't good to speak ill of people who have passed from this life onto the astral plane. However, Athena won't have to account to me, but to all those forces which she turned to her own benefit, rather than channelling them for the good of humanity and for her own spiritual enlightenment.
The worst thing is that if it hadn't been for her compulsive exhibitionism, everything we began together could have worked out really well. Had she behaved more discreetly, we would now be fulfilling the mission with which we were entrusted. But she couldn't control herself; she thought she was the mistress of the truth, capable of overcoming all barriers merely by using her powers of seduction. And the result? I was left alone. And I can't leave the work half-finished – I'll have to continue to the end, even though sometimes I feel very weak and often dispirited.
I'm not surprised that her life ended as it did: she was always flirting with danger. They say that extroverts are unhappier than introverts, and have to compensate for this by constantly proving to themselves how happy and contented and at ease with life they are. In her case, at least, this is absolutely true.
Athena was conscious of her own charisma, and she made all those who loved her suffer. Including me.
Deidre O'Neill, 37, doctor, known as Edda
If a man we don't know phones us up one day and talks a little, makes no suggestions, says nothing special, but nevertheless pays us the kind of attention we rarely receive, we're quite capable of going to bed with him that same night, feeling relatively in love. That's what we women are like, and there's nothing wrong with that – it's the nature of the female to open herself to love easily.
It was this same love that opened me up to my first encounter with the Mother when I was nineteen. Athena was the same age the first time she went into a trance while dancing. But that's the only thing we had in common – the age of our initiation.
In every other aspect, we were totally and profoundly different, especially in the way we dealt with other people. As her teacher, I always did my best to help her in her inner search. As her friend – although I'm not sure my feelings of friendship were reciprocated – I tried to alert her to the fact that the world wasn't ready for the kind of transformations she wanted to provoke. I remember spending a few sleepless nights before deciding to allow her to act with total freedom and follow the demands of her heart.
Her greatest problem was that she was a woman of the twenty-second century living in the twentyfirst, and making no secret of the fact either. Did she pay a price? She certainly did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had repressed her true exuberant self. She would have been bitter and frustrated, always concerned about 'what other people might think', always saying 'I'll just sort these things out, then I'll devote myself to my dream', always complaining 'that the conditions are never quite right'.
Everyone's looking for the perfect teacher, but although their teachings might be divine, teachers are all too human, and that's something people find hard to accept.
Don't confuse the teacher with the lesson, the ritual with the ecstasy, the transmitter of the symbol with the symbol itself. The Tradition is linked to our encounter with the forces of life and not with the people who bring this about. But we are weak: we ask the Mother to send us guides, and all she sends are signs to the road we need to follow.
Pity those who seek for shepherds, instead of longing for freedom! An encounter with the superior energy is open to anyone, but remains far from those who shift responsibility onto others. Our time on this Earth is sacred, and we should celebrate every moment.
The importance of this has been completely forgotten: even religious holidays have been transformed into opportunities to go to the beach or the park or skiing. There are no more rituals. Ordinary actions can no longer be transformed into manifestations of the sacred. We cook and complain that it's a waste of time, when we should be pouring our love into making that food. We work and believe it's a divine curse, when we should be using our skills to bring pleasure and to spread the energy of the Mother.
Athena brought to the surface the immensely rich world we all carry in our souls, without realising that people aren't yet ready to accept their own powers.
We women, when we're searching for a meaning to our lives or for the path of knowledge, always identify with one of four classic archetypes.
The Virgin (and I'm not speaking here of a sexual virgin) is the one whose search springs from her complete independence, and everything she learns is the fruit of her ability to face challenges alone.
The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, surrender and suffering.
The Saint finds her true reason for living in unconditional love and in her ability to give without asking anything in return.
Finally, the Witch justifies her existence by going in search of complete and
limitless pleasure. Normally, a woman has to choose from one of these traditional feminine archetypes, but Athena was all four at once.
Obviously we can justify her behaviour, alleging that all those who enter a state of trance or ecstasy lose contact with reality. That's not true: the physical world and the spiritual world are the same thing. We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.
Athena should have been more careful. When I reflect upon the life and death of my pupil, it seems to me that I had better change the way I behave too.
Lella Zainab, 64, numerologist
Athena? What an interesting name! Let's see…her Maximum number is nine. Optimistic, sociable, likely to be noticed in a crowd. People might go to her in search of understanding, compassion, generosity, and for precisely that reason, she should be careful, because that tendency to popularity could go to her head and she'll end up losing more than she gains. She should also watch her tongue, because she tends to speak more than common sense dictates.
As for her Minimum number eleven, I sense that she longs for some leadership position. She has an interest in mystical subjects and through these tries to bring harmony to those around her.
However, this is in direct conflict with the number nine, which is the sum of the day, month and year of her birth reduced to a single figure: she'll always be subject to envy, sadness, introversion and impulsive decisions. She must be careful not to let herself be affected by negative vibrations: excessive ambition, intolerance, abuse of power, extravagance.
Because of that conflict, I suggest she take up some career that doesn't involve emotional contact with people, like computing or engineering.
Oh, she's dead? I'm sorry. So what did she do?
What did Athena do? She did a little of everything, but, ifI had to summarise her life, I'd say: she was a priestess who understood the forces of nature. Or, rather, she was someone who, by the simple fact of having little to lose or to hope for in life, took greater risks than other people and ended up being transformed into the forces she thought she mastered.
She was a supermarket checkout girl, a bank employee, a property dealer, and in each of these positions she always revealed the priestess within. I lived with herfor eight years, and I owed her this: to recover her memory, her identity.
The most difficult thing in collecting together these statements was persuading people to let me use their real names. Some said they didn't want to be involved in this kind of story; others tried to conceal their opinions andfeelings. I explained that my real intention was to help all those involved to understand her better, and that no reader would believe in anonymous statements.
They finally agreed because they all believed that they knew the unique and definitive version of any event, however insignificant. During the recordings, I saw that things are never absolute; they depend on each individual's perceptions. And the best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us.
This doesn't mean that we should do what others expect us to do, but it helps us to understand ourselves better. I owed it to Athena to recover her story, to write her myth.
Samira R. Khalil, 57, housewife, Athena's mother
Please, don't call her Athena. Her real name is Sherine. Sherine Khalil, our much-loved, muchwanted daughter, whom both my husband and I wish we had engendered.
Life, however, had other plans – when fate is very generous with us, there is always a well into which all our dreams can tumble.
We lived in Beirut in the days when everyone considered it the most beautiful city in the Middle
East. My husband was a successful industrialist, we married for love, we travelled to Europe every year, we had friends, we were invited to all the important social events, and, once, the President of the United States himself visited my house.
Imagine that! Three unforgettable days, during two of which the American secret service scoured every corner of our house (they'd been in the area for more than a month already, taking up strategic positions, renting apartments, disguising themselves as beggars or young lovers). And for one day, or, rather, two hours, we partied. I'll never forget the look of envy in our friends' eyes, and the excitement of having our photo taken alongside the most powerful man on the planet.
We had it all, apart from the one thing we wanted most – a child. And so we had nothing.
We tried everything: we made vows and promises, went to places where miracles were guaranteed, we consulted doctors, witchdoctors, took remedies and drank elixirs and magic potions. I had artificial insemination twice and lost the baby both times. On the second occasion, I also lost my left ovary, and, after that, no doctor was prepared to risk such a venture again.
That was when one of the many friends who knew of our plight suggested the one possible solution: adoption. He said he had contacts in Romania, and that the process wouldn't take long.
A month later, we got on a plane. Our friend had important business dealings with
the dictator who ruled the country at the time, and whose name I now forget (Editor's note: Nicolae Ceauºescu), and so we managed to avoid the bureaucratic red tape and went straight to an adoption centre in Sibiu, in Transylvania. There we were greeted with coffee, cigarettes, mineral water, and with the paperwork signed and sealed, all we had to do was choose a child.
They took us to a very cold nursery, and I couldn't imagine how they could leave those poor children in such a place. My first instinct was to adopt them all, to carry them off to Lebanon where there was sun and freedom, but obviously that was a crazy idea. We walked up and down between the cots, listening to the children crying, terrified by the magnitude of the decision we were about to take.
For more than an hour, neither I nor my husband spoke a word. We went out, drank coffee, smoked and then went back in again – and this happened several times. I noticed that the woman in charge of adoptions was growing impatient; she
wanted an immediate decision. At that moment, following an instinct I would dare to describe as maternal – as if I'd found a child who should have been mine in this incarnation, but who had come into the world in another woman's womb – I pointed to one particular baby girl.
The woman advised us to think again. And she'd been so impatient for us to make a decision! But I was sure.
Nevertheless – trying not to hurt my feelings (she thought we had contacts in the upper echelons of the Romanian government) – she whispered to me, so that my husband wouldn't hear: 'I know it won't work out. She's the daughter of a gipsy.'
I retorted that culture isn't something that's transmitted through the genes. The child, who was barely three months old, would be our daughter, brought up according to our customs. She would go to our church, visit our beaches, read books in French, study at the American School in Beirut. Besides, I knew nothing about gipsy culture – and I still know nothing. I only know that they travel a lot, don't wash very often, aren't to be trusted, and wear earrings. Legend has it that they kidnap children and carry them off in their caravans, but here, exactly the opposite was happening; they had left a child behind for me to take care of.
The woman tried again to dissuade me, but I was already signing the papers and asking my husband to do the same. On the flight back to Beirut, the world seemed different: God had given me a reason for living, working and fighting in this vale of tears. We now had a child to justify all our efforts.
Sherine grew in wisdom and beauty – I expect all parents say that, but I really do think she was an exceptional child. One afternoon, when she was five, one of my brothers said that, if, in the future, she wanted to work abroad, her name would always betray her origins, and he suggested changing it to one that gave nothing away, like Athena, for example. Now, of course, I know that Athena refers not only to the capital of Greece, but that it is also the name of the Greek goddess of wisdom, intelligence and war.
Perhaps my brother knew not only that, but was aware, too, of the problems an
Arab name might bring in the future, for he was very involved in politics, as were all our family, and wanted to protect his niece from the black clouds which he, and only he, could see on the horizon. Most surprising of all was that Sherine liked the sound of the word. That same afternoon, she began referring to herself as Athena and no one could persuade her to do otherwise. To please her, we adopted the nickname too, thinking that it would be a passing fancy.
Can a name affect a person's life? Time passed, and the name stuck.
From very early on we discovered that she had a strong religious vocation – she spent all her time in the church and knew the gospels by heart; this was at once a blessing and a curse. In a world that was starting to be divided more and more along religious lines, I feared for my daughter's safety. It was then that Sherine began telling us, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that she had a series of invisible friends – angels and saints whose images she was accustomed to seeing in the church we attended. All children everywhere have visions, but they usually forget about them after a certain age. They also treat inanimate objects, such as dolls or fluffy tigers, as if they were real. However, I really did feel she was going too far when I picked her up from school one day, and she told me that she'd seen 'a woman dressed in white, like the Virgin Mary'.
Naturally, I believe in angels. I even believe that the angels speak to little children, but when a child starts seeing visions of grown-ups, that's another matter. I've read about various shepherds and country people who claimed to have seen a woman in white, and how this eventually destroyed their lives, because others sought them out, expecting miracles; then the priests took over, their village became a centre of pilgrimage, and the poor children ended their lives in a convent or a monastery. I was, therefore, very concerned about this story. Sherine was at an age when she should be more concerned with make-up kits, painting her nails, watching soppy TV soaps and children's programmes. There was something wrong with my daughter, and I consulted an expert.
'Relax,' he said.
According to this paediatrician specialising in child psychology – and according to most other doctors in the field – invisible friends are a projection of a child's
dreams and a safe way of helping the child to discover her desires and express her feelings.
'Yes, but a vision of a woman in white?'
He replied that perhaps Sherine didn't understand our way of seeing or explaining the world. He suggested that we should gradually begin preparing the ground to tell her that she was adopted. In the paediatrician's words, the worst thing that could happen would be for her to find out by herself. Then she would begin to doubt everyone, and her behaviour might become unpredictable.
From then on, we changed the way we talked to her. I don't know how much children remember of what happens to them, but we started trying to show her just how much we loved her and that there was no need for her to take refuge in an imaginary world. She needed to see that her visible universe was as beautiful as it could possibly be, that her parents would protect her from any danger, that Beirut was a lovely city and its beaches full of sun and people. Without ever mentioning 'the woman in white', I began spending more time with my daughter; I invited her schoolfriends to come to our house; I seized every opportunity to shower her with affection.
The strategy worked. My husband used to travel a lot, and Sherine always missed him. In the name of love, he resolved to change his way of life a little. Her solitary conversations began to be replaced by games shared by father, mother and daughter.
Everything was going well. Then, one night, she came into our room in tears, saying that she was frightened and that hell was close at hand.
I was alone at home. My husband had had to go away again, and I thought perhaps this was the reason for her despair. But hell? What were they teaching her at school or at church? I decided to go and talk to her teacher the next day.
Sherine, meanwhile, wouldn't stop crying. I took her over to the window and showed her the Mediterranean outside, lit by the full moon. I told her there were
no devils, only stars in the sky and people strolling up and down the boulevard outside our apartment. I told her not to worry, that she needn't be afraid, but she continued to weep and tremble. After spending almost half an hour trying to calm her, I began to get worried. I begged her to stop, after all, she was no longer a child. I thought perhaps her first period had started and discreetly asked if there was any blood.
'Yes, lots.'
I got some cotton wool and asked her to lie down so that I could take care of her 'wound'. It wasn't important. I would explain tomorrow. However, her period hadn't started. She cried for a while longer, but she must have been tired, because then she fell asleep.
And the following morning, there was blood.
Four men had been murdered. To me, this was just another of the eternal tribal battles to which my people have become accustomed. To Sherine, it clearly meant nothing, because she didn't even mention her nightmare.
Meanwhile, from that date onwards, hell came ever closer and it hasn't gone away since. On that same day, twenty-six Palestinians were killed on a bus, as revenge for the murders. Twenty-four hours later, it was impossible to walk down the street because of shots coming from every angle. The schools closed, Sherine was hurried home by one of her teachers, and the situation went from bad to worse. My husband interrupted his business trip halfway through and came home, where he spent whole days on the phone to his friends in government, but no one said anything that made any sense. Sherine heard the shots outside and my husband's angry shouts indoors, but, to my surprise, she didn't say a word. I tried to tell her that it wouldn't last, that soon we'd be able to go to the beach again, but she would simply look away or ask for a book to read or a record to play. While hell gradually put down roots, Sherine read and listened to music.
But, if you don't mind, I'd prefer not to dwell on that. I don't want to think about the threats we received, about who was right, who was guilty and who was innocent. The fact is that, a few months later, if you wanted to cross a particular
street, you had to catch a boat across to the island of Cyprus, get on another boat and disembark on the other side of the street.
For nearly a year, we stayed pretty much shut up indoors, always hoping that the situation would improve, always thinking it was a temporary thing, and that the government would take control. One morning, while she was listening to a record on her little portable record-player, Sherine started dancing and saying things like: 'This is going to last for a long, long time.'
I tried to stop her, but my husband grabbed my arm. I realised that he was listening to what she was saying and taking it seriously. I never understood why, and we've never spoken about it since. It's a kind of taboo between us.
The following day, he began taking unexpected steps, and two weeks later we were on a boat bound for London. Later, we would learn that, although there are no reliable statistics, during those years of civil war about 44,000 people died, 180,000 were wounded, and thousands made homeless. The fighting continued for other reasons, the country was occupied by foreign troops, and the hell continues to this day. 'It's going to last for a long, long time,' said Sherine. Unfortunately, she was right.
Lukás Jessen-Petersen, 32, engineer, ex-husband
When I first met Athena, she already knew that she was adopted. She was just nineteen and about to have a stand-up fight with a fellow student in the university cafeteria because the fellow student, assuming Athena to be English (white skin, straight hair, eyes that were sometimes green, sometimes grey), had made some insulting remark about the Middle East.
It was the first day of term for these students and they knew nothing about each other. But Athena got up, grabbed the other girl by the collar and started screaming:
'Racist!'
I saw the look of terror in the girl's eyes and the look of excitement in the eyes of the other students, eager to see what would happen next. I was in the year above, and I knew exactly what the consequences would be: they would both be hauled up before the vice-chancellor, an official complaint would be made, and that would probably be followed by expulsion from the university and a possible police inquiry into alleged racism, etc. etc. Everyone would lose.
'Shut up!' I yelled, without really knowing what I was saying.
I knew neither of the girls. I'm not the saviour of the world and, to be perfectly honest, young people find the occasional fight stimulating, but I couldn't help myself.
'Stop it!' I shouted again at the pretty young woman, who now had the other equally pretty young woman by the throat. She shot me a furious glance. Then, suddenly, something changed. She smiled, although she still had her hands around her colleague's throat.
'You forgot to say “please”,' she said. Everyone laughed. 'Stop,' I asked again. 'Please.'
She released the other girl and came over to me. All heads turned to watch. 'You have excellent manners. Do you also have a cigarette?'
I offered her my pack of cigarettes, and we went outside for a smoke. She had gone from outrage to nonchalance, and minutes later, she was laughing, discussing the weather, and asking if I liked this or that pop group. I heard the bell ringing for class and solemnly ignored the rule I'd been brought up to obey all my life: do your duty. I stayed there chatting, as if there were no university, no fights, no canteens, no wind or cold or sun. There was only that young woman with the grey eyes, saying the most boring and pointless things, but capable, nonetheless, of holding my interest for the rest of my life.
Two hours later, we were having lunch together. Seven hours later, we were in a
bar, having supper and drinking whatever our limited budgets allowed us to eat and drink. Our conversations grew ever more profound, and in a short space of time, I knew practically everything about her life – Athena recounted details of her childhood and adolescence with no prompting from me. Later, I realised she was the same with everyone, but, that day, I felt like the most important man on the face of the Earth.
She had come to London fleeing the civil war that had broken out in Lebanon. Her father, a Maronite Christian (Editor's note: a branch of the Catholic Church, which, although it comes under the authority of the Vatican, does not require priests to be celibate and uses both Middle Eastern and Orthodox rituals), had started to receive death threats because he worked for the Lebanese government, but despite this, he couldn't make up his mind to leave and go into exile. Then Athena, overhearing a phone conversation, decided that it was time she grew up, that she assumed her filial responsibilities and protected those she loved.
She performed a kind of dance and pretended that she'd gone into a trance (she had learned all about this kind of thing at school when she studied the lives of the saints), and started making various pronouncements. I don't know how a mere child could possibly persuade adults to make decisions based on what she said, but that, according to Athena, was precisely what happened. Her father was very superstitious, and she was convinced that she'd saved the lives of her family.
They arrived here as refugees, but not as beggars. The Lebanese community is scattered all over the world, and her father soon found a way of re-establishing his business, and life went on. Athena was able to study at good schools, she attended dance classes – because dance was her passion – and when she'd finished at secondary school, she chose to take a degree in engineering.
Once they were living in London, her parents invited her out to supper at one of the most expensive restaurants in the city, and explained, very carefully, that she had been adopted. Athena pretended to be surprised, hugged them both, and said that nothing would change their relationship.
The truth was, though, that a friend of the family, in a moment of malice, had
called her 'an ungrateful orphan' and put her lack of manners down to the fact that she was 'not her parents' “real” daughter'. She had hurled an ashtray at him cutting his face, and then cried for two whole days, after which she quickly got used to the idea that she was adopted. The malicious family friend was left with an unexplained scar and took to saying that he'd been attacked in the street by muggers.
I asked if she would like to go out with me the next day. She told me that she was a virgin, went to church on Sundays, and had no interest in romantic novels – she was more concerned with reading everything she could about the situation in the Middle East.
She was, in short, busy. Very busy.
'People think that a woman's only dream is to get married and have children. And given what I've told you, you probably think that I've suffered a lot in life. It's not true, and, besides, I've been there already. I've known other men who wanted to “protect” me from all those tragedies. What they forget is that, from Ancient Greece on, the people who returned from battle were either dead on their shields or stronger, despite or because of their scars. It's better that way: I've lived on a battlefield since I was born, but I'm still alive and I don't need anyone to protect me.'
She paused.
'You see how cultured I am?'
'Oh, very, but when you attack someone weaker than yourself, you make it look as if you really do need protection. You could have ruined your university career right there and then.'
'You're right. OK, I accept the invitation.'
We started seeing each other regularly, and the closer I got to her, the more I discovered my own light, because she always encouraged me to give the best of
myself. She had never read any books on magic or esoterics. She said they were things of the Devil, and that salvation was only possible through Jesus – end of story. Sometimes, though, she said things that didn't seem entirely in keeping with the teachings of the Church.
'Christ surrounded himself with beggars, prostitutes, tax-collectors and fishermen. I think what he meant by this was that the divine spark is in every soul and is never extinguished. When I sit still, or when I'm feeling very agitated, I feel as if I were vibrating along with the whole Universe. And I know things then that I don't know, as if God were guiding my steps. There are moments when I feel that everything is being revealed to me.'
faith.
Then she would correct herself: 'But that's wrong.'
Athena always lived between two worlds: what she felt was true and what she had been taught by her
One day, after almost a semester of equations, calculations and structural studies, she announced that she was going to leave university.
'But you've never said anything to me about it!' I said.
'I was even afraid of talking about it to myself, but this morning I went to see my hairdresser. She worked day and night so that her daughter could finish her sociology degree. The daughter finally graduated and, after knocking on many doors, found work as a secretary at a cement works. Yet even today, my hairdresser said very proudly: “My daughter's got a degree.” Most of my parents' friends and most of my parents' friends' children, also have degrees. This doesn't mean that they've managed to find the kind of work they wanted. Not at all; they went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that, in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors and writers.'
I asked her to give it some more thought before taking such a radical step, but she quoted these lines by Robert Frost:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
The following day, she didn't turn up for class. At our following meeting, I asked what she was going to do.
'I'm going to get married and have a baby.'
This wasn't an ultimatum. I was twenty, she was nineteen, and I thought it was still too early to take on such a commitment.
But Athena was quite serious. And I needed to choose between losing the one thing that really filled my thoughts – my love for that woman – and losing my freedom and all the choices that the future promised me.
To be honest, the decision was easy.
Father Giancarlo Fontana, 72
Of course I was surprised when the couple, both of them much too young, came to the church to arrange the wedding ceremony. I hardly knew Lukás Jessen-Petersen, but that same day, I learned that his family – obscure aristocrats from Denmark – were totally opposed to the union. They weren't just against the marriage, they were against the Church as well.
According to his father – who based himself on frankly unanswerable scientific arguments – the Bible, on which the whole religion is based, wasn't really a book, but a collage of sixty-six different manuscripts, the real name or identity of whose authors is unknown; he said that almost a thousand years elapsed between the writing of the first book and the last, longer than the time that has elapsed since Columbus discovered America. And no living being on the planet – from monkeys down to parrots – needs ten commandments in order to know how to behave. All
that it takes for the world to remain in harmony is for each being to follow the laws of nature.
Naturally, I read the Bible and know a little of its history, but the human beings who wrote it were instruments of Divine Power, and Jesus forged a far stronger bond than the ten commandments: love. Birds and monkeys, or any of God's creatures, obey their instincts and merely do what they're programmed to do. In the case of the human being, things are more complicated because we know about love and its traps.
Oh dear, here I am making a sermon, when I should be telling you about my meeting with Athena and Lukás. While I was talking to the young man – and I say talking, because we don't share the same faith, and I'm not, therefore, bound by the secret of the confessional – I learned that, as well as the household's general anticlericalism, there was a lot of resistance to Athena because she was a foreigner. I felt like quoting from the Bible, from a part that isn't a profession of faith, but a call to common sense:
'Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother; thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land.'
I'm sorry, there I am quoting the Bible again, and I promise I'll try to control myself from now on. After talking to the young man, I spent at least two hours with Sherine, or Athena as she preferred to be called.
Athena had always intrigued me. Ever since she first started coming to the church, it seemed to me that she had one clear ambition: to become a saint. She told me – although her fiancé didn't know this – that shortly before civil war broke out in Beirut, she'd had an experience very similar to that of St Thérèse of Lisieux: she had seen the streets running with blood. One could attribute this to some trauma in childhood or adolescence, but the fact is that, to a greater or lesser extent, all creative human beings have such experiences, which are known as 'possession by the sacred'. Suddenly, for a fraction of a second, we feel that our whole life is justified, our sins forgiven, and that love is still the strongest force, one that can transform us forever.
But, at the same time, we feel afraid. Surrendering completely to love, be it human or divine, means giving up everything, including our own well-being or our ability to make decisions. It means loving in the deepest sense of the word. The truth is that we don't want to be saved in the way God has chosen; we want to keep absolute control over our every step, to be fully conscious of our decisions, to be capable of choosing the object of our devotion.
It isn't like that with love – it arrives, moves in and starts directing everything. Only very strong souls allow themselves to be swept along, and Athena was a strong soul. So strong that she spent hours in deep contemplation. She had a special gift for music; they say that she danced very well too, but since the church isn't really the appropriate place for that, she used to bring her guitar each morning and spend some time there singing to the Holy Virgin before going off to her classes.
I can still remember the first time I heard her. I'd just finished celebrating morning mass with the few parishioners prepared to get up that early on a winter's morning, when I realised that I'd forgotten to collect the money left in the offering box. When I went back in, I heard some music that made me see everything differently, as if the atmosphere had been touched by the hand of an angel. In one corner, in a kind of ecstasy, a young woman of about twenty sat playing her guitar and singing hymns of praise, with her eyes fixed on the statue of the Holy Virgin.
I went over to the offering box. She noticed my presence and stopped what she was doing, but I nodded to her, encouraging her to go on. Then I sat down on one of the pews, closed my eyes and listened.
At that moment, a sense of Paradise, of 'possession by the sacred', seemed to descend from the heavens. As if she understood what was going on in my heart, the young woman began to intersperse music with silence. Each time she stopped playing, I would say a prayer. Then the music would start up again.
And I was conscious that I was experiencing something unforgettable, one of those magical moments which we only understand when it has passed. I was entirely in the present, with no past, no future, absorbed in experiencing the
morning, the music, the sweetness and the unexpected prayer. I entered a state of worship and ecstasy and gratitude for being in the world, glad that I'd followed my vocation despite my family's opposition. In the simplicity of that small chapel, in the voice of that young woman, in the morning light flooding everything, I understood once again that the grandeur of God reveals itself through simple things.
After many tears on my part and after what seemed to me an eternity, the young woman stopped playing. I turned round and realised that she was one of my parishioners. After that, we became friends, and whenever we could, we shared in that worship through music.
However, the idea of marriage took me completely by surprise. Since we knew each other fairly well, I asked how she thought her husband's family would react.
'Badly, very badly.'
As tactfully as I could, I asked if, for any reason, she was being forced into marriage. 'No, I'm still a virgin. I'm not pregnant.'
I asked if she'd told her own family, and she said that she had, and that their reaction had been one of horror, accompanied by tears from her mother and threats from her father.
'When I come here to praise the Virgin with my music, I'm not bothered about what other people might think, I'm simply sharing my feelings with Her. And that's how it's always been, ever since I was old enough to think for myself. I'm a vessel in which the Divine Energy can make itself manifest. And that energy is asking me now to have a child, so that I can give it what my birth mother never gave me: protection and security.'
'No one is secure on this Earth,' I replied. She still had a long future ahead of her; there was plenty of time for the miracle of creation to occur. However, Athena was determined:
'St Thérèse didn't rebel against the illness that afflicted her, on the contrary, she saw it as a sign of God's Glory. St Thérèse was only fifteen, much younger than me, when she decided to enter a convent. She was forbidden to do so, but she insisted. She decided to go and speak to the Pope himself – can you imagine? To speak to the Pope! And she got what she wanted. That same Glory is asking something far simpler and far more generous of me – to become a mother. If I wait much longer, I won't be able to be a companion to my child, the age difference will be too great, and we won't share the same interests.'
She wouldn't be alone in that, I said.
But Athena continued as if she wasn't listening:
'I'm only happy when I think that God exists and is listening to me; but that isn't enough to go on living, when nothing seems to make sense. I pretend a happiness I don't feel; I hide my sadness so as not to worry those who love me and care about me. Recently, I've even considered suicide. At night, before I go to sleep, I have long conversations with myself, praying for this idea to go away; it would be such an act of ingratitude, an escape, a way of spreading tragedy and misery over the Earth. In the mornings, I come here to talk to St Thérèse and to ask her to free me from the demons I speak to at night. It's worked so far, but
I'm beginning to weaken. I know I have a mission which I've long rejected, and now I must accept it. That mission is to be a mother. I must carry out that mission or go mad. If I don't feel life growing inside me, I'll never be able to accept life outside me.'
Lukás Jessen-Petersen, ex-husband
When Viorel was born, I had just turned twenty-two. I was no longer the student who had married a fellow student, but a man responsible for supporting his family, and with an enormous burden on my shoulders. My parents, who didn't even come to the wedding, made any financial help conditional on my leaving Athena and gaining custody of the child (or, rather, that's what my father said, because my
mother used to phone me up, weeping, saying I must be mad, but saying, too, how much she'd like to hold her grandson in her arms). I hoped that, as they came to understand my love for Athena and my determination to stay with her, their resistance would gradually break down.
It didn't. And now I had to provide for my wife and child. I abandoned my studies at the Engineering Faculty. I got a phone-call from my father, a mixture of stick and carrot: he said that if I continued as I was, I'd end up being disinherited, but that if I went back to university, he'd consider helping me, in his words, 'provisionally'. I refused. The romanticism of youth demands that we always take very radical stances. I could, I said, solve my problems alone.
During the time before Viorel was born, Athena began helping me to understand myself better. This didn't happen through sex – our sexual relationship was, I must confess, very tentative – but through music.
As I later learned, music is as old as human beings. Our ancestors, who travelled from cave to cave, couldn't carry many things, but modern archaeology shows that, as well as the little they might have with them in the way of food, there was always a musical instrument in their baggage, usually a drum. Music isn't just something that comforts or distracts us, it goes beyond that – it's an ideology. You can judge people by the kind of music they listen to.
As I watched Athena dance during her pregnancy and listened to her play the guitar to calm the baby and make him feel that he was loved, I began to allow her way of seeing the world to affect my life too. When Viorel was born, the first thing we did when we brought him home was to play Albinoni's Adagio. When we quarrelled, it was the force of music – although I can't make any logical connection between the two things, except in some kind of hippyish way – that helped us get through difficult times.
But all this romanticism didn't bring in the money. Since I played no instrument and couldn't even offer my services as background music in a bar, I finally got a job as a trainee with a firm of architects, doing structural calculations. They paid me a very low hourly rate, and so I would leave the house very early each morning
and come home late. I hardly saw my son, who would be sleeping by then, and I was almost too exhausted to talk or make love to my wife. Every night, I asked myself: when will we be able to improve our financial situation and live in the style we deserve? Although I largely agreed with Athena when she talked about the pointlessness of having a degree, in engineering (and law and medicine, for example), there are certain basic technical facts that are essential if we're not to put people's lives at risk. And I'd been forced to interrupt my training in my chosen profession, which meant abandoning a dream that was very important to me.
The rows began. Athena complained that I didn't pay enough attention to the baby, that he needed a father, that if she'd simply wanted a child, she could have done that on her own, without causing me all these problems. More than once, I slammed out of the house, saying that she didn't understand me, and that I didn't understand either how I'd ever agreed to the 'madness' of having a child at twenty, before we had even a minimum of financial security. Gradually, out of sheer exhaustion and irritation, we stopped making love.
I began to slide into depression, feeling that I'd been used and manipulated by the woman I loved. Athena noticed my increasingly strange state of mind, but, instead of helping me, she focused her energies on Viorel and on music. Work became my escape. I would occasionally talk to my parents, and they would always say, as they had so many times before, that she'd had the baby in order to get me to marry her. She also became increasingly religious. She insisted on having our son baptised with a name she herself had decided on – Viorel, a Romanian name. Apart from a few immigrants, I doubt that anyone else in England is called Viorel, but I thought it showed imagination on her part, and I realised, too, that she was making some strange connection with a past she'd never known – her days in the orphanage in Sibiu.
I tried to be adaptable, but I felt I was losing Athena because of the child. Our arguments became more frequent, and she threatened to leave because she feared that Viorel was picking up the 'negative energy' from our quarrels. One night, when she made this threat again, I was the one who left, thinking that I'd go back as soon as I'd calmed down a bit.
I started wandering aimlessly round London, cursing the life I'd chosen, the child I'd agreed to have, and the wife who seemed to have no further interest in me. I went into the first bar I came to, near a Tube station, and downed four glasses of whisky. When the bar closed at eleven, I searched out one of those shops that stay open all night, bought more whisky, sat down on a bench in a square and continued drinking. A group of youths approached me and asked to share the bottle with me. When I refused, they attacked me. The police arrived, and we were all carted off to the police station.
I was released after making a statement. I didn't bring any charges, saying that it had been nothing but a silly disagreement; after all, I didn't want to spend months appearing at various courts, as the victim of an attack. I was still so drunk that, just as I was about to leave, I stumbled and fell sprawling across an inspector's desk. The inspector was angry, but instead of arresting me on the spot for insulting a police officer, he threw me out into the street.
And there was one of my attackers, who thanked me for not taking the case any further. He pointed out that I was covered in mud and blood and suggested I get a change of clothes before returning home. Instead of going on my way, I asked him to do me a favour: to listen to me, because I desperately needed to talk to someone.
For an hour, he listened in silence to my woes. I wasn't really talking to him, but to myself: a young man with his whole life before him, with a possibly brilliant career ahead of him – as well as a family with the necessary contacts to open many doors
– but who now looked like a beggar – drunk, tired, depressed and penniless. And all because of a woman who didn't even pay me any attention.
By the end of my story I had a clearer view of my situation: a life which I had chosen in the belief that love conquers all. And it isn't true. Sometimes love carries us into the abyss, taking with us, to make matters worse, the people we love. In my case, I was well on the way to destroying not only my life, but Athena's and Viorel's too.
At that moment, I said to myself once again that I was a man, not the boy who'd
been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and that I'd faced with dignity all the challenges that had been placed before me. Athena was already asleep, with the baby in her arms. I took a bath, went outside again to throw my dirty clothes in the bin, and lay down, feeling strangely sober.
The next day, I told Athena that I wanted a divorce. She asked me why.
'Because I love you. Because I love Viorel. And because all I've done is to blame you both because I had to give up my dream of becoming an engineer. If we'd waited a little, things would have been different, but you were only thinking about your plans and forgot to include me in them.'
Athena said nothing, as if she had been expecting this, or as if she had unconsciously been provoking such a response.
My heart was bleeding because I was hoping that she'd ask me, please, to stay. But she seemed calm and resigned, concerned only that the baby might hear our conversation. It was then that I felt sure she had never loved me, and that I had merely been the instrument for the realisation of her mad dream to have a baby at nineteen.
I told her that she could keep the house and the furniture, but she wouldn't hear of it. She'd stay with her parents for a while, then look for a job and rent her own apartment. She asked if I could help out financially with Viorel, and I agreed at once.
I got up, gave her one last, long kiss and insisted again that she should stay in the house, but she repeated her resolve to go to her parents' house as soon as she'd packed up all her things. I stayed at a cheap hotel and waited every night for her to phone me, asking me to come back and start a new life. I was even prepared to continue the old life if necessary, because that separation had made me realise that there was nothing and no one more important in the world than my wife and child.
A week later, I finally got that call. All she said, however, was that she'd cleared out all her things and wouldn't be going back. Two weeks after that, I learned that
she'd rented a small attic flat in Basset Road, where she had to carry the baby up three flights of stairs every day. A few months later, we signed the divorce papers.
My real family left forever. And the family I'd been born into received me with open arms.
After my separation from Athena and the great suffering that followed, I wondered if I hadn't made a bad, irresponsible decision, typical of people who've read lots of love stories in their adolescence and desperately want to repeat the tale of Romeo and Juliet. When the pain abated – and time is the only cure for that – I saw that life had allowed me to meet the one woman I would ever be capable of loving. Each second spent by her side had been worthwhile, and given the chance, despite all that had happened, I would do the same thing over again.
But time, as well as healing all wounds, taught me something strange too: that it's possible to love more than one person in a lifetime. I remarried. I'm very happy with my new wife, and I can't imagine living without her. This, however, doesn't mean that I have to renounce all my past experiences, as long as I'm careful not to compare my two lives. You can't measure love the way you can the length of a road or the height of a building.
Something very important remained from my relationship with Athena: a son, her great dream, of which she spoke so frankly before we decided to get married. I have another child by my second wife, and I'm better prepared for all the highs and lows of fatherhood than I was twelve years ago.
Once, when I went to fetch Viorel and bring him back to spend the weekend with me, I decided to ask her why she'd reacted so calmly when I told her I wanted a separation.
'Because all my life I've learned to suffer in silence,' she replied.
And only then did she put her arms around me and cry out all the tears she would like to have shed on that day.
Father Giancarlo Fontana
I saw her when she arrived for Sunday mass, with the baby in her arms as usual. I knew that she and Lukás were having difficulties, but, until that week, these had all seemed merely the sort of misunderstandings that all couples have, and since both of them were people who radiated goodness, I hoped that, sooner or later, they would resolve their differences.
It had been a whole year since she last visited the church in the morning to play her guitar and praise the Virgin. She devoted herself to looking after Viorel, whom I had the honour to baptise, although I must admit I know of no saint with that name. However, she still came to mass every Sunday, and we always talked afterwards, when everyone else had left. She said I was her only friend. Together we had shared in divine worship, now, though, it was her earthly problems she needed to share with me.
She loved Lukás more than any man she had ever met; he was her son's father, the person she had chosen to spend her life with, someone who had given up everything and had courage enough to start a family. When the difficulties started, she tried to convince him that it was just a phase, that she had to devote herself to their son, but that she had no intention of turning Viorel into a spoiled brat. Soon she would let him face certain of life's challenges alone. After that, she would go back to being the wife and woman he'd known when they first met, possibly with even more intensity, because now she had a better understanding of the duties and responsibilities that came with the choice she'd made. Lukás still felt rejected; she tried desperately to divide herself between her husband and her child, but she was always obliged to choose, and when that happened, she never hesitated: she chose Viorel.
Drawing on my scant knowledge of psychology, I said that this wasn't the first time I'd heard such a story, and that in such situations men do tend to feel rejected, but that it soon passes. I'd heard about similar problems in conversations with my other parishioners. During one of our talks, Athena acknowledged that she had perhaps been rather precipitate; the romance of being a young mother had blinded her to the real challenges that arise after the birth of a child. But it was too late
now for regrets.
She asked if I could talk to Lukás, who never came to church, perhaps because he didn't believe in God or perhaps because he preferred to spend his Sunday mornings with his son. I agreed to do so, as long as he came of his own accord. Just when Athena was about to ask him this favour, the major crisis occurred, and he left her and Viorel.
I advised her to be patient, but she was deeply hurt. She'd been abandoned once in childhood, and all the hatred she felt for her birth mother was automatically transferred to Lukás, although later, I understand, they became good friends again. For Athena, breaking family ties was possibly the gravest sin anyone could commit.
She continued attending church on Sundays, but always went straight back home afterwards. She had no one now with whom to leave her son, who cried lustily throughout mass, disturbing everyone else'sconcentration. On one of the rare occasions when we could speak, she said that she was working for a bank, had rented an apartment, and that I needn't worry about her. Viorel's father (she never mentioned her husband's name now) was fulfilling his financial obligations.
Then came that fateful Sunday.
I learned what had happened during the week – one of the parishioners told me. I spent several nights praying for an angel to bring me inspiration and tell me whether I should keep my commitment to the Church or to flesh-and-blood men and women. When no angel appeared, I contacted my superior, and he said that the only reason the Church has survived is because it's always been rigid about dogma, and if it started making exceptions, we'd be back in the Middle Ages. I knew exactly what was going to happen. I thought of phoning Athena, but she hadn't given me her new number.
That morning, my hands were trembling as I lifted up the host and blessed the bread. I spoke the words that had come down to me through a thousand-year-old tradition, using the power passed on from generation to generation by the apostles. But then my thoughts turned to that young woman with her child in her
arms, a kind of Virgin Mary, the miracle of motherhood and love made manifest in abandonment and solitude, and who had just joined the line as she always did, and was slowly approaching in order to take communion.
I think most of the congregation knew what was happening. And they were all watching me, waiting for my reaction. I saw myself surrounded by the just, by sinners, by Pharisees, by members of the Sanhedrin, by apostles and disciples and people with good intentions and bad.
Athena stood before me and repeated the usual gesture: she closed her eyes and opened her mouth to receive the Body of Christ.
The Body of Christ remained in my hands.
She opened her eyes, unable to understand what was going on. 'We'll talk later,' I whispered.
But she didn't move.
'There are people behind you in the queue. We'll talk later.'
'What's going on?' she asked, and everyone in the line could hear her question. 'We'll talk later.'
'Why won't you give me communion? Can't you see you're humiliating me in front of everyone? Haven't I been through enough already?'
'Athena, the Church forbids divorced people from receiving the sacrament. You signed your divorce papers this week. We'll talk later,' I said again.
When she still didn't move, I beckoned to the person behind her to come forward. I continued giving communion until the last parishioner had received it. And it was then, just before I turned to the altar, that I heard that voice.
It was no longer the voice of the girl who sang her worship of the Virgin Mary, who talked about her plans, who was so moved when she shared with me what she'd learned about the lives of the saints, and who almost wept when she spoke to me about her marital problems. It was the voice of a wounded, humiliated animal, its heart full of loathing.
'A curse on this place!' said the voice. 'A curse on all those who never listened to the words of Christ and who have transformed his message into a stone building. For Christ said: “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Well, I'm heavy laden, and they won't let me come to Him. Today I've learned that the Church has changed those words to read: “Come unto me all ye who follow our rules, and let the heavy laden go hang!”'
I heard one of the women in the front row of pews telling her to be quiet. But I wanted to hear. I needed to hear. I turned to her, my head bowed – it was all I could do.
'I swear that I will never set foot in a church ever again. Once more, I've been abandoned by a family, and this time it has nothing to do with financial difficulties or with the immaturity of those who marry too young. A curse upon all those who slam the door in the face of a mother and her child! You're just like those people who refused to take in the Holy Family, like those who denied Christ when he most needed a friend!'
With that, she turned and left in tears, her baby in her arms. I finished the service, gave the final blessing and went straight to the sacristy – that Sunday, there would be no mingling with the faithful, no pointless conversations. That Sunday, I was faced by a philosophical dilemma: I had chosen to respect the institution rather than the words on which that institution was based.
I'm getting old now, and God could take me at any moment. I've remained faithful to my religion and I believe that, for all its errors, it really is trying to put things right. This will take decades, possibly centuries, but one day, all that will matter is love and Christ's words: 'Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' I've devoted my entire life to the priesthood and I don't regret
my decision for one second. However, there are times, like that Sunday, when, although I didn't doubt my faith, I did doubt men.
I know now what happened to Athena, and I wonder: Did it all start there, or was it already in her soul? I think of the many Athenas and Lukáses in the world who are divorced and because of that can no longer receive the sacrament of the Eucharist; all they can do is contemplate the suffering, crucified Christ and listen to His words, words that are not always in accord with the laws of the Vatican. In a few cases, these people leave the church, but the majority continue coming to mass on Sundays, because that's what they're used to, even though they know that the miracle of the transmutation of the bread and the wine into the flesh and the blood of the Lord is forbidden to them.
I like to imagine that, when she left the church, Athena met Jesus. Weeping and confused, she would have thrown herself into his arms, asking him to explain why she was being excluded just because of a piece of paper she'd signed, something of no importance on the spiritual plane, and which was of interest only to registry offices and the tax man.
And looking at Athena, Jesus might have replied:
'My child, I've been excluded too. It's a very long time since they've allowed me in there.'
Pavel Podbielski, 57, owner of the apartment
Athena and I had one thing in common: we were both refugees from a war and arrived in England when we were still children, although I fled Poland over fifty years ago. We both knew that, despite that physical change, our traditions continue to exist in exile – communities join together again, language and religion remain alive, and in a place that will always be foreign to them, people tend to look after each other.
Traditions continue, but the desire to go back gradually disappears. That desire
needs to stay alive in our hearts as a hope with which we like to delude ourselves, but it will never be put into practice; I'll never go back to live in Czêstochowa, and Athena and her family will never return to Beirut.
It was this kind of solidarity that made me rent her the third floor of my house in Basset Road normally, I'd prefer tenants without children. I'd made that mistake before, and two things had happened: I complained about the noise they made during the day, and they complained about the noise I made during the night. Both noises had their roots in sacred elements – crying and music – but they belonged to two completely different worlds and it was hard for them to coexist.
I warned her, but she didn't really take it in, and told me not to worry about her son. He spent all day at his grandmother's house anyway, and the apartment was conveniently close to her work at a local bank.
Despite my warnings, and despite holding out bravely at first, eight days later the doorbell rang. It was Athena, with her child in her arms.
'My son can't sleep. Couldn't you turn the music down at least for one night?' Everyone in the room stared at her.
'What's going on?'
The child immediately stopped crying, as if he were as surprised as his mother to see that group of people, who had stopped in mid-dance.
I pressed the pause button on the cassette player and beckoned her in. Then I restarted the music so as not to interrupt the ritual. Athena sat down in one corner of the room, rocking her child in her arms and watching him drift off to sleep despite the noise of drums and brass. She stayed for the whole ceremony and left along with the other guests, but – as I thought she would – she rang my doorbell the next morning, before going to work.
'You don't have to explain what I saw – people dancing with their eyes closed – because I know what that means. I often do the same myself, and at the moment,
those are the only times of peace and serenity in my life. Before I became a mother, I used to go to clubs with my husband and my friends, and I'd see people dancing with their eyes closed there too. Some were just trying to look cool, and others seemed to be genuinely moved by a greater, more powerful force. And ever since I've been old enough to think for myself, I've always used dance as a way of getting in touch with something stronger and more powerful than myself. Anyway, could you tell me what that music was?'
'What are you doing this Sunday?'
'Nothing special. I might go for a walk with Viorel in Regent's Park and get some fresh air. I'll have plenty of time later on for a social calendar of my own; for the moment, I've decided to follow my son's.' 'I'll come with you, if you like.'
On the two nights before our walk, Athena came to watch the ritual. Her son fell asleep after only a few minutes, and she merely watched what was going on around her without saying a word. She sat quite still on the sofa, but I was sure that her soul was dancing.
On Sunday afternoon, while we were walking in the park, I asked her to pay attention to everything she was seeing and hearing: the leaves moving in the breeze, the waves on the lake, the birds singing, the dogs barking, the shouts of children as they ran back and forth, as if obeying some strange logic, incomprehensible to grown-ups.
'Everything moves, and everything moves to a rhythm. And everything that moves to a rhythm creates a sound. At this moment, the same thing is happening here and everywhere else in the world. Our ancestors noticed the same thing when they tried to escape from the cold into caves: things moved and made noise. The first human beings may have been frightened by this at first, but that fear was soon replaced by a sense of awe: they understood that this was the way in which some Superior Being was communicating with them. In the hope of reciprocating that communication, they started imitating the sounds and movements around them – and thus dance and music were born. A few days ago, you told me that dance puts you in touch with something stronger than yourself.'
'Yes, when I dance, I'm a free woman, or, rather, a free spirit who can travel through the universe, contemplate the present, divine the future, and be transformed into pure energy. And that gives me enormous pleasure, a joy that always goes far beyond everything I've experienced or will experience in my lifetime. There was a time when I was determined to become a saint, praising God through music and movement, but that path is closed to me forever now.'
'Which path do you mean?'
She made her son more comfortable in his pushchair. I saw that she didn't want to answer that question and so I asked again: when mouths close, it's because there's something important to be said.
Without a flicker of emotion, as if she'd always had to endure in silence the things life imposed on her, she told me about what had happened at the church, when the priest – possibly her only friend – had refused her communion. She also told me about the curse she had uttered then, and that she had left the Catholic Church forever.
'A saint is someone who lives his or her life with dignity,' I explained. 'All we have to do is understand that we're all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small, and walk fearlessly, aware that each step has meaning. We can let ourselves be guided by the light emanating from the Vertex.'
'What do you mean by the Vertex? In mathematics, it's the topmost angle of a triangle.'
'In life, too, it's the culminating point, the goal of all those who, like everyone else, make mistakes, but who, even in their darkest moments, never lose sight of the light emanating from their hearts. That's what we're trying to do in our group. The Vertex is hidden inside us, and we can reach it if we accept it and recognise its light.'
I explained that I'd come up with the name 'the search for the Vertex' for the dance she'd watched on previous nights, performed by people of all ages (at the time there were ten of us, aged between nineteen and sixty-five). Athena asked where I'd found out about it.
I told her that, immediately after the end of the Second World War, some of my family had managed to escape from the Communist regime that was taking over Poland, and decided to move to England. They'd been advised to bring with them art objects and antiquarian books, which, they were told, were highly valued in this part of the world.
Paintings and sculptures were quickly sold, but the books remained, gathering dust. My mother was keen for me to read and speak Polish, and the books formed part of my education. One day, inside a nineteenth-century edition of Thomas Malthus, I found two pages of notes written by my grandfather, who had died in a concentration camp. I started reading, assuming it would be something to do with an inheritance or else a passionate letter intended for a secret lover, because it was said that he'd fallen in love with someone in Russia.
There was, in fact, some truth in this. The pages contained a description of his journey to Siberia during the Communist revolution. There, in the remote village of Diedov, he fell in love with an actress. (Editor's note: It has not been possible to locate this village on the map. The name may have been deliberately changed, or the place itself may have disappeared after Stalin'sforced migrations.) According to my grandfather, the actress was part of a sect, who believed that they had found the remedy for all ills through a particular kind of dance, because the dance brought the dancer into contact with the light from the Vertex.
They feared that the tradition would disappear; the inhabitants of the village were soon to be transported to another place. Both the actress and her friends begged him to write down what they had learned. He did, but clearly didn't think it was of much importance, because he left his notes inside a book, and there they remained until the day I found them.
Athena broke in:
'But dance isn't something you write about, you have to do it.'
'Exactly. All the notes say is this: Dance to the point of exhaustion, as if you were a mountaineer climbing a hill, a sacred mountain. Dance until you are so out of breath that your organism is forced to obtain oxygen some other way, and it is that, in the end, which will cause you to lose your identity and your relationship with space and time. Dance only to the sound of percussion; repeat the process every day; know that, at a certain moment, your eyes will, quite naturally, close, and you will begin to see a light that comes from within, a light that answers your questions and develops your hidden powers.'
'Have you developed some special power?'
Instead of replying, I suggested that she join our group, since her son seemed perfectly at ease even when the noise of the cymbals and the other percussion instruments was at its loudest. The following day, at the usual time, she was there for the start of the session. I introduced her to my friends, explaining that she was my upstairs neighbour. No one said anything about their lives or asked her what she did. When the moment came, I turned on the music and we began to dance.
She started dancing with the child in her arms, but he soon fell asleep, and she put him down on the sofa. Before I closed my eyes and went into a trance, I saw that she had understood exactly what I meant by the path of the Vertex.
Every day, except Sunday, she was there with the child. We would exchange a few words of welcome, then I would put on the music a friend of mine had brought from the Russian steppes, and we would all dance to the point of exhaustion. After a month of this, she asked me for a copy of the tape.
'I'd like to do the dancing in the morning, before I leave Viorel at my Mum's house and go to work.' I tried to dissuade her.
'I don't know, I think a group that's connected by the same energy creates a kind of aura that helps everyone get into the trance state. Besides, doing the dancing before you go to work is just asking to get the sack, because you'll be exhausted all
day.'
Athena thought for a moment, then said:
'You're absolutely right when you talk about collective energy. In your group, for example, there are four couples and your wife. All of them have found love. That's why they can share such a positive vibration with me. But I'm on my own, or, rather, I'm with my son, but he can't yet manifest his love in a way we can understand. So I'd prefer to accept my loneliness. If I try to run away from it now, I'll never find a partner again. If I accept it, rather than fight against it, things might change. I've noticed that loneliness gets stronger when we try to face it down, but gets weaker when we simply ignore it.'
'Did you join our group in search of love?'
'That would be a perfectly good reason, I think, but the answer is “No”. I came in search of a meaning for my life, because, at present, its only meaning is my son, Viorel, and I'm afraid I might end up destroying him, either by being over-protective or by projecting onto him the dreams I've never managed to realise. Then one night, while I was dancing, I felt that I'd been cured. If we were talking about some physical ailment, we'd probably call it a miracle, but it was a spiritual malaise that was making me unhappy, and suddenly it vanished.'
I knew what she meant.
'No one taught me to dance to the sound of that music,' Athena went on, 'but I have a feeling I know what I'm doing.'
'It's not something you have to learn. Remember our walk in the park and what we saw there? Nature creating its own rhythms and adapting itself to each moment.'
'No one taught me how to love either, but I loved God, I loved my husband, I love my son and my family. And yet still there's something missing. Although I get tired when I'm dancing, when I stop, I seem to be in a state of grace, of profound ecstasy. I want that ecstasy to last throughout the day and for it to help me find what I lack: the love of a man. I can see the heart of that man while I'm dancing,
but not his face. I sense that he's close by, which is why I need to remain alert. I need to dance in the morning so that I can spend the rest of the day paying attention to everything that's going on around me.'
'Do you know what the word “ecstasy” means? It comes from the Greek and means, “to stand outside yourself”. Spending the whole day outside yourself is asking too much of body and soul.'
'I'd like to try anyway.'
I saw that there was no point arguing and so I made her a copy of the tape. And from then on, I woke every morning to the sound of music and dancing upstairs, and I wondered how she could face her work at the bank after almost an hour of being in a trance. When we bumped into each other in the corridor, I suggested she come in for a coffee, and she told me that she'd made more copies of the tape and that many of her work colleagues were also now looking for the Vertex.
'Did I do wrong? Was it a secret?'
Of course it wasn't. On the contrary, she was helping me preserve a tradition that was almost lost. According to my grandfather's notes, one of the women said that a monk who visited the region had once told them that each of us contains our ancestors and all the generations to come. When we free ourselves, we are freeing all humanity.
'So all the men and women in that village in Siberia must be here now and very happy too. Their work is being reborn in this world, thanks to your grandfather. There's one thing I'd like to ask you: what made you decide to dance after you read those notes? If you'd read something about sport instead, would you have decided to become a footballer?'
This was a question no one had ever asked me.
'Because, at the time, I was ill. I was suffering from a rare form of arthritis, and the doctors told me that I should prepare myself for life in a wheelchair by the age of
thirty-five. I saw that I didn't have much time ahead of me and so I decided to devote myself to something I wouldn't be able to do later on. My grandfather had written on one of those small sheets of paper that the inhabitants of Diedov believed in the curative powers of trances.'
'And it seems they were right.'
I didn't say anything, but I wasn't so sure. Perhaps the doctors were wrong. Perhaps the fact of being from an immigrant family, unable to allow myself the luxury of being ill, acted with such force upon my unconscious mind that it provoked a natural reaction in my body. Or perhaps it really was a miracle, although that went totally against what my Catholic faith preaches: dance is not a cure.
I remember that, as an adolescent, I had no idea what the right music would sound like, and so I used to put on a black hood and imagine that everything around me had ceased to exist: my spirit would travel to Diedov, to be with those men and women, with my grandfather and his beloved actress. In the silence of my bedroom, I would ask them to teach me to dance, to go beyond my limits, because soon I would be paralysed forever. The more my body moved, the more brightly the light in my heart shone, and the more I learned – perhaps on my own, perhaps from the ghosts of the past. I even imagined the music they must have listened to during their rituals, and when a friend visited Siberia many years later, I asked him to bring me back some records. To my surprise, one of them was very similar to the music I had imagined would accompany the dancing in Diedov.
It was best to say nothing of all this to Athena; she was easily influenced and, I thought, slightly unstable.
'Perhaps what you're doing is right,' was all I said.
We talked again, shortly before her trip to the Middle East. She seemed contented, as if she'd found everything she wanted: love.
'My colleagues at work have formed a group, and they call themselves “the Pilgrims
of the Vertex”. And all thanks to your grandfather.'
'All thanks to you, you mean, because you felt the need to share the dance with others. I know you're leaving, but I'd like to thank you for giving another dimension to what I've been doing all these years in trying to spread the light to a few interested people, but always very tentatively, always afraid people might find the whole story ridiculous.'
'Do you know what I've learned? That although ecstasy is the ability to stand outside yourself, dance is a way of rising up into space, of discovering new dimensions while still remaining in touch with your body. When you dance, the spiritual world and the real world manage to coexist quite happily. I think classical dancers dance on pointes because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies.'
As far as I can remember, those were her last words to me. During any dance to which we surrender with joy, the brain loses its controlling power, and the heart takes up the reins of the body. Only at that moment does the Vertex appear. As long as we believe in it, of course.
Peter Sherney, 47, manager of a branch of [name of Bank omitted] in Holland Park, London
I only took on Athena because her family was one of our most important customers; after all, the world revolves around mutual interests. She seemed a very restless person, and so I gave her a dull clerical post, hoping that she would soon resign. That way, I could tell her father that I'd done my best to help her, but without success.
My experience as a manager had taught me to recognise people's states of mind, even if they said nothing. On a management course I attended, we learned that if you wanted to get rid of someone, you should do everything you can to provoke them into rudeness, so that you would then have a perfectly good reason to dismiss them.
I did everything I could to achieve my objective with Athena. She didn't depend on her salary to live and would soon learn how pointless it was: having to get up early,
drop her son off at her mother's house, slave away all day at a repetitive job, pick her son up again, go to the supermarket, spend time with her son before putting him to bed, and then, the next day, spend another three hours on public transport, and all for no reason, when there were so many other more interesting ways of filling her days. She grew increasingly irritable, and I felt proud of my strategy. I would get what I wanted. She started complaining about the apartment where she lived, saying that her landlord kept her awake all night, playing really loud music.
Then, suddenly, something changed. At first, it was only Athena, but soon it was the whole branch. How did I notice this change? Well, a group of workers is like a kind of orchestra; a good manager is the conductor, and he knows who is out of tune, who is playing with real commitment, and who is simply following the crowd. Athena seemed to be playing her instrument without the least enthusiasm; she seemed distant, never sharing the joys and sadnesses of her personal life with her colleagues, letting it be known that, when she left work, her free time was entirely taken up with looking after her son. Then, suddenly, she became more relaxed, more communicative, telling anyone who would listen that she had discovered the secret of rejuvenation.
'Rejuvenation', of course, is a magic word. Coming from someone who was barely twenty-one, it sounded pretty ridiculous, and yet other members of staff believed her and started to ask her for the secret formula.
Her efficiency increased, even though her workload remained unchanged. Her colleagues, who, up until then, had never exchanged more than a 'Good morning' or a 'Goodnight' with her, started asking her out to lunch. When they came back, they seemed very pleased, and the department's productivity made a giant leap.
I know that people who are in love do have an effect on the environment in which they live, and so I immediately assumed that Athena must have met someone very important in her life.
I asked, and she agreed, adding that she'd never before gone out with a customer, but that, in this case, she'd been unable to refuse. Normally, this would have been grounds for immediate dismissal – the bank's rules are clear: personal contact with customers is forbidden. But, by then, I was aware that her behaviour had infected almost everyone else. Some of her colleagues started getting together with her after
work, and a few of them had, I believe, been to her house.
I had a very dangerous situation on my hands. The young trainee with no previous work experience, who up until then had seemed to veer between shyness and aggression, had become a kind of natural leader amongst my workers. If I fired her, they would think it was out ofjealousy, and I'd lose their respect. If I kept her on, I ran the risk, within a matter of months, of losing control of the group.
I decided to wait a little, but meanwhile, there was a definite increase in the 'energy' at the bank (I hate that word 'energy', because it doesn't really mean anything, unless you're talking about electricity). Anyway, our customers seemed much happier and were starting to recommend other people to come to us. The employees seemed happy too, and even though their workload had doubled, I didn't need to take on any more staff because they were all coping fine.
One day, I received a letter from my superiors. They wanted me to go to Barcelona for a group meeting, so that I could explain my management techniques to them. According to them, I had increased profit without increasing expenditure, and that, of course, is the only thing that interests executives everywhere.
But what techniques?
At least I knew where it had all started, and so I summoned Athena to my office. I complimented her on her excellent productivity levels, and she thanked me with a smile.
I proceeded cautiously, not wishing to be misinterpreted.
'And how's your boyfriend? I've always found that anyone who is loved has more love to give. What does he do?'
'He works for Scotland Yard.' (Editor's note: Police investigation department linked to London's Metropolitan Police.)
I preferred not to ask any further questions, but I needed to keep the conversation
going and I didn't have much time.
'I've noticed a great change in you and–' 'Have you noticed a change in the bank too?'
How to respond to a question like that? On the one hand, I would be giving her more power than was advisable, and on the other, if I wasn't straight with her, I would never get the answers I needed.
'Yes, I've noticed a big change, and I'm thinking of promoting you.'
'I need to travel. I'd like to get out of London and discover new horizons.'
Travel? Just when everything was going so well in my branch, she wanted to leave?
Although, when I thought about it, wasn't that precisely the way out I needed and wanted?
'I can help the bank if you give me more responsibility,' she went on.
Yes, she was giving me an excellent opportunity. Why hadn't I thought of that before? 'Travel' meant getting rid of her and resuming my leadership of the group without having to deal with the fall-out from a dismissal or a rebellion. But I needed to ponder the matter, because rather than her helping the bank, I needed her to help me. Now that my superiors had noticed an increase in productivity, I knew that I would have to keep it up or risk losing prestige and end up worse off than before. Sometimes I understand why most of my colleagues don't do very much in order to improve: if they don't succeed, they're called incompetent. If they do succeed, they have to keep improving all the time, a situation guaranteed to bring on an early heart attack.
I took the next step very cautiously: it's not a good idea to frighten the person in possession of a secret before she's revealed that secret to you; it's best to pretend to grant her request.
'I'll bring your request to the attention of my superiors. In fact, I'm having a meeting with them in Barcelona, which is why I called you in. Would it be true to say that our performance has improved since, shall we say, the other employees began getting on better with you?'
'Or shall we say, began getting on better with themselves?' 'Yes, but encouraged by you – or am I wrong?'
'You know perfectly well that you're not.'
'Have you been reading some book on management I don't know about?'
'I don't read that kind of book, but I would like a promise from you that you really will consider my request.'
I thought of her boyfriend at Scotland Yard. If I made a promise and failed to keep it, would I be the object of some reprisal? Could he have taught her some cutting-edge technology that enables one to achieve impossible results?
'I'll tell you everything, even if you don't keep your promise, but I can't guarantee that you'll get the same results if you don't practise what I teach.'
'You mean the “rejuvenation technique”?' 'Exactly.' 'Wouldn't it be enough just to know the theory?'
'Possibly. The person who taught me learned about it from a few sheets of paper.' I was glad she wasn't forcing me to make decisions that went beyond my capabilities or my principles. But I must confess that I had a personal interest in that whole story, because I, too, dreamed of finding some way of 'recycling' my potential. I promised that I'd do what I could, and Athena began to describe the long, esoteric dance she performed in search of the so-called Vertex (or was it Axis, I can't quite remember now). As we talked, I tried to set down her mad thoughts in objective terms. An hour proved not to be enough, and so I asked her to come back the following day, and together we would prepare the report to be
presented to the bank's board of directors. At one point in our conversation, she said with a smile:
'Don't worry about describing the technique in the same terms we've been using here. I reckon even a bank's board of directors are people like us, made of flesh and blood, and interested in unconventional methods.'
Athena was completely wrong. In England, tradition always speaks louder than innovation. But why not take a risk, as long as it didn't endanger my job? The whole thing seemed absurd to me, but I had to summarise it and put it in a way that everyone could understand. That was all.
Before I presented my 'paper' in Barcelona, I spent the whole morning repeating to myself: 'My' process is producing results, and that's all that matters. I read a few books on the subject and learned that in order to present a new idea with the maximum impact, you should structure your talk in an equally provocative way, and so the first thing I said to the executives gathered in that luxury hotel were these words of St Paul: 'God hid the most important things from the wise because they cannot understand what is simple.' (Editor's note: It is impossible to know here whether he is referring to a verse from Matthew 11: 25: 'I thank thee, O Father, thou hast hid these thingsfrom the wise andprudent, and hast revealed them unto babes', orfrom St Paul (1 Corinthians 1: 27): 'But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. ')
When I said this, the whole audience, who had spent the last two days analysing graphs and statistics, fell silent. It occurred to me that I had almost certainly lost my job, but I carried on. Firstly, because I had researched the subject and was sure of what I was saying and deserved credit for this. Secondly, because although, at certain points, I was obliged to omit any mention of Athena's enormous influence on the whole process, I was, nevertheless, not lying.
'I have learned that, in order to motivate employees nowadays, you need more than just the training provided by our own excellent training centres. Each of us contains something within us which is unknown, but which, when it surfaces, is
capable of producing miracles.
'We all work for some reason: to feed our children, to earn money to support ourselves, to justify our life, to get a little bit of power. However, there are always tedious stages in that process, and the secret lies in transforming those stages into an encounter with ourselves or with something higher.
'For example, the search for beauty isn't always associated with anything practical and yet we still search for it as if it were the most important thing in the world. Birds learn to sing, but not because it will help them find food, avoid predators or drive away parasites. Birds sing, according to Darwin, because that is the only way they have of attracting a partner and perpetuating the species.'
I was interrupted by an executive from Geneva, who called for a more objective presentation. However, to my delight, the Director-General asked me to go on. 'Again according to Darwin, who wrote a book that changed the course of all humanity (Editor's note: The Origin of Species, 1859, in which he first posited that human beings evolvedfrom a type of ape), those who manage to arouse passions are repeating something that has been going on since the days we lived in caves, where rituals for courting a partner were fundamental for the survival and evolution of the human species. Now, what difference is there between the evolution of the human race and that of the branch of a bank? None. Both obey the same laws – only the fittest survive and evolve.'
At this point, I was obliged to admit that I'd developed this idea thanks to the spontaneous collaboration of one of my employees, Sherine Khalil.
'Sherine, who likes to be known as Athena, brought into the workplace a new kind of emotion passion. Yes, passion, something we never normally consider when discussing loans or spreadsheets. My employees started using music as a stimulus for dealing more efficiently with their clients.'
Another executive interrupted, saying that this was an old idea: supermarkets did the same thing, using piped music to encourage their customers to buy more.
'I'm not saying that we used music in the workplace. People simply started living differently because Sherine, or Athena if you prefer, taught them to dance before facing their daily tasks. I don't know precisely what mechanism this awakens in people; as a manager, I'm only responsible for the results, not for the process. I myself didn't participate in the dancing, but I understand that, through dance, they all felt more connected with what they were doing.
'We were born and brought up with the maxim: Time is money. We know exactly what money is, but what does the word “time” mean? The day is made up of twenty-four hours and an infinite number of moments. We need to be aware of each of those moments and to make the most of them regardless of whether we're busy doing something or merely contemplating life. If we slow down, everything lasts much longer. Of course, that means that washing the dishes might last longer, as might totting up the debits and credits on a balance sheet or checking promissory notes, but why not use that time to think about pleasant things and to feel glad simply to be alive?'
The Director-General was looking at me in surprise. I was sure he wanted me to explain in detail what I'd learned, but some of those present were beginning to grow restless.
'I understand exactly what you mean,' he said. 'I understand, too, that your employees worked with more enthusiasm because they were able to enjoy one moment in the day when they came into full contact with themselves. And I'd like to compliment you on being flexible enough to allow such unorthodox practices, which are, it must be said, producing excellent results. However, speaking of time, this is a conference, and you have only five minutes to conclude your presentation. Could you possibly try to list the main points which would allow us to apply these principles in other branches?'
He was right. This was fine for the employees, but it could prove fatal to my career, and so I decided to summarise the points Sherine and I had written together.
'Basing ourselves on personal observations, Sherine Khalil and I developed certain points which I would be delighted to discuss with anyone who's interested. Here
are the main ones:
'(a) We all have an unknown ability, which will probably remain unknown forever. And yet that ability can become our ally. Since it's impossible to measure that ability or give it an economic value, it's never taken seriously, but I'm speaking here to other human beings and I'm sure you understand what I mean, at least in theory.
'(b) At my branch, employees have learned how to tap into that ability through a dance based on a rhythm which comes, I believe, from the desert regions of Asia. However, its place of origin is irrelevant, as long as people can express through their bodies what their souls are trying to say. I realise that the word “soul” might be misunderstood, so I suggest we use the word “intuition” instead. And if that word is equally hard to swallow, then let's use the term “primary emotions”, which sounds more scientific, although, in fact, it has rather less meaning than the other two words.
'(c) Before going to work, instead of encouraging my employees to do keep-fit or aerobics, I get them to dance for at least an hour. This stimulates the body and the mind; they start the day demanding a certain degree of creativity from themselves and channel that accumulated energy into their work at the bank.
'(d) Customers and employees live in the same world: reality is nothing but a series of electrical stimuli to the brain. What we think we “see” is a pulse of energy to a completely dark part of the brain. However, if we get on the same wavelength with other people, we can try to change that reality. In some way which I don't understand, joy is infectious, as is enthusiasm and love. Or indeed sadness, depression or hatred – things which can be picked up “intuitively” by customers and other employees. In order to improve performance, we have to create mechanisms that keep these positive stimuli alive.'
'How very esoteric,' commented a woman who managed investment funds at a branch in Canada. I slightly lost confidence. I had failed to convince anyone. Nevertheless, I pretended to ignore her remark and, using all my creativity, sought to give my paper a practical conclusion:
'The bank should earmark a fund to do research into how this infectious state of mind works, and thus noticeably increase our profits.'
This seemed a reasonably satisfactory ending, and so I preferred not to use the two minutes remaining to me. When I finished the seminar, at the end of an exhausting day, the Director-General asked me to have supper with him, and he
did so is front of all our other colleagues, as if he were trying to show that he supported everything I'd said. I had never before had an opportunity to dine with the DirectorGeneral, and so I tried to make the most of it. I started talking about performance, about spreadsheets, difficulties on the stock exchange and possible new markets. He interrupted me; he was more interested in knowing more of what I'd learned from Athena.
In the end, to my surprise, he turned the conversation to more personal matters.
'I understood what you meant when, during your paper, you talked about time. At New Year, when I was still enjoying the holiday season, I decided to go and sit in the garden for a while. I picked up the newspaper from the mailbox, but it contained nothing of any importance, only the things that journalists had decided we should know, feel involved in and have an opinion about.
'I thought of phoning someone at work, but that would be ridiculous, since they would all be with their families. I had lunch with my wife, children and grandchildren, took a nap, and when I woke up, I
made a few notes, then realised that it was still only two o'clock in the afternoon. I had another three days of not working, and, however much I love being with my family, I started to feel useless.
'The following day, taking advantage of this free time, I went to have my stomach checked out, and, fortunately, the tests revealed nothing seriously wrong. I went to the dentist, who said there was nothing wrong with my teeth either. I again had lunch with my wife, children and grandchildren, took another nap, again woke up at two in the afternoon, and realised that I had absolutely nothing on which to focus my attention.
'I felt uneasy: shouldn't I be doing something? Well, if I wanted to invent work, that wouldn't take much effort. We all have projects to develop, light bulbs to change, leaves to sweep, books to put away, computer files to organise, etc. But how about just facing up to the void? It was then that I remembered something that seemed to me of great importance: I needed to walk to the letterbox – which is less than a mile from my house in the country – and post one of the Christmas cards lying forgotten on my desk.
'And I was surprised: why did I need to send that card today. Was it really so hard just to stay where I was, doing nothing?
'A series of thoughts crossed my mind: friends who worry about things that haven't yet happened; acquaintances who manage to fill every minute of their lives with
tasks that seem to me absurd; senseless conversations; long telephone calls in which nothing of any importance is ever said. I've seen my directors inventing work in order to justify their jobs; employees who feel afraid because they've been given nothing important to do that day, which might mean that they're no longer useful. My wife who torments herself because our son has got divorced, my son who torments himself because our grandson, his son, got bad marks at school, our grandson who is terrified because he's making his parents sad – even though we all know that marks aren't that important.
'I had a long, hard struggle with myself not to get up from my chair. Gradually, though, the anxiety gave way to contemplation, and I started listening to my soul – or intuition or primary emotions, or whatever you choose to believe in. Whatever you call it, that part of me had been longing to speak to me, but I had always been too busy.
'In that case, it wasn't a dance, but the complete absence of noise and movement, the silence, that brought me into contact with myself. And, believe it or not, I learned a great deal about the problems bothering me, even though all those problems had dissolved completely while I was sitting there. I didn't see God, but I had a clearer understanding of what decisions to take.'
Before paying the bill, he suggested that I send the employee in question to Dubai, where the bank was opening a new branch, and where the risks were considerable. As a good manager, he knew that I had learned all I needed to learn, and now it was merely a question of providing continuity. My employee could make a useful contribution somewhere else. He didn't know this, but he was helping me to keep the promise I'd made.
When I returned to London, I immediately told Athena about this invitation, and she accepted at once. She told me that she spoke fluent Arabic (I knew this already because of her father), although, since we would mainly be doing deals with foreigners, not Arabs, this would not be essential. I thanked her for her help, but she showed no curiosity about my talk at the conference, and merely asked when she should pack her bags.
I still don't know whether the story of the boyfriend in Scotland Yard was a fantasy or not. If it were true, I think Athena's murderer would already have been arrested, because I don't believe anything the newspapers wrote about the crime. I can understand financial engineering, I can even allow myself the luxury of saying that dancing helps my employees to work better, but I will never comprehend how
it is that the best police force in the world catches some murderers, but not others. Not that it makes much difference now.
Nabil Alaihi, age unknown, Bedouin
It made me very happy to know that Athena had kept a photo of me in a place of honour in her apartment, but I don't really think what I taught her had any real use. She came here to the desert, leading a three-year-old boy by the hand. She opened her bag, took out a radio-cassette and sat down outside my tent. I know that people from the city usually give my name to foreigners who want to experience some local cooking, and so I told her at once that it was too early for supper.
'I came for another reason,' she said. 'Your nephew Hamid is a client at the bank where I work and he told me that you're a wise man.'
'Hamid is a rather foolish youth who may well say that I'm a wise man, but who never follows my advice. Mohammed, the Prophet, may the blessings of God be upon him, he was a wise man.'
guide.'
I pointed to her car.
'You shouldn't drive alone in a place you don't know, and you shouldn't come here without a
Instead of replying, she turned on the radio-cassette. Then, all I could see was this young woman dancing on the dunes and her son watching her in joyous amazement; and the sound seemed to fill the whole desert. When she finished, she asked if I had enjoyed it.
I said that I had. There is a sect in our religion which uses dance as a way of getting closer to Allah blessed be His Name. (Editor's note: The sect in question is Sufism.)
'Well,' said the woman, who introduced herself as Athena, 'ever since I was a child, I've felt that I should grow closer to God, but life always took me further away from Him. Music is one way I've discovered of getting close, but it isn't enough. Whenever I dance, I see a light, and that light is now asking me to go further. But I can't continue learning on my own; I need someone to teach me.'
'Anything will do,' I told her, 'because Allah, the merciful, is always near. Lead a decent life, and that will be enough.'
But the woman appeared unconvinced. I said that I was busy, that I needed to prepare supper for the few tourists who might appear. She told me that she'd wait
for as long as was necessary. 'And the child?'
'Don't worry about him.'
While I was making my usual preparations, I observed the woman and her son. They could have been the same age; they ran about the desert, laughed, threw sand at each other, and rolled down the dunes. The guide arrived with three German tourists, who ate and asked for beer, and I had to explain that my religion forbade me to drink or to serve alcoholic drinks. I invited the woman and her son to join us for supper, and in that unexpected female presence, one of the Germans became quite animated. He said that he was thinking of buying some land, that he had a large fortune saved up and believed in the future of the region.
'Great,' she replied. 'I believe in the region too.'
'It would be good to have supper somewhere, so that we could talk about the possibility of–'
'No,' she said, holding a card out to him, 'but if you like, you can get in touch with my bank.' When the tourists left, we sat down outside the tent. The child soon fell asleep on her lap. I fetched blankets for us all, and we sat looking up at the starry sky. Finally, she broke the silence.
'Why did Hamid say that you were a wise man?'
'Perhaps so that I'll be more patient with him. There was a time when I tried to teach him my art, but Hamid seemed more interested in earning money. He's probably convinced by now that he's wiser than I am: he has an apartment and a boat, while here I am in the middle of the desert, making meals for the occasional tourist. He doesn't understand that I'm satisfied with what I do.'
'He understands perfectly, and he always speaks of you with great respect. And what do you mean by your “art”?'
dance.'
'I watched you dancing today, well, I do the same thing, except that it's the letters not my body that
She looked surprised.
'My way of approaching Allah – may his name be praised – has been through calligraphy, and the search for the perfect meaning of each word. A single letter requires us to distil in it all the energy it contains, as if we were carving out its meaning. When sacred texts are written, they contain the soul of the man who served as an instrument to spread them throughout the world. And that doesn't
apply only to sacred texts, but to every mark we place on paper. Because the hand that draws each line reflects the soul of the person making that line.'
'Would you teach me what you know?'
'Firstly, I don't think anyone as full of energy as you would have the patience for this. Besides, it's not part of your world, where everything is printed, without, if you'll allow me to say so, much thought being given to what is being published.'
'I'd like to try.'
And so, for more than six months, that woman – whom I'd judged to be too restless and exuberant to be able to sit still for a moment – came to visit me every Friday. Her son would go to one corner of the tent, take up paper and brushes, and he, too, would devote himself to revealing in his paintings whatever the heavens determined.
When I saw the immense effort it took her to keep still and to maintain the correct posture, I said: 'Don't you think you'd be better off finding something else to do?' She replied: 'No, I need this, I need to calm my soul, and I still haven't learned everything you can teach me. The light of the Vertex told me that I should continue.' I never asked her what the Vertex was, nor was I interested.
The first lesson, and perhaps the most difficult, was: 'Patience!'
Writing wasn't just the expression of a thought, but a way of reflecting on the meaning of each word. Together we began work on texts written by an Arab poet, because I do not feel that the Koran is suitable for someone brought up in another faith. I dictated each letter, and that way she could concentrate on what she was doing, instead of immediately wanting to know the meaning of each word or phrase or line.
'Once, someone told me that music had been created by God, and that rapid movement was necessary for people to get in touch with themselves,' said Athena on one of those afternoons we spent together. 'For years, I felt that this was true, and now I'm being forced to do the most difficult thing in the world – slow down. Why is patience so important?'
'Because it makes us pay attention.'
'But I can dance obeying only my soul, which forces me to concentrate on something greater than myself, and brings me into contact with God – if I can use that word. Dance has already helped me to change many things in my life, including my work. Isn't the soul more important?'
'Of course it is, but if your soul could communicate with your brain, you would be
able to change even more things.'
We continued our work together. I knew that, at some point, I would have to tell her something that she might not be ready to hear, and so I tried to make use of every minute to prepare her spirit. I explained that before the word comes the thought. And before the thought, there is the divine spark that placed it there. Everything, absolutely everything on this Earth makes sense, and even the smallest things are worthy of our consideration.
'I've educated my body so that it can manifest every sensation in my soul,' she said. 'Now you must educate only your fingers, so that they can manifest every sensation in your body. That will concentrate your body's strength.'
'Are you a teacher?'
'What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.'
I sensed that, despite her youth, Athena had already experienced this. Writing reveals the personality, and I could see that she was aware of being loved, not just by her son, but by her family and possibly by a man. I saw too that she had mysterious gifts, but I tried never to let her know that I knew this, since these gifts could bring about not only an encounter with God, but also her perdition.
I did not only teach her calligraphy techniques. I also tried to pass on to her the philosophy of the calligraphers.
'The brush with which you are making these lines is just an instrument. It has no consciousness; it follows the desires of the person holding it. And in that it is very like what we call “life”. Many people in this world are merely playing a role, unaware that there is an Invisible Hand guiding them. At this moment, in your hands, in the brush tracing each letter, lie all the intentions of your soul. Try to understand the importance of this.'
'I do understand, and I see that it's important to maintain a certain elegance. You tell me to sit in a particular position, to venerate the materials I'm going to use, and only to begin when I have done so.'
Naturally, if she respected the brush that she used, she would realise that in order to learn to write she must cultivate serenity and elegance. And serenity comes from the heart.
'Elegance isn't a superficial thing, it's the way mankind has found to honour life and work. That's why, when you feel uncomfortable in that position, you mustn't
think that it's false or artificial: it's real and true precisely because it's difficult. That position means that both the paper and the brush feel proud of the effort you're making. The paper ceases to be a flat, colourless surface and takes on the depth of the things placed on it. Elegance is the correct posture if the writing is to be perfect. It's the same with life: when all superfluous things have been discarded, we discover simplicity and concentration. The simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be, even though, at first, it may seem uncomfortable.' Occasionally, she would talk about her work. She said she was enjoying what she was doing and that she had just received a job offer from a powerful emir. He had gone to the bank to see the manager, who was a friend of his (emirs never go to banks to withdraw money, they have staff who can do that for them), and while he was talking to Athena, he mentioned that he was looking for someone to take charge of selling
land, and wondered if she would be interested.
Who would want to buy land in the middle of the desert or in a far-flung port? I decided to say nothing and, looking back, I'm glad I stayed silent.
Only once did she mention the man she loved, although whenever she was there when tourists arrived, one of the men would always start flirting with her. Normally Athena simply ignored them, but, one day, a man suggested that he knew her boyfriend. She turned pale and immediately shot a glance at her son, who, fortunately, wasn't listening to the conversation.
'How do you know him?'
'I'm joking,' said the man. 'I just wanted to find out if you were unattached.'
She didn't say anything, but I understood from this exchange that the man in her life was not the father of her son.
One day, she arrived earlier than usual. She said that she'd left her job at the bank and started selling real estate, and would now have more free time. I explained that I couldn't start her class any earlier because I had various things to do.
'I can combine two things: movement and stillness; joy and concentration.'
She went over to the car to fetch her radio-cassette and, from then on, Athena would dance in the desert before the start of our class, while the little boy ran round her, laughing. When she sat down to practise calligraphy, her hand was steadier than usual.
'There are two kinds of letter,' I explained. 'The first is precise, but lacks soul. In this case, although the calligrapher may have mastered the technique, he has
focused solely on the craft, which is why it hasn't evolved, but become repetitive; he hasn't grown at all, and one day he'll give up the practice of writing, because he feels it is mere routine.
'The second kind is done with great technique, but with soul as well. For that to happen, the intention of the writer must be in harmony with the word. In this case, the saddest verses cease to be clothed in tragedy and are transformed into simple facts encountered along the way.'
'What do you do with your drawings?' asked the boy in perfect Arabic. He might not understand our conversation, but he was eager to share in his mother's work.
'I sell them.'
'Can I sell my drawings?'
'You should sell your drawings. One day, you'll become rich that way and be able to help your
mother.'
He was pleased by my comment and went back to what he was doing, painting a colourful butterfly. 'And what shall I do with my texts?' asked Athena.
'You know the effort it took to sit in the correct position, to quieten your soul, keep your intentions clear and respect each letter of each word. Meanwhile, keep practising. After a great deal of practice, we no longer think about all the necessary movements we must make; they become part of our existence. Before reaching that stage, however, you must practise and repeat. And if that's not enough, you must practise and repeat some more.
'Look at a skilled blacksmith working steel. To the untrained eye, he's merely repeating the same hammer blows, but anyone trained in the art of calligraphy knows that each time the blacksmith lifts the hammer and brings it down, the intensity of the blow is different. The hand repeats the same gesture, but as it approaches the metal, it understands that it must touch it with more or less force. It's the same thing with repetition: it may seem the same, but it's always different. The moment will come when you no longer need to think about what you're doing. You become the letter, the ink, the paper, the word.'
This moment arrived almost a year later. By then, Athena was already known in Dubai and recommended customers to dine in my tent, and through them I learned that her career was going very well: she was selling pieces of desert! One night, the emir in person arrived, preceded by a great retinue. I was terrified; I wasn't prepared for that, but he reassured me and thanked me for what I was
doing for his employee.
'She's an excellent person and attributes her qualities to what she's learning from you. I'm thinking of giving her a share in the company. It might be a good idea to send my other sales staff to learn calligraphy, especially now that Athena is about to take a month's holiday.'
'It wouldn't help,' I replied. 'Calligraphy is just one of the ways which Allah – blessed be His Name – places before us. It teaches objectivity and patience, respect and elegance, but we can learn all that–' '–through dance,' said Athena, who was standing nearby.
'Or through selling land,' I added.
When they had all left, and the little boy had lain down in one corner of the tent, his eyes heavy with sleep, I brought out the calligraphy materials and asked her to write something. In the middle of the word, I took the brush from her hand. It was time to say what had to be said. I suggested that we go for a little walk in the desert. 'You have learned what you needed to learn,' I said. 'Your calligraphy is getting more and more individual and spontaneous. It's no longer a mere repetition of beauty, but a personal, creative gesture. You have understood what all great painters understand: in order to forget the rules, you must know them and respect them.
'You no longer need the tools that helped you learn. You no longer need paper, ink or brush, because the path is more important than whatever made you set off along it. Once, you told me that the person who taught you to dance used to imagine the music playing in his head, and even so, he was able to repeat the necessary rhythms.'
'He was.'
'If all the words were joined together, they wouldn't make sense, or, at the very least, they'd be extremely hard to decipher. The spaces are crucial.'
She nodded.
'And although you have mastered the words, you haven't yet mastered the blank spaces. When you're concentrating, your hand is perfect, but when it jumps from one word to the next, it gets lost.' 'How do you know that?'
'Am I right?'
'Absolutely. Before I focus on the next word, for a fraction of a second I lose myself. Things I don't want to think about take over.'
'And you know exactly what those things are.'
Athena knew, but she said nothing until we went back to the tent and she could cradle her sleeping son in her arms. Her eyes were full of tears, although she was trying hard to control herself.
'The emir said that you were going on holiday.'
She opened the car door, put the key in the ignition and started the engine. For a few moments, only the noise of the engine troubled the silence of the desert.
'I know what you mean,' she said at last. 'When I write, when I dance, I'm guided by the Hand that created everything. When I look at Viorel sleeping, I know that he knows he's the fruit of my love for his father, even though I haven't seen his father for more than a year. But I …'
She fell silent again. Her silence was the blank space between the words.
'… but I don't know the hand that first rocked me in the cradle. The hand that wrote me in the book of the world.'
I merely nodded.
'Do you think that matters?'
'Not necessarily. But in your case, until you touch that hand, your, shall we say, calligraphy will not improve.'
'I don't see why I should bother to look for someone who never took the trouble to love me.' She closed the car door, smiled and drove off. Despite her last words, I knew what her next step would be.
Samira R. Khalil, Athena's mother
It was as if all her professional success, her ability to earn money, her joy at having found a new love, her contentment when she played with her son – my grandson
– had all been relegated to second place. I was quite simply terrified when Sherine told me that she'd decided to go in search of her birth mother.
At first, of course, I took consolation in the thought that the adoption centre would no longer exist, the paperwork would all have been lost, any officials she encountered would prove implacable, the recent collapse of the Romanian government would make travel impossible, and the womb that bore her would long since have vanished. This, however, provided only a momentary consolation: my daughter was capable of anything and would overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.
Up until then, the subject had been taboo in the family. Sherine knew she was adopted, because the psychiatrist in Beirut had advised me to tell her as soon as she was old enough to understand. But she had never shown any desire to know
where she had come from. Her home had been Beirut, when it was still our home. The adopted son of a friend of mine had committed suicide at the age of sixteen when he acquired a biological sister, and so we had never attempted to have more children of our own, and we did everything we could to make her feel that she was the sole reason for our joys and sadnesses, our love and our hopes. And yet, it seemed that none of this counted. Dear God, how ungrateful children can be!
Knowing my daughter as I did, I realised that there was no point in arguing with her about this. My husband and I didn't sleep for a whole week, and every morning, every evening, we were bombarded with the same question: 'Whereabouts in Romania was I born?' To make matters worse, Viorel kept crying, as if he understood what was going on.
I decided to consult a psychiatrist again. I asked why a young woman who had everything in life should always be so dissatisfied.
'We all want to know where we came from,' he said. 'On the philosophical level, that's the fundamental question for all human beings. In your daughter's case, I think it's perfectly reasonable that she should want to go in search of her roots. Wouldn't you be curious to know?'
'No, I wouldn't. On the contrary, I'd think it dangerous to go in search of someone who had denied and rejected me when I was still too helpless to survive on my own.'
But the psychiatrist insisted:
'Rather than getting into a confrontation with her, try to help. Perhaps when she sees that it's no longer a problem for you, she'll give up. The year she spent far from her friends must have created a sense of emotional need, which she's now trying to make up for by provoking you like this. She simply wants to be sure that she's loved.'
It would have been better if Sherine had gone to the psychiatrist herself, then she would have understood the reasons for her behaviour.
'Show that you're confident and don't see this as a threat. And if, in the end, she really does go ahead with it, simply give her the information she needs. As I understand it, she's always been a difficult child. Perhaps she'll emerge from this search a stronger person.'
I asked if the psychiatrist had any children. He didn't, and I knew then that he wasn't the right person to advise me.
That night, when we were sitting in front of the TV, Sherine returned to the
subject: 'What are you watching?' 'The news.'
'What for?'
'To find out what's going on in Lebanon,' replied my husband.
I saw the trap, but it was too late. Sherine immediately pounced on this opening. 'You see, you're curious to know what's going on in the country where you were born. You're settled in England, you have friends, Dad earns plenty of money, you've got security, and yet you still buy Lebanese newspapers. You channel-hop until you find a bit of news to do with Beirut. You imagine the future as if it were the past, not realising that the war will never end. What I mean is that if you're not in touch with your roots, you feel as if you'd lost touch with the world. Is it so very hard then for you to understand what I'm feeling?'
'You're our daughter.'
'And proud to be. And I'll always be your daughter. Please don't doubt my love or my gratitude for everything you've done for me. All I'm asking is to be given the chance to visit the place where I was born and perhaps ask my birth mother why she abandoned me or perhaps, when I look into her eyes, simply say nothing. If I don't at least try and do that, I'll feel like a coward and I won't ever understand the blank spaces.'
'The blank spaces?'
'I learned calligraphy while I was in Dubai. I dance whenever I can, but music only exists because the pauses exist, and sentences only exist because the blank spaces exist. When I'm doing something, I feel complete, but no one can keep active twenty-four hours a day. As soon as I stop, I feel there's something lacking. You've often said to me that I'm a naturally restless person, but I didn't choose to be that way. I'd like to sit here quietly, watching television, but I can't. My brain won't stop. Sometimes, I think I'm going mad. I need always to be dancing, writing, selling land, taking care of Viorel, or reading whatever I find to read. Do you think that's normal?'
'Perhaps it's just your temperament,' said my husband.
The conversation ended there, as it always ended, with Viorel crying, Sherine retreating into silence, and with me convinced that children never acknowledge what their parents have done for them. However, over breakfast the next day, it was my husband who brought the subject up again.
'A while ago, while you were in the Middle East, I looked into the possibility of
going home to Beirut. I went to the street where we used to live. The house is no longer there, but, despite the foreign occupation and the constant incursions, they are slowly rebuilding the country. I felt a sense of euphoria. Perhaps it was the moment to start all over again. And it was precisely that expression, “start all over again”, that brought me back to reality. The time has passed when I could allow myself that luxury. Nowadays, I just want to go on doing what I'm doing, and I don't need any new adventures.
'I sought out the people I used to enjoy a drink with after work. Most of them have left, and those who have stayed complain all the time about a constant feeling of insecurity. I walked past some of my old haunts, and I felt like a stranger, as if nothing there belonged to me anymore. The worst of it was that my dream of one day returning gradually disappeared when I found myself back in the city where I was born. Even so, I needed to make that visit. The songs of exile are still there in my heart, but I know now that I'll never again live in Lebanon. In a way, the days I spent in Beirut helped me to a better understanding of the place where I live now, and to value each second that I spend in London.'
'What are you trying to tell me, Dad?'
'That you're right. Perhaps it really would be best to understand those blank spaces. We can look after Viorel while you're away.'
He went to the bedroom and returned with the yellow file containing the adoption papers. He gave them to Sherine, kissed her and said it was time he went to work.
Heron Ryan, journalist
For a whole morning in 1990, all I could see from the sixth-floor window of the hotel was the main government building. A flag had just been placed on the roof, marking the exact spot where the megalomaniac dictator had fled in a helicopter only to find death a few hours later at the hands of those he had oppressed for twenty-two years.
In his plan to create a capital that would rival Washington, Ceauºescu had ordered
all the old houses to be razed to the ground. Indeed, Bucharest had the dubious honour of being described as the city that had suffered the worst destruction outside of a war or a natural disaster.
The day I arrived, I attempted to go for a short walk with my interpreter, but in the streets I saw only poverty, bewilderment, and a sense that there was no future, no past and no present: the people were living in a kind of limbo, with little idea of what was happening in their country or in the rest of the world. When I went back
ten years later and saw the whole country rising up out of the ashes, I realised human beings can overcome any difficulty, and that the Romanian people were a fine example ofjust that.
But on that other grey morning, in the grey foyer of a gloomy hotel, all I was concerned about was whether my interpreter would manage to get a car and enough petrol so that I could carry out some final research for the BBC documentary I was working on. He was taking a very long time, and I was beginning to have my doubts. Would I have to go back to England having failed to achieve my goal? I'd already invested a significant amount of money in contracts with historians, in the script, in filming interviews, but before the BBC would sign the final contract, they insisted on me visiting Dracula's castle to see what state it was in. The trip was costing more than expected.
I tried phoning my girlfriend, but was told I'd have to wait nearly an hour to get a line. My interpreter might arrive at any moment with the car and there was no time to lose, and so I decided not to risk waiting.
I asked around to see if I could buy an English newspaper, but there were none to be had. To take my mind off my anxiety, I started looking, as discreetly as I could, at the people around me drinking tea,
possibly oblivious to everything that had happened the year before – popular uprisings, the cold-blooded murder of civilians in Timiºoara, shoot-outs in the
streets between the people and the dreaded secret service as the latter tried desperately to hold on to the power fast slipping from their grasp. I noticed a group of three Americans, an interesting-looking woman who was, however, glued to the fashion magazine she was
reading, and some men sitting round a table, talking loudly in a language I couldn't identify.
I was just about to get up yet again and go over to the entrance to see if my interpreter was anywhere to be seen, when she came in. She must have been a little more than twenty years old. She sat down, ordered some breakfast, and I noticed that she spoke English. None of the other men present appeared to notice her arrival, but the other woman interrupted her reading.
Perhaps because of my anxiety or because of the place, which was beginning to depress me, I plucked up courage and went over to her.
'Excuse me, I don't usually do this. I always think breakfast is the most private meal of the day.' She smiled, told me her name, and I immediately felt wary. It had
been too easy – she might be a prostitute. Her English, however, was perfect and she was very discreetly dressed. I decided not to ask any questions, and began talking at length about myself, noticing as I did so that the woman on the next table had put down her magazine and was listening to our conversation.
'I'm an independent producer working for the BBC in London, and, at the moment, I'm trying to find a way to get to Transylvania…'
I noticed the light in her eyes change.
'…so that I can finish the documentary I'm making about the myth of the vampire.'
I waited. This subject always aroused people's curiosity, but she lost interest as soon as I mentioned the reason for my visit.
'You'll just have to take the bus,' she said. 'Although I doubt you'll find what you're looking for. If you want to know more about Dracula, read the book. The author never even visited Romania.'
'What about you, do you know Transylvania?' 'I don't know.'
That was not an answer; perhaps it was because English – despite her British accent – was not her mother tongue.
'But I'm going there too,' she went on. 'On the bus, of course.'
Judging by her clothes, she was not an adventuress who sets off round the world visiting exotic places. The idea that she might be a prostitute returned; perhaps she was trying to get closer to me. 'Would you like a lift?'
'I've already bought my ticket.'
I insisted, thinking that her first refusal was just part of the game. She refused again, saying that she needed to make that journey alone. I asked where she was from, and there was a long pause before she replied.
'Like I said, from Transylvania.'
'That isn't quite what you said. But if that's so, perhaps you could help me with finding locations for the film and…'
My unconscious mind was telling me to explore the territory a little more, because although the idea that she might be a prostitute was still buzzing around in my head, I very, very much wanted her to come with me. She politely refused my offer. The other woman joined in the conversation at this point, as if to protect the younger woman, and I felt then that I was in the way and decided to leave.
My interpreter arrived shortly afterwards, out of breath, saying that he'd made all the necessary arrangements, but that (as expected) it was going to cost a lot of
money. I went up to my room, grabbed my suitcase, which I'd packed earlier, got into the Russian wreck of a car, drove down the long, almost deserted avenues, and realised that I had with me my small camera, my belongings, my anxieties, a couple of bottles of mineral water, some sandwiches, and the image of someone that stubbornly refused to leave my head.
In the days that followed, as I was trying to piece together a script on the historical figure of Dracula, and interviewing both locals and intellectuals on the subject of the vampire myth (with, as foreseen, little success), I gradually became aware that I was no longer merely trying to make a documentary for British television. I wanted to meet that arrogant, unfriendly, self-sufficient young woman whom I'd seen in a dining room in a hotel in Bucharest, and who would, at that moment, be somewhere nearby. I knew absolutely nothing about her apart from her name, but, like the vampire of the myth, she seemed to be sucking up all my energy.
In my world, and in the world of those I lived with, this was absurd, nonsensical, unacceptable.
Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda
'I don't know what you came here to do, but whatever it was, you must see it through to the end.' She looked at me, startled.
'Who are you?'
I started talking about the magazine I was reading, and after a while, the man sitting with her decided to get up and leave. Now I could tell her who I was.
'If you mean what do I do for a living, I qualified as a doctor some years ago, but I don't think that's the answer you want to hear.'
I paused.
'Your next step, though, will be to try to find out, through clever questioning, exactly what I'm doing here, in a country that's only just emerging from years of terrible oppression.'
'I'll be straightforward then. What did you come here to do?'
I could have said: I came for the funeral of my teacher, because I felt he deserved that homage. But it would be imprudent to touch on the subject. She may have shown no interest in vampires, but the word 'teacher' would be sure to attract her attention. Since my oath will not allow me to lie, I replied with a halftruth.
'I wanted to see where a writer called Mircea Eliade lived. You've probably never heard of him, but Eliade, who spent most of his life in France, was a world authority on myths.'
The young woman looked at her watch, feigning indifference. I went on:
'And I'm not talking about vampires, I'm talking about people who, let's say, are following the same path you're following.'
She was about to take a sip of her coffee, but she stopped:
'Are you from the government? Or are you someone my parents engaged to follow me?'
It was my turn then to feel uncertain as to whether to continue the conversation. Her response had been unnecessarily aggressive. But I could see her aura, her anxiety. She was very like me when I was her age: full of internal and external wounds that drove me to want to heal people on the physical plane and to help them find their path on the spiritual plane. I wanted to say: 'Your wounds will help you, my dear,' then pick up my magazine and leave.
If I had done that, Athena's path might have been completely different, and she would still be alive and living with the man she loved. She would have brought up her son and watched him grow, get married and have lots of children. She would be rich, possibly the owner of a company selling real estate. She had all the necessary qualities to find success and happiness. She'd suffered enough to be able to use her scars to her advantage, and it was just a matter of time before she managed to control her anxiety and move on.
So what kept me sitting there, trying to keep the conversation going? The answer is very simple: curiosity. I couldn't understand what that brilliant light was doing there in the cold hotel.
I continued:
'Mircea Eliade wrote books with strange titles: Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions, for example. Or The Sacred and the Profane. My teacher' (I inadvertently let the word slip, but she either wasn't listening or else pretended not to have noticed) 'loved his work. And something tells me it's a subject you're interested in too.'
She glanced at her watch again.
'I'm going to Sibiu,' she said. 'My bus leaves in an hour. I'm looking for my mother, if that's what you want to know. I work as a real estate agent in the Middle East, I have a son of nearly four, I'm divorced, and my parents live in London. My adoptive parents, of course, because I was abandoned as a baby.'
She was clearly at a very advanced stage of perception, and had identified with me, even though she wasn't aware of this yet.
'Yes, that's what I wanted to know.'
'Did you have to come all this way just to do research into a writer? Aren't there any libraries where you live?'
'The fact is that Eliade only lived in Romania until he graduated from university. So if I really wanted to know more about his work, I should go to Paris, London or to Chicago, where he died. However, what I'm doing isn't research in the normal sense of the word: I wanted to see the ground where he placed his feet. I wanted to feel what inspired him to write about things that affect my life and the lives of people I respect.'
'Did he write about medicine too?'
I had better not answer that. I saw that she'd picked up on the word 'teacher', and assumed it must be related to my profession.
The young woman got to her feet. I felt she knew what I was talking about. I could see her light shining more intensely. I only achieve this state of perception when I'm close to someone very like myself. 'Would you mind coming with me to the bus station?' she asked.
Not at all. My plane didn't leave until later that night, and a whole, dull, endless day stretched out before me. At least I would have someone to talk to for a while.
She went upstairs, returned with her suitcases in her hand and a series of questions in her head. She began her interrogation as soon as we left the hotel.
'I may never see you again,' she said, 'but I feel that we have something in common. Since this may be the last opportunity we have in this incarnation to talk to each other, would you mind being direct in your answers?'
I nodded.
'Based on what you've read in all those books, do you believe that through dance we can enter a trance-like state that helps us to see a light? And that the light tells us nothing – only whether we're happy or sad?'
A good question!
'Of course, and that happens not only through dance, but through anything that allows us to focus our attention and to separate body from spirit. Like yoga or prayer or Buddhist meditation.'
'Or calligraphy.'
'I hadn't thought of that, but it's possible. At such moments, when the body sets the soul free, the soul either rises up to heaven or descends into hell, depending on the person's state of mind. In both cases, it learns what it needs to learn: to destroy
or to heal. But I'm no longer interested in individual paths; in my tradition, I need the help of … are you listening to me?'
'No.'
She had stopped in the middle of the street and was staring at a little girl who appeared to have been abandoned. She went to put her hand in her bag.
'Don't do that,' I said. 'Look across the street at that woman, the one with cruel eyes. She's put the girl there purely in order to–'
'I don't care.'
She took out a few coins. I grabbed her hand.
'Let's buy her something to eat. That would be more useful.'
I asked the little girl to go with us to a café and bought her a sandwich. The little girl smiled and thanked me. The eyes of the woman across the street seemed to glitter with hatred, but, for the first time, the grey eyes of the young woman walking at my side looked at me with respect.
'What were you saying?' she asked.
'It doesn't matter. Do you know what happened to you a few moments ago? You went into the same trance that your dancing provokes.'
'No, you're wrong.'
'I'm right. Something touched your unconscious mind. Perhaps you saw yourself as you would have been if you hadn't been adopted – begging in the street. At that moment, your brain stopped reacting. Your spirit left you and travelled down to hell to meet the demons from your past. Because of that, you didn't notice the woman across the street – you were in a trance, a disorganised, chaotic trance that was driving you to do something which was good in theory, but, in practice, pointless. As if you were–'
'–in the blank space between the letters. In the moment when a note of music ends and the next has not yet begun.'
'Exactly. And such a trance can be dangerous.'
I almost said: 'It's the kind of trance provoked by fear. It paralyses the person, leaves them unable to react; the body doesn't respond, the soul is no longer there. You were terrified by everything that could have happened to you had fate not placed your parents in your path.' But she had put her suitcases down on the ground and was standing in front of me.
'Who are you? Why are you saying all this?'
'As a doctor, I'm known as Deidre O'Neill. Pleased to meet you, and what's your
name?' 'Athena. Although according to my passport I'm Sherine Khalil.' 'Who gave you the name Athena?'
'No one important. But I didn't ask you for your name, I asked who you are and why you spoke to me. And why I felt the same need to talk to you. Was it just because we were the only two women in that hotel dining room? I don't think so. And you're saying things to me that make sense of my life.'
She picked up her bags again, and we continued walking towards the bus station.
'I have another name too – Edda. But it wasn't chosen by chance, nor do I believe it was chance that brought us together.'
Before us was the entrance to the bus station, with various people going in and out
– soldiers in uniform, farmers, pretty women dressed as if they were still living in the 1950s.
'If it wasn't chance, what was it?'
She had another half an hour before her bus left, and I could have said: It was the Mother. Some chosen spirits emit a special light and are drawn to each other, and you – Sherine or Athena – are one of those spirits, but you need to work very hard to use that energy to your advantage.
I could have explained that she was following the classic path of the witch, who, through her individual persona, seeks contact with the upper and lower world, but always ends up destroying her own life – she serves others, gives out energy, but receives nothing in return.
I could have explained that, although all paths are different, there is always a point when people come together, celebrate together, discuss their difficulties, and prepare themselves for the Rebirth of the Mother. I could have said that contact with the Divine Light is the greatest reality a human being can experience, and yet, in my tradition, that contact cannot be made alone, because we've suffered centuries of persecution, and this has taught us many things.
'Would you like to have a coffee while I wait for the bus?'
No, I did not. I would only end up saying things that might, at that stage, be misinterpreted. 'Certain people have been very important in my life,' she went on. 'My landlord, for example, or the calligrapher I met in the desert near Dubai. Who knows, you might have things to say to me that I can share with them, and repay them for all they taught me.'
So she had already had teachers in her life – excellent! Her spirit was ripe. All she needed was to continue her training, otherwise she would end up losing all she had
achieved. But was I the right person?
I asked the Mother to inspire me, to tell me what to do. I got no answer, which did not surprise me. She always behaves like that when it's up to me to take responsibility for a decision.
I gave Athena my business card and asked her for hers. She gave me an address in Dubai, a country I would have been unable to find on the map.
I decided to try making a joke, to test her out a little more:
'Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that three English people should meet in a hotel in Bucharest?' 'Well, from your card I see that you're Scottish. The man I met apparently works in England, but I don't know anything else about him.'
She took a deep breath: 'And I'm … Romanian.'
I gave an excuse and said that I had to rush back to the hotel and pack my bags. Now she knew where to find me, if it was written that we would meet again, we would. The important thing is to allow fate to intervene in our lives and to decide what is best for everyone.
Vosho 'Bushalo', 65, restaurant owner
These Europeans come here thinking they know everything, thinking they deserve the very best treatment, that they have the right to bombard us with questions which we're obliged to answer. On the other hand, they think that by giving us some tricksy name, like 'travellers' or 'Roma', they can put right the
many wrongs they've done us in the past.
Why can't they just call us gipsies and put an end to all the stories that make us look as if we were cursed in the eyes of the world? They accuse us of being the fruit of the illicit union between a woman and the Devil himself. They say that one of us forged the nails that fixed Christ to the cross, that mothers should be careful when our caravans come near, because we steal children and enslave them.
And because of this there have been frequent massacres throughout history; in the Middle Ages we were hunted as witches; for centuries our testimony wasn't even accepted in the German courts. I was born before the Nazi wind swept through Europe and I saw my father marched off to a concentration camp in Poland, with a humiliating black triangle sewn to his clothes. Of the 500,000 gipsies sent for slave labour, only 5,000 survived to tell the tale.
And no one, absolutely no one, wants to hear about this.
Right up until last year, our culture, religion and language were banned in this godforsaken part of the world, where most of the tribes decided to settle. If you
asked anyone in the city what they thought of gipsies, their immediate response would be: 'They're all thieves.' However hard we try to lead normal lives by ceasing our eternal wanderings and living in places where we're easily identifiable, the racism continues. Our children are forced to sit at the back of the class and not a week goes by without someone insulting them.
Then people complain that we don't give straight answers, that we try to disguise ourselves, that we never openly admit our origins. Why would we do that? Everyone knows what a gipsy looks like, and everyone knows how to 'protect' themselves from our 'curses'.
When a stuck-up, intellectual young woman appears, smiling and claiming to be part of our culture and our race, I'm immediately on my guard. She might have been sent by the Securitate, the secret police who work for that mad dictator – the Conducator, the Genius of the Carpathians, the Leader. They say he was put on trial and shot, but I don't believe it. His son may have disappeared from the scene for the moment, but he's still a powerful figure in these parts.
The young woman insists; she smiles, as if she were saying something highly amusing, and tells me that her mother is a gipsy and that she'd like to find her. She knows her full name. How could she obtain such information without the help of the Securitate?
It's best not to get on the wrong side of people who have government contacts. I tell her that I know nothing, that I'm just a gipsy who's decided to lead an honest life, but she won't listen: she wants to find her mother. I know who her mother is, and I know, too, that more than twenty years ago, she had a child she gave up to an orphanage and never heard from again. We had to take her mother in because a blacksmith who thought he was the master of the universe insisted on it. But who can guarantee that this intellectual young woman standing before me really is Liliana's daughter? Before trying to find out who her mother is, she should at least respect some of our customs and not turn up dressed in red, if it's not her wedding day. She ought to wear longer skirts as well, so as not to arouse men's lust. And she should be more respectful.
If I speak of her now in the present tense, it's because for those who travel, time does not exist, only space. We came from far away, some say from India, others from Egypt, but the fact is that we carry the past with us as if it had all just happened. And the persecutions continue.
The young woman is trying to be nice and to show that she knows about our
culture, when that doesn't matter at all. After all, she should know about our traditions.
'In town I was told that you're a Rom Baro, a tribal leader. Before I came here, I learned a lot about our history–'
'Not “our”, please. It's my history, the history of my wife, my children, my tribe. You're a European. You were never stoned in the street as I was when I was five years old.'
'I think the situation is getting better.'
'The situation is always getting better, then it immediately gets worse.'
But she keeps smiling. She orders a whisky. One of our women would never do that.
If she'd come in here just to have a drink or looking for company, I'd treat her like any other customer. I've learned to be friendly, attentive, discreet, because my business depends on that. When my customers want to know more about the gipsies, I offer them a few curious facts, tell them to listen to the group who'll be playing later on, make a few remarks about our culture, and then they leave with the impression that they know everything about us.
But this young woman isn't just another tourist: she says she belongs to our race. She again shows me the certificate she got from the government. I can believe that the government kills, steals and lies, but it wouldn't risk handing out false certificates, and so she really must be Liliana's daughter, because the certificate gives her full name and address. I learned from the television that the Genius of the Carpathians, the Father of the People, our Conducator, the one who left us to starve while he exported all our food, the one who lived in palaces and used gold-plated cutlery while the people were dying of starvation, that same man and his wretched wife used to get the Securitate to trawl the orphanages selecting babies to be trained as State assassins.
They only ever took boys, though, never girls. Perhaps she really is Liliana's daughter.
I look at the certificate once more and wonder whether or not I should tell her where her mother is. Liliana deserves to meet this intellectual, claiming to be 'one of us'. Liliana deserves to look this woman in the eye. I think she suffered enough when she betrayed her people, slept with a gadje (Editor's note: foreigner) and shamed her parents. Perhaps the moment has come to end her hell, for her to see that her daughter survived, got rich, and might even be able to help her out of the
poverty she lives in.
Perhaps this young woman will pay me for this information; perhaps it'll be of some advantage to our tribe, because we're living in confusing times. Everyone's saying that the Genius of the Carpathians is dead, and they even show photos of his execution, but, who knows, he could come back tomorrow, and it'll all turn out to have been a clever trick on his part to find out who really was on his side and who was prepared to betray him.
The musicians will start playing soon, so I'd better talk business.
'I know where you can find this woman. I can take you to her.' I adopt a friendlier tone of voice. 'But I think that information is worth something.'
for.
'I was prepared for that,' she says, holding out a much larger sum of money than I was going to ask
'That's not even enough for the taxi fare.'
'I'll pay you the same amount again when I reach my destination.'
And I sense that, for the first time, she feels uncertain. She suddenly seems afraid of what she's about to do. I grab the money she's placed on the counter.
'I'll take you to see Liliana tomorrow.'
Her hands are trembling. She orders another whisky, but suddenly a man comes into the bar, sees her, blushes scarlet and comes straight over to her. I gather that they only met yesterday, and yet here they are talking as if they were old friends. His eyes are full of desire. She's perfectly aware of this and encourages him. The man orders a bottle of wine, and the two sit down at a table, and it's as if she'd forgotten all about her mother.
However, I want the other half of that money. When I serve them their drinks, I tell her I'll be at her hotel at ten o'clock in the morning.
Heron Ryan, journalist
Immediately after the first glass of wine, she told me, unprompted, that she had a boyfriend who worked for Scotland Yard. It was a lie, of course. She must have read the look in my eyes, and this was her way of keeping me at a distance.
I told her that I had a girlfriend, which made us even.
Ten minutes after the music had started, she stood up. We had said very little – she asked no questions about my research into vampires, and we exchanged only generalities: our impressions of the city, complaints about the state of the roads. But what I saw next – or, rather, what everyone in the restaurant saw – was a
goddess revealing herself in all her glory, a priestess invoking angels and demons. Her eyes were closed and she seemed no longer to be conscious of who she was or where she was or why she was there; it was as if she were floating and simultaneously summoning up her past, revealing her present and predicting the future. She mingled eroticism with chastity, pornography with revelation, worship of God and nature, all at the same time.
People stopped eating and started watching what was happening. She was no longer following the music, the musicians were trying to keep up with her steps, and that restaurant in the basement of an old building in the city of Sibiu was transformed into an Egyptian temple, where the worshippers of Isis used to gather for their fertility rites. The smell of roast meat and wine was transmuted into an incense that drew us all into the same trance-like state, into the same experience of leaving this world and entering an unknown dimension.
The string and wind instruments had given up, only the percussion played on. Athena was dancing as if she were no longer there, with sweat running down her face, her bare feet beating on the wooden floor. A woman got up and very gently tied a scarf around her neck and breasts, because her blouse kept threatening to slip off her shoulders. Athena, however, appeared not to notice; she was inhabiting other spheres, experiencing the frontiers of worlds that almost touch ours, but never reveal themselves.
The other people in the restaurant started clapping in time to the music, and Athena was dancing ever faster, feeding on that energy, and spinning round and round, balancing in the void, snatching up everything that we, poor mortals, wanted to offer to the supreme divinity.
And suddenly she stopped. Everyone stopped, including the percussionists. Her eyes were still closed, but tears were now rolling down her cheeks. She raised her arms in the air and cried:
'When I die, bury me standing, because I've spent all my life on my knees!'
No one said anything. She opened her eyes as if waking from a deep sleep and walked back to the table as if nothing had happened. The band started up again, and couples took to the floor in an attempt to enjoy themselves, but the atmosphere in the place had changed completely. People soon paid their bills and started to leave the restaurant.
'Is everything all right?' I asked, when I saw that she'd recovered from the physical effort of
dancing.
'I feel afraid. I discovered how to reach a place I don't want to go to.' 'Do you want me to go with you?'
She shook her head.
In the days that followed, I completed my research for the documentary, sent my interpreter back to Bucharest with the hired car, and then stayed on in Sibiu simply because I wanted to meet her again. All my life I've always been guided by logic and I know that love is something that can be built rather than simply discovered, but I sensed that if I never saw her again, I would be leaving a very important part of my life in Transylvania, even though I might only realise this later on. I fought against the monotony of those endless hours; more than once, I went to the bus station to find out the times of buses to Bucharest; I spent more than my tiny budget as an independent film-maker allowed on phone-calls to the BBC and to my girlfriend. I explained that I didn't yet have all the material I needed, that there were still a few things lacking, that I might need another day or possibly a week; I said that the Romanians were being very difficult and got upset if anyone associated their beautiful Transylvania with the hideous story of Dracula. I finally managed to convince the producers, and they let me stay on longer than I really needed to.
We were staying in the only hotel in the city, and one day she saw me in the foyer and seemed suddenly to remember our first encounter. This time, she invited me out, and I tried to contain my joy. Perhaps I was important in her life.
saying.
Later on, I learned that the words she had spoken at the end of her dance were an ancient gipsy
Liliana, seamstress, age and surname unknown
I speak in the present tense because for us time does not exist, only space. And because it seems like only yesterday.
The one tribal custom I did not follow was that of having my man by my side when Athena was born. The midwives came to me even though they knew I had slept with a gadje, a foreigner. They loosened my hair, cut the umbilical cord, tied various knots and handed it to me. At that point, tradition demands that the child be wrapped in some item of the father's clothing; he had left a scarf which reminded me of his smell and which I sometimes pressed to my nose so as to feel him close to me, but now that perfume would vanish for ever.
I wrapped the baby in the scarf and placed her on the floor so that she would receive energy from the Earth. I stayed there with her, not knowing what to feel or think; my decision had been made.
The midwives told me to choose a name and not to tell anyone what it was – it could only be pronounced once the child was baptised. They gave me the consecrated oil and the amulets I must hang around her neck for the two weeks following her birth. One of them told me not to worry, the whole tribe was responsible for my child and although I would be the butt of much criticism, this would soon pass. They also advised me not to go out between dusk and dawn because the tsinvari (Editor's note: evil spirits) might attack us and take possession of us, and from then on our lives would be a tragedy.
A week later, as soon as the sun rose, I went to an adoption centre in Sibiu and placed her on the doorstep, hoping that some charitable person would take her in. As I was doing so, a nurse caught me and dragged me inside. She insulted me in every way she could and said that they were used to such behaviour, but that there was always someone watching and I couldn't escape so easily from the responsibility of bringing a child into the world.
'Although, of course, what else would one expect from a gipsy! Abandoning your own child like
that!'
I was forced to fill in a form with all my details and, since I didn't know how to write, she said again, more than once: 'Yes, well, what can you expect from a gipsy. And don't try to trick us by giving false information. If you do, it could land you in jail.' Out of pure fear, I told them the truth.
I looked at my child one last time, and all I could think was: 'Child without a name, may you find love, much love in your life.'
Afterwards, I walked in the forest for hours. I remembered many nights during my pregnancy when I had both loved and hated the child herself and the man who had put her inside me.
Like all women, I'd dreamed of one day meeting an enchanted prince, who would marry me, give me lots of children and shower attentions on my family. Like many women, I fell in love with a man who could give me none of those things, but with whom I shared some unforgettable moments, moments my child would never understand, for she would always be stigmatised in our tribe as a gadje and a fatherless child. I could bear that, but I didn't want her to suffer as I had suffered
ever since I first realised I was pregnant. I wept and tore at my own skin, thinking that the pain of the scratches would perhaps stop me thinking about a return to ordinary life, to face the shame I had brought on the tribe. Someone would take care of the child, and I would always cherish the hope of seeing her again one day, when she had grown up.
Unable to stop crying, I sat down on the ground and put my arms around the trunk of a tree. However, as soon as my tears and the blood from my wounds touched the trunk of the tree, a strange calm took hold of me. I seemed to hear a voice telling me not to worry, saying that my blood and my tears had purified the path of the child and lessened my suffering. Ever since then, whenever I despair, I remember that voice and feel calm again.
That's why I wasn't surprised when I saw her arrive with our tribe's Rom Baro, who asked me for a coffee and a drink, then smiled slyly and left. The voice told me that she would come back, and now here she is, in front of me. She's pretty. She looks like her father. I don't know what feelings she has for me; perhaps she hates me because I abandoned her. I don't need to explain why I did what I did; no one would ever understand.
We sit for an age without saying anything to each other, just looking – not smiling, not crying, nothing. A surge of love rises up from the depths of my soul, but I don't know if she's interested in what I feel.
'Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?'
Instinct. Instinct above all else. She nods. We go into the small room in which I live, and which is living room, bedroom, kitchen and sewing workshop. She looks around, shocked, but I pretend not to notice. I go over to the stove and return with two bowls of thick meat and vegetable broth. I've prepared some strong coffee too and just as I'm about to add sugar, she speaks for the first time:
'No sugar for me, thank you. I didn't know you spoke English.'
I almost say that I learned it from her father, but I bite my tongue. We eat in silence and, as time passes, everything starts to feel familiar to me; here I am with my daughter; she went off into the world and now she's back; she followed different paths from mine and has come home. I know this is an illusion, but life has given me so many moments of harsh reality that it does no harm to dream a little.
'Who's that saint?' she asks, pointing to a painting on the wall.
'St Sarah, the patron saint of gipsies. I've always wanted to visit her church in
France, but I can't leave the country. I'd never get a passport or permission…'
I'm about to say: And even if I did, I wouldn't have enough money, but I stop myself in time. She might think I was asking her for something.
'…and besides I have too much work to do.'
Silence falls again. She finishes her soup, lights a cigarette, and her eyes give nothing away, no
emotion.
'Did you think you would ever see me again?'
I say that I did, and that I'd heard yesterday, from the Rom Baro's wife, that she'd visited his restaurant.
'A storm is coming. Wouldn't you like to sleep a little?'
'I can't hear anything. The wind isn't blowing any harder or softer than before. I'd rather talk.' 'Believe me, I have all the time in the world. I have the rest of my life to spend by your side.' 'Don't say that.'
'But you're tired,' I go on, pretending not to have heard her remark. I can see the storm approaching. Like all storms, it brings destruction, but, at the same time, it soaks the fields, and the wisdom of the heavens falls with the rain. Like all storms, it will pass. The more violent it is, the more quickly it will pass.
I have, thank God, learned to weather storms.
And as if all the Holy Marys of the Sea were listening to me, the first drops of rain begin to fall on the tin roof. The young woman finishes her cigarette. I take her hand and lead her to my bed. She lies down and closes her eyes.
I don't know how long she slept. I watched her without thinking anything, and the voice I'd heard once in the forest was telling me that all was well, that I needn't worry, that the ways in which fate changes people are always favourable if we only know how to decipher them. I don't know who saved her from the orphanage and brought her up and made her into the independent woman she appears to be. I offered up a prayer to that family who had allowed my daughter to survive and achieve a better life. In the middle of the prayer, I felt jealousy, despair, regret, and I stopped talking to St Sarah. Had it really been so important to bring her back? There lay everything I'd lost and could never recover.
But there, too, was the physical manifestation of my love. I knew nothing and yet everything was revealed to me: I remembered the times I'd considered suicide and, later, abortion, when I'd imagined leaving that part of the world and setting off on foot to wherever my strength would take me; I remembered my blood and tears on
the tree trunk, the dialogue with nature that had intensified from that moment on and has never left me since, although few people in my tribe have any inkling of this. My protector, whom I met while I was wandering in the forest, understood, but he had just died.
'The light is unstable, the wind blows it out, the lightning ignites it, it is never simply there, shining like the sun, but it is worth fighting for,' he used to say.
He was the only person who accepted me and persuaded the tribe that I could once again form part of their world. He was the only one with the moral authority to ensure that I wasn't expelled.
And, alas, the only one who would never meet my daughter. I wept for him, while she lay sleeping on my bed, she who must be used to all the world's comforts. Thousands of questions filled my head – who were her adoptive parents, where did she live, had she been to university, was there someone she loved, what were her plans? But I wasn't the one who had travelled the world in search of her, on the contrary. I wasn't there to ask questions, but to answer them.
She opened her eyes. I wanted to touch her hair, to give her the affection I'd kept locked inside all these years, but I wasn't sure how she would react and thought it best to do nothing.
'You came here to find out why–'
'No, I don't want to know why a mother would abandon her daughter. There is no reason for anyone to do that.'
Her words wound my heart, but I don't know how to respond.
'Who am I? What blood runs in my veins? Yesterday, when I found out where you were, I was absolutely terrified. Where do I start? I suppose, like all gipsies, you can read the future in the cards.'
'No, that's not true. We only do that with gadje as a way of earning a living. We never read cards or hands or try to predict the future within our own tribe. And you…'
'…I'm part of the tribe. Even though the woman who brought me into the world sent me far away.' 'Yes.'
'So what am I doing here? Now that I've seen your face I can go back to London. My holidays are nearly over.'
mouth:
hours.
'Do you want to know about your father?' 'No, I haven't the slightest interest in
him.'
And suddenly, I realised that I could help her. It was as if someone else's voice came out of my
'Try to understand the blood that flows in my veins and in your heart.'
That was my teacher speaking through me. She closed her eyes again and slept for nearly twelve
The following day, I took her to the outskirts of Sibiu where there's a kind of museum of the different kinds of houses found in the region. For the first time, I'd had the pleasure of preparing her breakfast. She was more rested, less tense, and she asked me questions about gipsy culture, but never about me. She told me a little of her life. I learned that I was a grandmother! She didn't mention her husband or her adoptive parents. She said she sold land in a country far from there and that she would soon return to her work.
I explained that I could show her how to make amulets to ward off evil, but she didn't seem interested. However, when I spoke to her about the healing properties of herbs, she asked me to teach her how to recognise them. In the park where we were walking, I tried to pass on to her all the knowledge I possessed, although I was sure she'd forget everything as soon as she returned to her home country, which by then I knew was England.
'We don't possess the Earth, the Earth possesses us. We used to travel constantly, and everything around us was ours: the plants, the water, the landscapes through which our caravans passed. Our laws were nature's laws: the strong survived, and we, the weak, the eternal exiles, learned to hide our strength and to use it only when necessary. We don't believe that God made the universe. We believe that God is the universe and that we are contained in Him, and He in us. Although…'
I stopped, then decided to go on, because it was a way of paying homage to my protector.
'…in my opinion, we should call “Him” “Goddess” or “Mother”. Not like the woman who gives her daughter up to an orphanage, but like the Woman in all of us, who protects us when we are in danger. She will always be with us while we perform our daily tasks with love and joy, understanding that nothing is suffering, that everything is a way of praising Creation.'
Athena – now I knew her name – looked across at one of the houses in the park. 'What's that? A church?'
The hours I'd spent by her side had allowed me to recover my strength. I asked if
she was trying to change the subject. She thought for a moment before replying. 'No, I want to go on listening to what you have to tell me, although, according to everything I read before I came here, what you're saying isn't part of the gipsy tradition.'
'My protector taught me these things. He knew things the gipsies don't know and he made the tribe take me back. And as I learned from him, I gradually became aware of the power of the Mother, I, who had rejected the blessing of being a mother.'
I pointed at a small bush.
'If one day your son has a fever, place him next to a young plant like this and shake its leaves. The fever will pass over into the plant. If ever you feel anxious, do the same thing.'
'I'd rather you told me more about your protector.'
'He taught me that in the beginning Creation was so lonely that it created someone else to talk to. Those two creatures, in an act of love, made a third person, and from then on, they multiplied by thousands and millions. You asked about the church we just saw: I don't know when it was built and I'm not interested. My temple is the park, the sky, the water in the lake and the stream that feeds it. My people are those who share my ideas and not those I'm bound to by bonds of blood. My ritual is being with those people and celebrating everything around me. When are you thinking of going home?'
'Possibly tomorrow. I don't want to inconvenience you.' Another wound to my heart, but I could say nothing.
'No, please, stay as long as you like. I only asked because I'd like to celebrate your arrival with the others. If you agree, I can do this tonight.'
She says nothing, and I understand this as a 'yes'. Back home, I give her more food, and she explains that she needs to go to her hotel in Sibiu to fetch some clothes. By the time she returns, I have everything organised. We go to a hill to the south of the town; we sit around a fire that has just been lit; we play instruments, we sing, we dance, we tell stories. She watches, but doesn't take part, although the Rom Baro told me that she was a fine dancer. For the first time in many years, I feel happy, because I've had the chance to prepare a ritual for my daughter and to celebrate with her the miracle of the two of us being together, alive and healthy and immersed in the love of the Great Mother.
Afterwards, she says that she'll sleep at the hotel that night. I ask her if this is
goodbye, but she says it isn't. She'll come back tomorrow.
For a whole week, my daughter and I share together the adoration of the Universe. One night, she brought a friend, making it quite clear that he was neither her boyfriend nor the father of her child. The man, who must have been ten years older than her, asked who we were worshipping in our rituals. I explained that worshipping someone means – according to my protector – placing that person outside our world. We are not worshipping anyone or anything; we are simply communing with Creation.
'But do you pray?'
'Myself, I pray to St Sarah, but here we are part of everything and we celebrate rather than pray.' I felt that Athena was proud of my answer, but I was really only repeating my protector's words. 'And why do this in a group, when we can all celebrate the Universe on our own?'
'Because the others are me. And I am the others.'
Athena looked at me then, and I felt it was my turn to wound her heart. 'I'm leaving tomorrow,' she said.
'Before you do, come and say goodbye to your mother.'
That was the first time, in all those days, I had used the word. My voice didn't tremble, my gaze was steady, and I knew that, despite everything, standing before me was the blood of my blood, the fruit of my womb. At that moment, I was behaving like a little girl who has just found out that the world isn't full of ghosts and curses, as grown-ups have taught us. It's full of love, regardless of how that love is manifested, a love that forgives our mistakes and redeems our sins.
She gave me a long embrace. Then she adjusted the veil I wear to cover my hair; I may not have had a husband, but according to gipsy tradition, I had to wear a veil because I was no longer a virgin. What would tomorrow bring me, along with the departure of the being I've always both loved and feared from a distance? I was everyone, and everyone was me and my solitude.
The following day, Athena arrived bearing a bunch of flowers. She tidied my room, told me that I should wear glasses because my eyes were getting worn out from all that sewing. She asked if the friends I celebrated with experienced any problems with the tribe, and I told her that they didn't, that my protector had been a very respected man, had taught us many things and had followers all over the world. I explained that he'd died shortly before she arrived.
'One day, a cat brushed against him. To us, that means death, and we were all very
worried. But although there is a ritual that can lift such a curse, my protector said it was time for him to leave, that he needed to travel to those other worlds which he knew existed, to be reborn as a child, and to rest for a while in the arms of the Mother. His funeral took place in a forest nearby. It was a very simple affair, but people came from all over the world.'
'Amongst those people, was there a woman of about thirty-five, with dark hair?' 'I can't be sure, but possibly. Why do you ask'
'I met someone at a hotel in Bucharest who said that she'd come to attend the funeral of a friend. I think she said something about “her teacher”.'
She asked me to tell her more about the gipsies, but there wasn't much she didn't already know, mainly because, apart from customs and traditions, we know little of our own history. I suggested that she go to France one day and take, on my behalf, a shawl to present to the image of St Sarah in the little French village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
'I came here because there was something missing in my life,' she said. 'I needed to fill up my blank spaces, and I thought just seeing your face would be enough. But it wasn't. I also needed to understand that…I was loved.'
'You are loved.'
I said nothing else for a long time. I'd finally put into words what I'd wanted to say ever since I let her go. So that she would not become too emotional, I went on: 'I'd like to ask you something.' 'Ask me anything you like.'
'I want to ask your forgiveness.' She bit her lip.
'I've always been a very restless person. I work hard, spend too much time looking after my son, I dance like a mad thing, I learned calligraphy, I go to courses on selling, I read one book after another. But that's all a way of avoiding those moments when nothing is happening, because those blank spaces give me a feeling of absolute emptiness, in which not a single crumb of love exists. My parents have always done everything they could for me, and I do nothing but disappoint them. But here, during the time we've spent together, celebrating nature and the Great Mother, I've realised that those empty spaces were starting to get filled up. They were transformed into pauses – the moment when the man lifts his hand from the drum before bringing it down again to strike it hard. I think I can leave now. I'm not saying that I'll go in peace, because my life needs to follow the rhythm I'm accustomed to. But I won't leave feeling bitter. Do all gipsies believe in the Great Mother?'
'If you were to ask them, none of them would say “yes”. They've adopted the beliefs and customs of the places where they've settled, and the only thing that unites us in religious terms is the worship of St Sarah and making a pilgrimage, at least once in our lifetime, to visit her tomb in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Some tribes call her Kali Sarah, Black Sarah. Or the Virgin of the Gipsies, as she's known in Lourdes.'
'I have to go,' Athena said after a while. 'The friend you met the other day is leaving with me.' 'He seems like a nice man.'
'You're talking like a mother.' 'I am your mother.' 'And I'm your daughter.'
She embraced me, this time with tears in her eyes. I stroked her hair as I held her in my arms, as I'd always dreamed I would, ever since the day when fate – or my fear – separated us. I asked her to take good care of herself, and she told me that she had learned a lot.
'You'll learn a lot more too because, although, nowadays, we're all trapped in houses, cities and jobs, there still flows in your blood the time of caravans and journeyings and the teachings that the Great Mother placed in our path so that we could survive. Learn, but always learn with other people by your side. Don't be alone in the search, because if you take a wrong step, you'll have no one there to help put you right.'
She was still crying, still clinging to me, almost begging me to let her stay. I pleaded with my protector not to let me shed one tear, because I wanted the best for Athena, and her destiny was to go forward. Here in Transylvania, apart from my love, she would find nothing else. And although I believe that love is enough to justify a whole existence, I was quite sure that I couldn't ask her to sacrifice her future in order to stay by my side.
Athena planted a kiss on my forehead and left without saying goodbye, perhaps thinking she would return one day. Every Christmas, she sent me enough money to spend the whole year without having to sew, but I never went to the bank to cash her cheques, even though everyone in the tribe thought I was behaving like a foolish woman.
Six months ago, she stopped sending money. She must have realised that I need my sewing to fill up what she called the 'blank spaces'.
I would love to see her again, but I know she'll never come back. She's probably a big executive now, married to the man she loves. And I probably have lots of
grandchildren, which means that my blood will remain on this Earth, and my mistakes will be forgiven.
Samira R. Khalil, housewife
As soon as Sherine arrived home, whooping with joy and clutching a rather startled Viorel to her, I knew that everything had gone much better than I'd imagined. I felt that God had heard my prayers, and that now she no longer had anything more to learn about herself, she would finally adapt to normal life, bring up her child, remarry and forget all about the strange restlessness that left her simultaneously euphoric and depressed.
'I love you, Mum.'
It was my turn to put my arms around her and hold her to me. During all the nights she'd been away, I had, I confess, been terrified by the thought that she might send someone to fetch Viorel and then they would never come back.
After she'd eaten, had a bath, told us about the meeting with her birth mother, and described the Transylvanian countryside (I could barely remember it, since all I was interested in, at the time, was finding the orphanage), I asked her when she was going back to Dubai.
'Next week, but, first, I have to go to Scotland to see someone.' A man!
'A woman,' she said at once, perhaps in response to my knowing smile. 'I feel that I have a mission. While we were celebrating life and nature, I discovered things I didn't even know existed. What I thought could be found only through dance is everywhere. And it has the face of a woman. I saw in the…'
I felt frightened. Her mission, I told her, was to bring up her son, do well at her job, earn more money, remarry, and respect God as we know Him.
But Sherine wasn't listening.
'It was one night when we were sitting round the fire, drinking, telling funny stories and listening to music. Apart from in the restaurant, I hadn't felt the need to dance all the time I was there, as if I were storing up energy for something different. Suddenly, I felt as if everything around me were alive and pulsating, as if the Creation and I were one and the same thing. I wept with joy when the flames of the fire seemed to take on the form of a woman's face, full of compassion, smiling at me.'
I shuddered. It was probably gipsy witchcraft. And at the same time, the image came back to me of the little girl at school, who said she'd seen 'a woman in white'. 'Don't get caught up in things like that, they're the Devil's work. We've always set
you a good example, so why can't you lead a normal life?'
I'd obviously been too hasty when I thought the journey in search of her birth mother had done her good. However, instead of reacting aggressively, as she usually did, she smiled and went on:
'What is normal? Why is Dad always laden down with work, when we have money enough to support three generations? He's an honest man and he deserves the money he earns, but he always says, with a certain pride, that he's got far too much work. Why? What for?'
'He's a man who lives a dignified, hard-working life.'
'When I lived at home, the first thing he'd ask me when he got back every evening was how my homework was going, and he'd give me a few examples illustrating how important his work was to the world. Then he'd turn on the TV, make a few comments about the political situation in Lebanon, and read some technical book before going to sleep. But he was always busy. And it was the same thing with you. I was the best-dressed girl at school; you took me to parties; you kept the house spick and span; you were always kind and loving and brought me up impeccably. But what happens now that you're getting older? What are you going to do with your life now that I've grown up and am independent?'
'We're going to travel the world and enjoy a well-earned rest.' 'But why don't you do that now, while your health is still good?'
I'd asked myself the same question, but I felt that my husband needed his work, not because of the money, but out of a need to feel useful, to prove that an exile also honours his commitments. Whenever he took a holiday and stayed in town, he always found some excuse to slip into the office, to talk to his colleagues and make some decision that could easily have waited. I tried to make him go to the theatre, to
the cinema, to museums, and he'd do as I asked, but I always had the feeling that it bored him. His only interest was the company, work, business.
For the first time, I talked to her as if she were a friend and not my daughter, but I chose my words carefully and spoke in a way that she could understand.
'Are you saying that your father is also trying to fill in what you call the “blank spaces”?'
'The day he retires, although I really don't think that day will ever come, he'll fall into a deep depression. I'm sure of it. What to do with that hard-won freedom? Everyone will congratulate him on a brilliant career, on the legacy he leaves behind
him because of the integrity with which he ran his company, but no one will have time for him any more – life flows on, and everyone is caught up in that flow. Dad will feel an exile again, but this time he won't have a country where he can seek refuge.'
'Have you got a better idea?'
'Only one: I don't want the same thing to happen to me. I'm too restless, and, please don't take this the wrong way, because I'm not blaming you and Dad at all for the example you set me, but I need to change, and change fast.'
Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda She's sitting in the pitch black.
The boy, of course, left the room at once – the night is the kingdom of terror, of monsters from the past, of the days when we wandered like gipsies, like my former teacher – may the Mother has mercy on his soul, and may he be loved and cherished until it is time for him to return.
Athena hasn't known what to do since I switched off the light. She asks about her son, and I tell her not to worry, to leave everything to me. I go out, put the TV on, find a cartoon channel and turn off the sound; the child sits there hypnotised – problem solved. I wonder how it must have been in the past, because the women who came to perform the same ritual Athena is about to take part in would have brought their children and in those days there was no TV. What did teachers do then?
Fortunately, I don't have to worry about that.
What the boy is experiencing in front of the television – a gateway into a different reality – is the same state I am going to induce in Athena. Everything is at once so simple and so complicated! It's simple because all it takes is a change of attitude: I'm not going to look for happiness any more. From now on, I'm independent; I see life through my eyes and not through other people's. I'm going in search of the adventure of being alive.
And it's complicated: why am I not looking for happiness when everyone has taught me that happiness is the only goal worth pursuing? Why am I going to risk taking a path that no one else is taking? After all, what is happiness?
Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.
All right then, peace. Peace? If we look at the Mother, she's never at peace. The
winter does battle with the summer, the sun and the moon never meet, the tiger chases the man, who's afraid of the dog, who chases the cat, who chases the mouse, who frightens the man.
Money brings happiness. Fine. In that case, everyone who earns enough to have a high standard of living would be able to stop work. But then they're more troubled than ever, as if they were afraid of losing everything. Money attracts money, that's true. Poverty might bring unhappiness, but money won't necessarily bring happiness.
I spent a lot of my life looking for happiness, now what I want is joy. Joy is like sex – it begins and ends. I want pleasure. I want to be contented, but happiness? I no longer fall into that trap.
When I'm with a group of people and I want to provoke them by asking that most important of questions: 'Are you happy?', they all reply: 'Yes, I am.'
Then I ask: 'But don't you want more? Don't you want to keep on growing?' And they all reply: 'Of
course.'
Then I say: 'So you're not happy.' And they change the subject.
I must go back to the room where Athena is sitting. It's dark. She hears my footsteps; a match is struck and a candle lit.
'We're surrounded by Universal Desire. It's not happiness; it's desire. And desires are never satisfied, because once they are, they cease to be desires.'
'Where's my son?'
'Your son is fine; he's watching TV. I just want you to look at the candle; don't speak, don't say anything. Just believe.'
'Believe what?'
'I asked you not to say anything. Simply believe – don't doubt anything. You're alive, and this candle is the only point in your universe. Believe in that. Let go of the idea that the path will lead you to your goal. The truth is that with each step we take, we arrive. Repeat that to yourself every morning: “I've arrived”. That way you'll find it much easier to stay in touch with each second of your day.'
I paused.
'The candle flame is illuminating your world. Ask the candle: “Who am I?”' I paused again, then went on:
'I can imagine your answer. I'm so-and-so. I've had these experiences. I have a son. I work in Dubai. Now ask the candle again: “Who am I not?”'
Again I waited and again I went on:
'You probably said: I'm not a contented person. I'm not a typical mother concerned only with her son and her husband, with having a house and a garden and a place to spend the summer holidays. Is that so? You can speak now.'
'Yes, it is.'
'Good, we're on the right path. You, like me, are a dissatisfied person. Your “reality” does not coincide with the “reality” of other people. And you're afraid that your son will follow the same path as you, is that correct?'
'Yes.'
'Nevertheless, you know you cannot stop. You struggle, but you can't control your doubts. Look hard at the candle. At the moment, the candle is your universe. It fixes your attention; it lights up the room around you a little. Breathe deeply, hold the air in your lungs as long as possible and then breathe out. Repeat this five times.'
She obeyed.
'This exercise should have calmed your soul. Now, remember what I said: believe. Believe in your abilities; believe that you have already arrived where you wanted to arrive. At a particular moment in your life, as you told me over tea this afternoon, you said that you'd changed the behaviour of the people in the bank where you worked because you'd taught them to dance. That isn't true. You changed everything because, through dance, you changed their reality. You believed in the story of the Vertex, which, although I've never heard of it before, seems to me an interesting one. You like dancing and you believed in what you were doing. You can't believe in something you don't like, can you?'
Athena shook her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the candle flame.
'Faith is not desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us, as you did with your work at the bank. But for that, you also need Desire. Please, concentrate on the candle!
'Your son left the room and went to watch TV because he's afraid of the dark. But why? We can project anything onto the darkness, and we usually project our own ghosts. That's true for children and for adults. Slowly raise your right arm.'
She raised her arm. I asked her to do the same with her left arm. I looked at her breasts, far prettier than mine.
'Now slowly lower them again. Close your eyes and breathe deeply. I'm going to
turn on the light. Right, that's the end of the ritual. Let's go into the living room.' adopt.
She got up with some difficulty. Her legs had gone numb because of the position I'd told her to
Viorel had fallen asleep. I turned off the TV, and we went into the kitchen. 'What was the point of all that?' she asked.
'Merely to remove you from everyday reality. I could have asked you to concentrate on anything, but I like the darkness and the candle flame. But you want to know what I'm up to, isn't that right?'
Athena remarked that she'd travelled for nearly five hours in the train with her son on her lap, when she should have been packing her bags to go back to work. She could have sat looking at a candle in her own room without any need to come to Scotland at all.
'Yes, there was a need,' I replied. 'You needed to know that you're not alone, that other people are in contact with the same thing as you. Just knowing that allows you to believe.'
'To believe what?'
'That you're on the right path. And, as I said before, arriving with each step you take.'
'What path? I thought that by going to find my mother in Romania, I would, at last, find the peace of mind I so need, but I haven't. What path are you talking about?'
'I haven't the slightest idea. You'll only discover that when you start to teach. When you go back to Dubai, find a student.'
'Do you mean teach dance or calligraphy?'
'Those are things you know about already. You need to teach what you don't know, what the Mother wants to reveal through you.'
She looked at me as if I had gone mad.
'It's true,' I said. 'Why else do you think I asked you to breathe deeply and to raise your arms? So that you'd believe that I knew more than you. But it isn't true. It was just a way of taking you out of the world you're accustomed to. I didn't ask you to thank the Mother, to say how wonderful She is or that you saw Her face shining in the flames of a fire. I asked only that absurd and pointless gesture of raising your arms and focusing your attention on a candle. That's enough – trying, whenever possible, to do something that is out of kilter with the reality around us.
'When you start creating rituals for your student to carry out, you'll be receiving guidance. That's where the apprenticeship begins, or so my protector told me. If you want to heed my words, fine, but if you don't and you carry on with your life as it is at the moment, you'll end up bumping up against a wall called “dissatisfaction”.'
I rang for a taxi, and we talked a little about fashion and men, and then Athena left. I was sure she would listen to me, mainly because she was the kind of person who never refuses a challenge.
'Teach people to be different. That's all!' I shouted after her, as the taxi moved off. That is joy. Happiness would be feeling satisfied with everything she already had – a lover, a son, a job. And Athena, like me, wasn't born for that kind of life.
Heron Ryan, journalist
I couldn't admit I was in love, of course; I already had a girlfriend who loved me and shared with me both my troubles and my joys.
The various encounters and events that had taken place in Sibiu were part of a journey, and it wasn't the first time this kind of thing had happened while I was away from home. When we step out of our normal world and leave behind us all the usual barriers and prejudices, we tend to become more adventurous.
When I returned to England, the first thing I did was to tell the producers that making a documentary about the historical figure of Dracula was a nonsense, and that one book by a mad Irishman had created a truly terrible image of Transylvania, which was, in fact, one of the loveliest places on the planet. Obviously the producers were none too pleased, but at that point, I didn't care what they thought. I left television and went to work for one of the world's most prestigious newspapers.
That was when I began to realise that I wanted to meet Athena again.
I phoned her and we arranged to go for a walk together before she went back to Dubai. She suggested guiding me around London.
We got on the first bus that stopped, without asking where it was going, then we chose a female passenger at random and decided that we would get off wherever she did. She got off at Temple and so did we. We passed a beggar who asked us for money, but we didn't give him any and walked on, listening to the insults he hurled after us, accepting that this was merely his way of communicating with us.
We saw someone vandalising a telephone box, and I wanted to call the police, but Athena stopped me; perhaps that person had just broken up with the love of his
life and needed to vent his feelings. Or, who knows, perhaps he had no one to talk to and couldn't stand to see others humiliating him by using that phone to discuss business deals or love.
She told me to close my eyes and to describe exactly the clothes we were both wearing; to my surprise, I got nearly every detail wrong.
She asked me what was on my desk at work and said that some of the papers were only there because I was too lazy to deal with them.
'Have you ever considered that those bits of paper have a life and feelings, have requests to make and stories to tell? I don't think you're giving life the attention it deserves.'
I promised that I'd go through them one by one when I returned to work the following day.
A foreign couple with a map asked Athena how to get to a particular tourist spot. She gave them very precise, but totally inaccurate directions.
'Everything you told them was completely wrong!'
'It doesn't matter. They'll get lost, and that's the best way to discover interesting places. Try to fill your life again with a little fantasy; above our heads is a sky about which the whole of humanity – after thousands of years spent observing it – has given various apparently reasonable explanations. Forget everything you've ever learned about the stars and they'll once more be transformed into angels, or into children, or into whatever you want to believe at that moment. It won't make you more stupid – after all, it's only a game – but it could enrich your life.'
The following day, when I went back to work, I treated each sheet of paper as if it were a message addressed to me personally and not to the organisation I represent. At midday, I went to talk to the deputy editor and suggested writing an article about the Goddess worshipped by the gipsies. He thought it an excellent idea and I was commissioned to go to the celebrations in the gipsy Mecca, Saintes-Maries-de-laMer.
Incredible though it may seem, Athena showed no desire to go with me. She said that her boyfriend that fictitious policeman, whom she was using to keep me at a distance – wouldn't be very happy if she went off travelling with another man. 'Didn't you promise your mother to take the saint a new shawl?'
'Yes, I did, but only if the town happened to be on my path, which it isn't. If I do ever pass by there, then I'll keep my promise.'
She was returning to Dubai the following Sunday, but first she travelled up to
Scotland with her son to see the woman we'd both met in Bucharest. I didn't remember anyone, but, perhaps the phantom 'woman in Scotland', like the phantom 'boyfriend', was another excuse, and I decided not to insist. But I nevertheless felt jealous, as if she were telling me that she preferred being with other people.
I found my jealousy odd. And I decided that if I was asked to go to the Middle East to write an article about the property boom that someone on the business pages had mentioned, I would read up everything I could on real estate, economics, politics and oil, simply as a way of getting closer to Athena.
My visit to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer produced an excellent article. According to tradition, Sarah was a gipsy who happened to be living in the small seaside town when Jesus' aunt, Mary Salome, along with other refugees, arrived there fleeing persecution by the Romans. Sarah helped them and, in the end, converted to Christianity.
During the celebrations, bones from the skeletons of the two women who are buried beneath the altar are taken out of a reliquary and raised up on high to bless the multitude of gipsies who arrive in their caravans from all over Europe with their bright clothes and their music. Then the image of Sarah, decked out in splendid robes, is brought from the place near the church where it's kept – for Sarah has never been canonised by the Vatican – and carried in procession to the sea through narrow streets strewn with rose petals. Four gipsies in traditional costume place the relics in a boat full of flowers and wade into the water, re-enacting the arrival of the fugitives and their meeting with Sarah. From then on, it's all music,
celebration, songs and bull-running.
A historian, Antoine Locadour, helped me flesh out the article with interesting facts about the Female Divinity. I sent Athena the two pages I'd written for the newspaper's travel section. All I received in return was a friendly reply, thanking me for sending her the article, but with no other comment.
At least, I'd confirmed that her address in Dubai existed. Antoine Locadour, 74, historian, ICP, France
It's easy to label Sarah as just one of the many Black Virgins in the world. According to tradition, Sarah-la-Kali was of noble lineage and knew the secrets of the world. She is, I believe, one more manifestation of what people call the Great Mother, the Goddess of Creation.
And it doesn't surprise me in the least that more and more people are becoming interested in pagan traditions. Why? Because God the Father is associated with the rigour and discipline of worship, whereas the Mother Goddess shows the importance of love above and beyond all the usual prohibitions and taboos.
The phenomenon is hardly a new one. Whenever a religion tightens its rules, a significant number of people break away and go in search of more freedom in their search for spiritual contact. This happened during the Middle Ages when the Catholic Church did little more than impose taxes and build splendid monasteries and convents; the phenomenon known as 'witchcraft' was a reaction to this, and even though it was suppressed because of its revolutionary nature, it left behind it roots and traditions that have managed to survive over the centuries.
According to pagan tradition, nature worship is more important than reverence for sacred books. The Goddess is in everything and everything is part of the Goddess. The world is merely an expression of her goodness. There are many philosophical systems – such as Taoism and Buddhism – which make no distinction between creator and creature. People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life, but choose instead to be part of it. There is no female figure in Taoism or Buddhism, but there, too, the central idea is that 'everything is one'.
In the worship of the Great Mother, what we call 'sin', usually a transgression of certain arbitrary moral codes, ceases to exist. Sex and customs in general are freer because they are part of nature and cannot be considered to be the fruits of evil.
The new paganism shows that man is capable of living without an institutionalised religion, while still continuing the spiritual search in order to justify his existence. If God is Mother, then we need only gather together with other people and adore Her through rituals intended to satisfy the female soul, rituals involving dance, fire, water, air, earth, songs, music, flowers and beauty.
This has been a growing trend over the last few years. We may be witnessing a very important moment in the history of the world, when the Spirit finally merges with the Material, and the two are united and transformed. At the same time, I imagine that there will be a very violent reaction from organised religious institutions, which are beginning to lose their followers. There will be a rise in fundamentalism.
As a historian, I'm content to collate all the data and analyse this confrontation between the freedom to worship and the duty to obey, between the God who controls the world and the Goddess who is part of the world, between people who
join together in groups where celebration is a spontaneous affair and those who close ranks and learn only what they should and should not do.
I'd like to be optimistic and believe that human beings have at last found their path to the spiritual world, but the signs are not very positive. As so often in the past, a new conservative backlash could once more stifle the cult of the Mother.
Andrea McCain, actress
It's very difficult to be impartial and to tell a story that began in admiration and ended in rancour, but I'm going to try, yes, I'm really going to try and describe the Athena I met for the first time in an apartment in Victoria Street.
She'd just got back from Dubai with plenty of money and a desire to share everything she knew about the mysteries of magic. This time, she'd spent only four months in the Middle East: she sold some land for the construction of two supermarkets, earned a huge commission and decided that she'd earned enough money to support herself and her son for the next three years, and that she could always resume work later on if she wanted. Now was the time to make the most of the present, to live what remained of her youth and to teach others everything she had learned.
She received me somewhat unenthusiastically: 'What do you want?'
'I work in the theatre and we're putting on a play about the female face of God. I heard from a journalist friend that you spent time in the Balkan mountains with some gipsies and would be prepared to tell me about your experiences there.'
'You mean you only came here to learn about the Mother because of a play?' 'Why did you learn about Her?'
Athena stopped, looked me up and down, and smiled:
'You're right. That's my first lesson as a teacher: teach those who want to learn.
The reason doesn't matter.'
'I'm sorry?' 'Nothing.'
'The origins of the theatre are sacred,' I went on. 'It began in Greece with hymns to Dionysus, the god of wine, rebirth and fertility. But it's believed that even from very remote times, people performed a ritual in which they would pretend to be someone else as a way of communing with the sacred.'
'Second lesson, thank you.'
'I don't understand. I came here to learn, not to teach.'
This woman was beginning to irritate me. Perhaps she was being ironic. 'My
protector–' 'Your protector?'
'I'll explain another time. My protector said that I would only learn what I need to learn if I were provoked into it. And since my return from Dubai, you're the first person to demonstrate that to me. What she said makes sense.'
I explained that, in researching the play, I'd gone from one teacher to the next, but had never found their teachings to be in any way exceptional; despite this, however, I grew more and more interested in the matter as I went on. I also mentioned that these people had seemed confused and uncertain about what they wanted.
'For example?'
Sex, for example. In some of the places I went to, sex was a complete no-no. In others, they not only advocated complete freedom, but even encouraged orgies. She asked for more details, and I couldn't tell if she was doing this in order to test me or because she had no idea what other people got up to.
Athena spoke before I could answer her question.
'When you dance, do you feel desire? Do you feel as if you were summoning up a greater energy? When you dance, are there moments when you cease to be yourself?'
I didn't know what to say. In nightclubs or at parties in friends' houses, sensuality was definitely part of how I felt when I danced. I would start by flirting and enjoying the desire in men's eyes, but as the night wore on, I seemed to get more in touch with myself, and it was no longer important to me whether I was or wasn't seducing someone.
Athena continued:
'If theatre is ritual, then dance is too. Moreover, it's a very ancient way of getting close to a partner. It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.'
I started listening to her with more respect.
'Afterwards, we go back to being who we were before – frightened people trying to be more important than we actually believe we are.'
That was exactly how I felt. Or is it the same for everyone? 'Do you have a boyfriend?'
I remembered that in one of the places where I'd gone to learn about the Gaia
tradition, a 'druid' had asked me to make love in front of him. Ridiculous and frightening – how dare these people use the spiritual search for their own more sinister ends?
'Do you have a boyfriend?' she asked again. 'I do.'
Athena said nothing else. She merely put her finger to her lips, indicating that I should remain silent. And suddenly I realised that it was extremely difficult for me to remain silent in the presence of someone I'd only just met. The norm is to talk about something, anything – the weather, the traffic, the best restaurants to go to. We were sitting on the sofa in her completely white sitting room, with a CD-player and a small shelf of CDs. There were no books anywhere, and no paintings on the wall. Given that she'd travelled to the Middle East, I'd expected to find objects and souvenirs from that part of the world.
But it was empty, and now there was this silence.
Her grey eyes were fixed on mine, but I held firm and didn't look away. Instinct perhaps. A way of saying that I'm not frightened, but facing the challenge head-on.
Except that everything – the silence and the
white room, the noise of the traffic outside in the street – began to seem unreal. How long were we going to stay there, saying nothing?
I started to track my own thoughts. Had I come there in search of material for my play or did I really want knowledge, wisdom, power? I couldn't put my finger on what it was that had led me to come and see…what? A witch?
My adolescent dreams surfaced. Who wouldn't like to meet a real witch, learn how to perform magic, and gain the respect and fear of her friends? Who, as a young woman, hasn't been outraged by the centuries of repression suffered by women and felt that becoming a witch would be the best way of recovering her lost identity? I'd been through that phase myself; I was independent and did what I liked in the highly competitive world of the theatre, but then why was I never content? Why was I always testing out my curiosity?
We must have been about the same age…or was I older? Did she, too, have a boyfriend?
Athena moved closer. We were now less than an arm's length from each other and I started to feel afraid. Was she a lesbian?
I didn't look away, but I made a mental note of where the door was so that I could leave whenever I wished. No one had made me go to that house to meet someone I'd never seen before in my life and sit there wasting time, not saying anything and
not learning anything either. What did she want?
That silence perhaps. My muscles began to grow tense. I was alone and helpless. I desperately needed to talk or to make my mind stop telling me that I was under threat. How could she possibly know who I was? We are what we say!
Had she asked me anything about my life? She'd wanted to know if I had a boyfriend. I tried to say more about the theatre, but couldn't. And what about the stories I'd heard about her gipsy ancestry, her stay in Transylvania, the land of vampires?
My thoughts wouldn't stop: how much would that consultation cost? I was terrified. I should have asked before. A fortune? And if I didn't pay, would she put a spell on me that would eventually destroy me?
I felt an impulse to get to my feet, thank her and say that I hadn't come there just to sit in silence. If you go to a psychiatrist, you have to talk. If you go to a church, you listen to a sermon. If you go in search of magic, you find a teacher who wants to explain the world to you and who gives you a series of rituals to follow. But silence? Why did it make me feel so uncomfortable?
One question after another kept forming in my mind, and I couldn't stop thinking or trying to find a reason for the two of us to be sitting there, saying nothing. Suddenly, perhaps after five or ten long minutes of total immobility, she smiled.
I smiled too and relaxed.
'Try to be different. That's all.'
'That's all? Is sitting in silence being different? I imagine that, at this very moment, there are thousands of people in London who are desperate for someone to talk to, and all you can say to me is that silence makes a difference?'
'Now that you're talking and reorganising the universe, you'll end up convincing yourself that you're right and I'm wrong. But as you experienced for yourself – being silent is different.'
'It's unpleasant. It doesn't teach you anything.' She seemed indifferent to my reaction.
'What theatre are you working at?'
Finally, she was taking an interest in my life! I was being restored to my human condition, with a profession and everything! I invited her to come and see the play we were putting on – it was the only way I could find to avenge myself, by showing that I was capable of things that Athena was not. That silence had left a humiliating aftertaste.
She asked if she could bring her son, and I said, no, it was for adults only.
'Well, I could always leave him with my mother. I haven't been to the theatre in ages.'
She didn't charge for the consultation. When I met up with the other members of the cast, I told them about my encounter with this mysterious creature. They were all mad keen to meet someone who, when she first met you, asked only that you sat in silence.
Athena arrived on the appointed day. She saw the play, came to my dressing-room afterwards to say hello, but didn't say whether she'd enjoyed herself or not. My colleagues suggested that I invite her to the
bar where we usually went after the performance. There, instead of keeping quiet, she started answering a question that had been left unanswered at our first meeting. 'No one, not even the Mother would ever want sex to take place purely as a celebration. Love must always be present. Didn't you say that you'd met people like that? Well, be careful.'
My friends had no idea what she was talking about, but they warmed to the subject and started bombarding her with questions. Something troubled me. Her answers were very academic, as if she didn't have much experience of what she was talking about. She spoke about the game of seduction, about fertility rites, and concluded with a Greek myth, probably because I'd mentioned during our first meeting that the theatre had begun in Greece. She must have spent the whole week reading up on the subject.
'After millennia of male domination, we are returning to the cult of the Great Mother. The Greeks called her Gaia, and according to the myth, she was born out of Chaos, the void that existed before the universe. With her came Eros, the god of love, and then she gave birth to the Sea and the Sky.'
'Who was the father?' asked one of my friends.
'No one. There's a technical term, parthenogenesis, which is a process of reproduction that does not require fertilisation of the egg by a male. There's a mystical term too, one to which we're more accustomed: Immaculate Conception. 'From Gaia sprang all the gods who would later people the Elysian Fields of Greece, including our own dear Dionysus, your idol. But as man became established as the principal political power in the cities, Gaia was forgotten, and was replaced by Zeus, Ares, Apollo and company, all of whom were competent enough, but didn't have the same allure as the Mother who originated everything.'
Then she questioned us about our work. The director asked if she'd like to give us some lessons. 'On what?'
'On what you know.'
'To be perfectly honest, I learned all about the origins of theatre this week. I learn everything as I need to learn it, that's what Edda told me to do.'
So I was right!
'But I can share other things that life has taught me.' They all agreed. And no one asked who Edda was.
Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda
I said to Athena: 'You don't have to keep coming here all the time just to ask silly questions. If a group has decided to take you on as a teacher, why not use that opportunity to turn yourself into a teacher? 'Do what I always did.
'Try to feel good about yourself even when you feel like the least worthy of creatures. Reject all those negative thoughts and let the Mother take possession of your body and soul; surrender yourself to dance or to silence or to ordinary, everyday activities – like taking your son to school, preparing supper, making sure the house is tidy. Everything is worship if your mind is focused on the present moment.
'Don't try to convince anyone of anything. When you don't know something, ask or go away and find out. But when you do act, be like the silent, flowing river and open yourself to a greater energy. Believe – that's what I said at our first meeting – simply believe that you can.
'At first, you'll be confused and insecure. Then you'll start to believe that everyone thinks they're being conned. It's not true. You have the knowledge, it's simply a matter of being aware. All the minds on the planet are so easily cast down – they fear illness, invasion, attack, death. Try to restore their lost joy to them.
'Be clear.
'Re-programme yourself every minute of each day with thoughts that make you grow. When you're feeling irritated or confused, try to laugh at yourself. Laugh out loud at this woman tormented by doubts and anxieties, convinced that her problems are the most important thing in the world. Laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation, at the fact that despite being a manifestation of the Mother, you still believe God is a man who lays down the rules. Most of our problems stem from just that – from following rules. 'Concentrate.
'If you can find nothing on which to focus your mind, concentrate on your
breathing. The Mother's river of light is flowing in through your nose. Listen to your heart beating, follow the thoughts you can't
control, control your desire to get up at once and to do something “useful”. Sit for a few minutes each day, doing nothing, getting as much as you can out of that time.
'When you're washing up, pray. Be thankful that there are plates to be washed; that means there was food, that you fed someone, that you've lavished care on one or more people, that you cooked and laid the table. Imagine the millions of people at this moment who have absolutely nothing to wash up and no one for whom to lay the table.
'There are women who say: “I'm not going to do the washing up, let the men do it.” Fine, let the men do it if they want to, but that has nothing to do with equality. There's nothing wrong with doing simple things, although if I were to publish an article tomorrow saying everything I think, I'd be accused of working against the feminist cause. Nonsense! As if washing up or wearing a bra or having someone open or close a door could be humiliating to me as a woman. The fact is, I love it when a man opens the door for me. According to etiquette this means: “She needs me to do this because she's fragile”, but in my soul is written: “I'm being treated like a goddess. I'm a queen.” I'm not here to work for the feminist cause, because both men and women are a manifestation of the Mother, the Divine Unity. No one can be greater than that.
'I'd love to see you giving classes on what you're learning. That's the main aim of life – revelation! You make yourself into a channel; you listen to yourself and are surprised at how capable you are. Remember your job at the bank? Perhaps you never properly understood that what happened there was a result of the energy flowing out your body, your eyes, your hands.
'You'll say it was the dance.
'The dance was simply a ritual. What is a ritual? It means transforming something monotonous into something different, rhythmic, capable of channelling the Unity. That's why I say again: be different even when you're washing up. Move your hands so that they never repeat the same gesture twice, even though they maintain the rhythm.
'If you find it helpful, try to visualise images – flowers, birds, trees in a forest. Don't imagine single objects, like the candle you focused on when you came here for the first time. Try to think of something collective. And do you know what you'll find?
That you didn't choose your thought.
'I'll give you an example: imagine a flock of birds flying. How many birds did you see? Eleven, nineteen, five? You have a vague idea, but you don't know the exact number. So where did that thought come from? Someone put it there. Someone who knows the exact number of birds, trees, stones, flowers. Someone who, in that fraction of a second, took charge of you and showed you Her power.
'You are what you believe yourself to be.
'Don't be like those people who believe in “positive thinking” and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that, because you know it already. And when you doubt it which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution – do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humour. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. 'Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything: it's merely a question of believing.
'Believe.
'As I said to you in Bucharest, the very first time we met, groups are very important because they force us to progress. If you're alone, all you can do is laugh at yourself, but if you're with others, you'll laugh and then immediately act. Groups challenge us. Groups allow us to choose our affinities. Groups create a collective energy, and ecstasy comes more easily because everyone infects everyone else. 'Groups can also destroy us of course, but that's part of life and the human condition – living with other people. And anyone who's failed to develop an instinct for survival has understood nothing of what the Mother is saying.
'You're lucky. A group has just asked you to teach them something, and that will make you a
teacher.'
Heron Ryan, journalist
Before the first meeting with the actors, Athena came to my house. Ever since I published the article on St Sarah, she'd been convinced that I understood her world, which wasn't true at all. I simply wanted to attract her attention. I was trying to come round to the idea that there might be an invisible reality capable of interfering in our lives, but the only reason I did so was because of a love I didn't want to believe I felt, but which was continuing to grow in a subtle, devastating
way.
I was content with my universe and didn't want to change it at all, even though I was being propelled in that direction.
'I'm afraid,' she said as soon as she arrived. 'But I must go ahead and do what they're asking of me. I need to believe.'
'You've had a lot of experiences in life. You learned from the gipsies, from the dervishes in the desert, from–'
'Well, that's not quite true. Besides, what does learning mean: accumulating knowledge or transforming your life?'
I suggested we go out that night for supper and to dance a little. She agreed to supper, but rejected the dancing.
'Answer me,' she said, looking round my apartment. 'Is learning just putting things on a shelf or is it discarding whatever is no longer useful and then continuing on your way feeling lighter?'
On the shelves were all the books I'd invested so much money and time in buying, reading and annotating. There were my personality, my education, my true teachers.
'How many books have you got? Over a thousand, I'd say. But most of them you'll probably never open again. You hang on to them because you don't believe.'
'I don't believe?'
'No, you don't believe, full stop. Anyone who believes, will go and read up about theatre as I did when Andrea asked me about it, but, after that, it's a question of letting the Mother speak through you and making discoveries as she speaks. And as you make those discoveries, you'll manage to fill in the blank spaces that all those writers left there on purpose to provoke the reader's imagination. And when you fill in the spaces, you'll start to believe in your own abilities.
'How many people would love to read those books, but don't have the money to buy them? Meanwhile, you sit here surrounded by all this stagnant energy, purely to impress the friends who visit you. Or is it that you don't feel you've learned anything from them and need to consult them again?'
I thought she was being rather hard on me, and that intrigued me. 'So you don't think I need this library?'
'I think you need to read, but why hang on to all these books? Would it be asking too much if we were to leave here right now, and before going to the restaurant, distribute most of them to whoever we happened to pass in the street?'
'They wouldn't all fit in my car.' 'We could hire a truck.'
'But then we wouldn't get to the restaurant in time for supper. Besides, you came here because you were feeling insecure, not in order to tell me what I should do with my books. Without them I'd feel naked.' 'Ignorant, you mean.'
'Uncultivated would be the right word.'
'So your culture isn't in your heart, it's on your bookshelves.'
Enough was enough. I picked up the phone to reserve a table and told the restaurant that we'd be there in fifteen minutes. Athena was trying to avoid the problem that had brought her here. Her deep insecurity was making her go on the attack, rather than looking at herself. She needed a man by her side and, who knows, was perhaps sounding me out to see how far I'd go, using her feminine wiles to discover just what I'd be prepared to do for her.
Simply being in her presence seemed to justify my very existence. Was that what she wanted to hear? Fine, I'd tell her over supper. I'd be capable of doing almost anything, even leaving the woman I was living with, but I drew the line, of course, at giving away my books.
In the taxi, we returned to the subject of the theatre group, although I was, at that moment, prepared to discuss something I never normally spoke about – love, a subject I found far more complicated than Marx, Jung, the British Labour Party or the day-to-day problems at a newspaper office.
'You don't need to worry,' I said, feeling a desire to hold her hand. 'It'll be all right. Talk about calligraphy. Talk about dancing. Talk about the things you know.'
'If I did that, I'd never discover what it is I don't know. When I'm there, I'll have to allow my mind to go still and let my heart begin to speak. But it's the first time I've done that, and I'm frightened.'
'Would you like me to come with you?'
She accepted at once. We arrived at the restaurant, ordered some wine and started to drink. I was drinking in order to get up the courage to say what I thought I was feeling, although it seemed absurd to me to be declaring my love to someone I hardly knew. And she was drinking because she was afraid of talking about what she didn't know.
After the second glass of wine, I realised how on edge she was. I tried to hold her hand, but she gently pulled away.
'I can't be afraid.'
'Of course you can, Athena. I often feel afraid, and yet, when I need to, I go ahead
and face up to whatever it is I'm afraid of.'
I was on edge too. I refilled our glasses. The waiter kept coming over to ask what we'd like to eat, and I kept telling him that we'd order later.
I was talking about whatever came into my head. Athena was listening politely, but she seemed far away, in some dark universe full of ghosts. At one point, she told me again about the woman in Scotland and what she'd said. I asked if it made sense to teach what you didn't know.
'Did anyone ever teach you how to love?' she replied. Could she be reading my thoughts?
'And yet,' she went on, 'you're as capable of love as any other human being. How did you learn? You didn't, you simply believe. You believe, therefore you love.' 'Athena…'
I hesitated, then managed to finish my sentence, although not at all as I had intended. '…perhaps we should order some food.'
I realised that I wasn't yet prepared to mention the things that were troubling my world. I called the waiter over and ordered some starters, then some more starters, a main dish, a pudding and another bottle of wine. The more time I had, the better.
'You're acting strangely. Was it my comment about your books? You do what you like. It's not my job to change your world. I was obviously sticking my nose in where it wasn't wanted.'
I had been thinking about that business of 'changing the world' only a few seconds before. 'Athena, you're always telling me about…no, I need to talk about something that happened in that bar in Sibiu, with the gipsy music.'
'In the restaurant, you mean?'
'Yes, in the restaurant. Today we were discussing books, the things that we accumulate and that take up space. Perhaps you're right. There's something I've been wanting to do ever since I saw you dancing that night. It weighs more and more heavily on my heart.'
'I don't know what you mean.'
'Of course you do. I'm talking about the love I'm discovering now and doing my best to destroy before it reveals itself. I'd like you to accept it. It's the little I have of myself, but it's not my own. It's not exclusively yours, because there's someone else in my life, but I would be happy if you could accept it anyway. An Arab poet from your country, Khalil Gibran, says: “It is well to give when asked, but it is
better to give unasked.” If I don't say everything I need to say tonight, I'll merely be a spectator watching events unfold rather than the person actually experiencing them.'
I took a deep breath. The wine had helped me to free myself.
She drained her glass, and I did the same. The waiter appeared with the food, making a few comments about the various dishes, explaining the ingredients and the way in which they had been cooked. Athena and I kept our eyes fixed on each other. Andrea had told me that this is what Athena had done when they met for the first time, and she was convinced it was simply a way of intimidating others.
The silence was terrifying. I imagined her getting up from the table and citing her famous, invisible boyfriend from Scotland Yard, or saying that she was very flattered, but she had to think about the class she was to give the next day.
'And is there anything you would withhold? Some day, all that you have shall be given. The trees give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.'
She was speaking quietly and carefully because of the wine she'd drunk, but her voice nevertheless silenced everything around us.
'And what greater merit shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving? You give but little when you give ofyour possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.'
She said all this without smiling. I felt as if I were conversing with a sphinx.
'Words written by the same poet you were quoting. I learned them at school, but I don't need the book where he wrote those words. I've kept his words in my heart.' She drank a little more wine. I did the same. I couldn't bring myself to ask if she accepted my love or not, but I felt lighter.
'You may be right. I'll donate my books to a public library and only keep those I really will re-read
one day.'
'Is that what you want to talk about now?'
'No. I just don't know how to continue the conversation.'
'Shall we eat then and enjoy the food. Does that seem a good idea?'
No, it didn't seem like a good idea. I wanted to hear something different, but I was afraid to ask, and so I babbled on about libraries, books and poets, regretting having ordered so many dishes. I was the one who wanted to escape now, because I didn't know how to continue.
In the end, she made me promise that I would be at the theatre for her first class,
and, for me, that was a signal. She needed me; she had accepted what I had unconsciously dreamed of offering her ever since I saw her dancing in a restaurant in Transylvania, but which I had only been capable of understanding that night.
Or, as Athena would have said, of believing. Andrea McCain, actress
Of course I'm to blame. If it hadn't been for me, Athena would never have come to the theatre that morning, gathered us all together, asked us to lie down on the stage and begin a relaxation exercise involving breathing and bringing our awareness to each part of the body.
'Relax your thighs…'
We all obeyed, as if we were before a goddess, someone who knew more than all of us, even though we'd done this kind of exercise hundreds of times before. We were all curious to know what would come after '…now relax your face and breathe deeply'.
Did she really think she was teaching us anything new? We were expecting a lecture, a talk! But I must control myself. Let's get back to what happened then. We relaxed and then came a silence which left us completely disoriented. When I discussed it with my colleagues afterwards, we all agreed that we felt the exercise was over, that it was time to sit up and look around, except that no one did. We remained lying down, in a kind of enforced meditation, for fifteen interminable minutes.
Then she spoke again.
'You've had plenty of time to doubt me now. One or two of you looked impatient. But now I'm going to ask you just one thing: when I count to three, be different. I don't mean be another person, an animal or a house. Try to forget everything you've learned on drama courses. I'm not asking you to be actors and to demonstrate your abilities. I'm asking you to cease being human and to transform yourselves into something you don't know.'
We were all still lying on the floor with our eyes closed and so couldn't see how anyone else was reacting. Athena was playing on that uncertainty.
'I'm going to say a few words and you'll immediately associate certain images with those words. Remember that you're all full of the poison of preconceived ideas and that if I were to say “fate”, you would probably start imagining your lives in the future. If I were to say “red”, you would probably make some psychoanalytic interpretation. That isn't what I want. As I said, I want you to be different.'
She couldn't explain what she really wanted. When no one complained, I felt sure they were simply being polite, but that when the 'lecture' was over, they would never invite Athena back. They would even tell me that I'd been naïve to have sought her out in the first place.
'The first word is “sacred”.'
So as not to die of boredom, I decided to join in the game. I imagined my mother, my boyfriend, my future children, a brilliant career.
'Make a gesture that means “sacred”.'
I folded my arms over my chest, as if I were embracing all my loved ones. I found out later that most people opened their arms to form a cross, and that one of the women opened her legs, as if she were making love.
'Relax again, and again forget about everything and keep your eyes closed. I'm not criticising, but from what I saw, you seem to be giving form to what you consider to be sacred. That isn't what I want. When I give you the next word, don't try to define it as it manifests itself in the world. Open all the channels and allow the poison of reality to drain away. Be abstract and then you will enter the world I'm guiding you towards.'
That last phrase had real authority, and I felt the energy in the theatre change. Now the voice knew where it wanted to take us. She was a teacher now, not a lecturer.
'Earth,' she said.
Suddenly I understood what she meant. It was no longer my imagination that mattered, but my body in contact with the soil. I was the Earth.
'Make a gesture that represents Earth.'
I didn't move. I was the soil of that stage.
'Perfect,' she said. 'None of you moved. For the first time you all experienced the same feeling. Instead of describing something, you transformed yourself into an idea.'
She fell silent again for what I imagined were five long minutes. The silence made us feel lost, unable to tell whether she simply had no idea how to continue, or if she was merely unfamiliar with our usual intense rhythm of working.
'I'm going to say a third word.' She paused. 'Centre.'
I felt – and this was entirely unconscious – that all my vital energy went to my navel, where it glowed yellow. This frightened me. If someone touched it, I could
die.
'Make a gesture for centre!'
Her words sounded like a command. I immediately placed my hands on my belly to protect myself. 'Perfect,' said Athena. 'You can sit up now.'
I opened my eyes and saw the extinguished stage lights up above me, distant and dull. I rubbed my face and got to my feet. I noticed that my colleagues looked surprised.
'Was that the lecture?' asked the director. 'You can call it a lecture if you like.'
'Well, thank you for coming. Now, if you'll excuse us, we have to start rehearsals for the next play.' 'But I haven't finished yet.'
'Perhaps another time.'
Everyone seemed confused by the director's reaction. After some initial doubts, I think we were enjoying the session – it was different, no pretending to be things or people, no visualising apples or candles. No sitting in a circle holding hands as if we were practising some sacred ritual. It was simply something slightly absurd and we wanted to know where it would take us.
Without a flicker of emotion, Athena bent down to pick up her bag. At that moment, we heard a voice from the stalls.
'Marvellous!'
Heron had come to join her. The director was afraid of him because Heron knew the theatre critics on his newspaper and had close ties with the media generally. 'You stopped being individuals and turned into ideas. What a shame you're so busy, but don't worry, Athena, we'll find another group to work with and then I can see how your “lecture” ends. I have contacts.'
I was still thinking about the light travelling through my whole body to my navel. Who was that woman? Had my colleagues experienced the same thing?
'Just a moment,' said the director, aware of the look of surprise on everyone's face. 'I suppose we could postpone rehearsals today…'
'No, you mustn't do that, besides I have to get back to the newspaper and write something about this woman. You carry on doing what you always do. I've just found an excellent story.'
If Athena felt lost in that debate between the two men, she didn't show it. She climbed down from the stage and went off with Heron. We turned to the director and asked him why he'd reacted like that.
'With all due respect, Andrea, I thought the conversation in the bar about sex was
far more interesting than the nonsense we've just been engaging in. Did you notice how she kept falling silent? She didn't know what to do next!'
'But I felt something strange,' said one of the older actors. 'When she said “centre”, it was as if all my vital energy were suddenly focused in my navel. I've never experienced that before.'
'Did you? Are you sure?' asked an actress, and judging by her words, she'd experienced the same
thing.
'She's a bit of a witch, that woman,' said the director, interrupting the conversation. 'Let's get back to work.'
We started doing our usual stretching exercises, warm-ups and meditation, all strictly by the book. Then after a few improvisations, we went straight into a read-through of the new script. Gradually, Athena's presence seemed to be dissolving, and everything was returning to what it was – a theatre, a ritual created by the Greeks thousands of years ago, where we were used to pretending to be different people.
But that was pure play-acting. Athena wasn't like that, and I was determined to see her again, especially after what the director had said about her.
Heron Ryan, journalist
Unbeknown to Athena, I'd followed exactly the same steps as the actors, obeying everything she told us to do, except that I kept my eyes open so that I could follow what was happening on stage. The moment she said 'Make a gesture for centre', I'd placed my hand on my navel, and, to my surprise, I saw that everyone, including the director, had done the same. What was going on?
That afternoon, I had to write a dreary article about a visiting head of state – a real drag. In order to amuse myself between phone calls, I decided to ask colleagues in the office what gesture they would make if I said the word 'centre'. Most of them made jokey comments about political parties. One pointed to the centre of the Earth. Another put his hand on his heart. But no one, absolutely no one, thought of their navel as the centre of anything. In the end, though, I managed to speak to someone who had some interesting information on the subject.
When I got home, Andrea had had a bath, laid the table and was waiting for me to start supper. She opened a bottle of very expensive wine, filled two glasses and offered me one.
'So how was supper last night?'
How long can a man live with a lie? I didn't want to lose the woman standing there before me, who had stuck with me through thick and thin, who was always by my side when I felt my life had lost meaning and direction. I loved her, but in the crazy world into which I was blindly plunging, my heart was far away, trying to adapt to something it possibly knew, but couldn't accept: being large enough for two people.
Since I would never risk letting go of a certainty in favour of a mere possibility, I tried to minimise the significance of what had happened at the restaurant, mainly because nothing had happened, apart from an exchange of lines by a poet who had suffered greatly for love.
'Athena's a difficult person to get to know.' Andrea laughed.
'That's precisely why men must find her so fascinating. She awakens that rapidly disappearing protective instinct of yours.'
Best to change the subject. I've always been convinced that women have a supernatural ability to know what's going on in a man's soul. They're all witches. 'I've been looking into what happened at the theatre today. You don't know this, but I had my eyes open throughout the exercises.'
'You've always got your eyes open. I assume it's part of being a journalist. And you're going to talk about the moment when we all did exactly the same thing. We talked a lot about that in the bar after rehearsals.'
'A historian told me about a Greek temple where they used to predict the future (Editor's note: the temple ofApollo at Delphi) and which housed a marble stone called “the navel”. Stories from the time describe Delphi as the centre of the planet. I went to the newspaper archives to make a few enquiries: in Petra, in Jordan, there's another “conic navel”, symbolising not just the centre of the planet, but of the entire universe. Both “navels” try to show the axis through which the energy of the world travels, marking in a visible way something that is only there on the “invisible” map. Jerusalem is also called the navel of the
world, as is an island in the Pacific Ocean, and another place I've forgotten now, because I had never associated the two things.'
'Like dance!' 'What?' 'Nothing.'
'No, I know what you mean – belly dancing, the oldest form of dance recorded, in which everything revolves about the belly. I was trying to avoid the subject because I told you that in Transylvania I saw Athena dance. She was dressed, of course, but…'
'…all the movement began with her navel, and gradually spread to the rest of the body.' She was right.
Best to change the subject again and talk about the theatre, about boring journalistic stuff, then drink a little wine and end up in bed making love while, outside, the rain was starting to fall. I noticed that, at the moment of orgasm, Andrea's body was all focused on her belly. I'd seen this many times before, but never thought anything of it.
Antoine Locadour, historian[/h1
Heron started spending a fortune on phone calls to France, asking me to get all the information I could by the weekend, and he kept going on about the navel, which seemed to me the least interesting and least romantic thing in the world. But, then, the English don't see things in the same way as the French, and so, instead of asking questions, I tried to find out what science had to say on the subject.
I soon realised that historical knowledge wasn't enough. I could locate a monument here, a dolmen there, but the odd thing was that the ancient cultures all seemed to agree on the subject and even use the same word to define the places they considered sacred. I'd never noticed this before and I started to get interested. When I saw the number of coincidences, I went in search of something that would complement them – human behaviour and beliefs.
I immediately had to reject the first and most logical explanation, that we're nourished through the umbilical cord, which is why the navel is, for us, the centre of life. A psychologist immediately pointed out that the theory made no sense at all: man's central idea is always to 'cut' the umbilical cord and, from then on, the brain or the heart become the more important symbols.
When we're interested in something, everything around us appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenomena 'signs', the sceptics 'coincidence', and psychologists 'concentrated focus', although I've yet to find out what term historians should use). One night, my adolescent daughter came home with a navel piercing.
'Why did you do that?' 'Because I felt like it.'
A perfectly natural and honest explanation, even for a historian who needs to find a reason for everything. When I went into her room, I saw a poster of her favourite female pop star. She had a bare midriff and, in that photo on the wall, her navel did look like the centre of the world.
I phoned Heron and asked why he was so interested. For the first time, he told me
about what had happened at the theatre and how the people there had all responded to a command in the same spontaneous, unexpected manner. It was impossible to get any more information out of my daughter, and so I decided to consult some specialists.
No one seemed very interested, until I found François Shepka, an Indian psychologist (Editor's note: the scientist requested that his name and nationality be changed), who was starting to revolutionise the therapies currently in use. According to him, the idea that traumas could be resolved by a return to childhood had never got anyone anywhere. Many problems that had been overcome in adult life resurfaced, and grown-ups started blaming their parents for failures and defeats. Shepka was at war with the various French psychoanalytic associations, and a conversation about absurd subjects, like the navel, seemed to relax him.
He warmed to the theme, but didn't, at first, tackle it directly. He said that according to one of the most respected psychoanalysts in history, the Swiss analyst Carl Gustav Jung, we all drank from the same spring. It's called the 'soul of the world'. However much we try to be independent individuals, a part of our memory is the same. We all seek the ideal of beauty, dance, divinity and music.
Society, meanwhile, tries to define how these ideals should be manifested in reality. Currently, for example, the ideal of beauty is to be thin, and yet thousands of years ago all the images of goddesses were
fat. It's the same with happiness: there are a series of rules, and if you fail to follow them, your conscious mind will refuse to accept the idea that you're happy.
Jung used to divide individual progress into four stages: the first was the Persona – the mask we use every day, pretending to be who we are. We believe that the world depends on us, that we're wonderful parents and that our children don't understand us, that our bosses are unfair, that the dream of every human being is never to work and to travel constantly. Many people realise that there's something wrong with this story, but because they don't want to change anything, they quickly drive the thought from their head. A few do try to understand what is wrong and end up finding the Shadow.
The Shadow is our dark side, which dictates how we should act and behave. When we try to free ourselves from the Persona, we turn on a light inside us and we see the cobwebs, the cowardice, the meanness. The Shadow is there to stop our progress, and it usually succeeds, and we run back to what we were before we doubted. However, some do survive this encounter with their own cobwebs,
saying: 'Yes, I have a few faults, but I'm good enough, and I want to go forward.' At this moment, the Shadow disappears and we come into contact with the Soul.
By Soul, Jung didn't mean 'soul' in the religious sense; he speaks of a return to the Soul of the World, the source of all knowledge. Instincts become sharper, emotions more radical, the interpretation of signs becomes more important than logic, perceptions of reality grow less rigid. We start to struggle with things to which we are unaccustomed and we start to react in ways that we ourselves find unexpected.
And we discover that if we can channel that continuous flow of energy, we can organise it around a very solid centre, what Jung calls the Wise Old Man for men and the Great Mother for women.
Allowing this to manifest itself is dangerous. Generally speaking, anyone who reaches this stage has a tendency to consider themselves a saint, a tamer of spirits, a prophet. A great deal of maturity is required if someone is to come into contact with the energy of the Wise Old Man or the Great Mother.
'Jung went mad,' said my friend, when he had explained the four stages described by the Swiss psychoanalyst. 'When he got in touch with his Wise Old Man, he started saying that he was guided by a spirit called Philemon.'
'And finally…'
'…we come to the symbol of the navel. Not only people, but societies, too, fit these four stages. Western civilisation has a Persona, the ideas that guide us. In its attempt to adapt to changes, it comes into contact with the Shadow, and we see mass demonstrations, in which the collective energy can be manipulated both for good and ill. Suddenly, for some reason, the Persona or the Shadow are no longer enough for human beings, and then comes the moment to make the leap, the unconscious connection with the Soul. New values begin to emerge.'
'I've noticed that. I've noticed a resurgence in the cult of the female face of God.' 'An excellent example. And at the end of this process, if those new values are to become established, the entire race comes into contact with the symbols, the coded language by which present-day generations communicate with their ancestral knowledge. One of those symbols of rebirth is the navel. In the navel of Vishnu, the Indian divinity responsible for creation and destruction, sits the god who will rule each cycle. Yogis consider the navel one of the chakras, one of the sacred points on the human body. Primitive tribes often used to build monuments in the place they believed to be the navel of the world. In South America, people who go
into trances say that the true form of the human being is a luminous egg, which connects with other people through filaments that emerge from the navel. The mandala, a design said to stimulate meditation, is a symbolic representation of this.' I passed all this information on to Heron in England before the agreed date. I told him that the woman who had succeeded in provoking the same absurd reaction in a group of people must have enormous power, and that I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't some kind of paranormal. I suggested that he study her more closely.
I had never thought about the subject before, and I tried to forget it at once. However, my daughter said that I was behaving oddly, thinking only of myself, that I was, in short, navel-gazing!
Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda
'It was a complete disaster. How could you have put the idea in my head that I could teach? Why humiliate me in front of other people? I should just forget you even exist. When I was taught to dance, I danced. When I was taught calligraphy, I practised calligraphy. But demanding that I go so far beyond my
limits was pure wickedness. That's why I caught the train up to Scotland, that's why I came here, so that you could see how much I hate you!'
She couldn't stop crying. Fortunately, she'd left the child with her parents, because she was talking rather too loudly and there was a faint whiff of wine on her breath. I asked her to come in. Making all that noise at my front door would do nothing to help my already somewhat tarnished reputation, with people putting it around that I received visits from both men and women and organised sex orgies in the name of Satan.
But she still stood there, shouting:
'It's all your fault! You humiliated me!'
One window opened, and then another. Well, anyone working to change the axis of the world must be prepared for the fact that her neighbours won't always be happy. I went over to Athena and did exactly what she wanted me to do: I put my arms around her.
She continued weeping, her head resting on my shoulder. Very gently I helped her up the steps and into the house. I made some tea, the recipe for which I share with no one because it was taught to me by my protector. I placed it in front of her and she drank it down in one. By doing so, she demonstrated that her trust in me was still intact.
'Why am I like this?' she asked.
I knew then that the effects of the alcohol had been neutralised.
'There are men who love me. I have a son who adores me and sees me as his model in life. I have adoptive parents whom I consider to be my real family and who would lay down their lives for me. I filled in all the blank spaces in my past when I went in search of my birth mother. I have enough money to spend the next three years doing nothing but enjoy life, and still I'm not content!
'I feel miserable and guilty because God blessed me with tragedies that I've managed to overcome and with miracles to which I've done credit, but I'm never content. I always want more. The last thing I needed was to go to that theatre and add a failure to my list of victories!'
'Do you think you did the wrong thing?' She looked at me in surprise: 'Why do you ask that?'
I said nothing, but awaited her answer.
'No, I did the right thing. I went there with a journalist friend, and I didn't have a clue what I was going to do, but suddenly things started to emerge as if out of the void. I felt the presence of the Great Mother by my side, guiding me, instructing me, filling my voice with a confidence I didn't really feel.' 'So why are you complaining?'
'Because no one understood!'
'Is that important? Important enough to make you travel up to Scotland and insult me in front of everyone?'
'Of course it's important! If I can do absolutely anything and know I'm doing the right thing, how come I'm not at least loved and admired?'
So that was the problem. I took her hand and led her into the same room where, weeks before, she had sat contemplating a candle. I asked her to sit down and try to calm herself a little, although I was sure the tea was already taking effect. I went to my room, picked up a round mirror and placed it before her.
'You have everything and you've fought for every inch of your territory. Now look at your tears. Look at your face and the bitterness etched on it. Look at the woman in the mirror, but don't laugh this time, try to understand her.'
I allowed her time to follow my instructions. When I saw that she was, as I intended, going into a trance, I went on:
'What is the secret of life? We call it “grace” or “blessing”. Everyone struggles to be satisfied with what they have. Apart from me. Apart from you. Apart from a few people who will, alas, have to make a small sacrifice in the name of something
greater.
'Our imagination is larger than the world around us; we go beyond our limits. This used to be called “witchcraft”, but fortunately things have changed, otherwise we would both already have been burned at the stake. When they stopped burning women, science found an explanation for our behaviour, normally referred to as “female hysteria”. We don't get burned any more, but it does cause problems, especially in the
workplace. But don't worry; eventually they'll call it “wisdom”. Keep looking into the mirror. Who can you see?'
'A woman.'
'And what is there beyond that woman?' She hesitated. I asked again and she said: 'Another woman, more authentic and more intelligent than me. It's as if she were a soul that didn't belong to me, but which is nonetheless part of me.'
'Exactly. Now I'm going to ask you to imagine one of the most important symbols in alchemy: a snake forming a circle and swallowing its own tail. Can you imagine that?'
She nodded.
'That's what life is like for people like you and me. We're constantly destroying and rebuilding ourselves. Everything in your life has followed the same pattern: from lost to found; from divorce to new love; from working in a bank to selling real estate in the desert. Only one thing remains intact – your son. He is the connecting thread, and you must respect that.'
She started to cry again, but her tears were different this time.
'You came here because you saw a female face in the flames. That face is the face you can see now in the mirror, so try to do honour to it. Don't let yourself be weighed down by what other people think, because in a few years, in a few decades, or in a few centuries, that way of thinking will be changed. Live now what others will only live in the future.
'What do you want? You can't want to be happy, because that's too easy and too boring. You can't want only to love, because that's impossible. What do you want? You want to justify your life, to live it as intensely as possible. That is at once a trap and a source of ecstasy. Try to be alert to that danger, and experience the joy and the adventure of being that woman who is beyond the image reflected in the mirror.' Her eyes closed, but I knew that my words had penetrated her soul and would stay there.
'If you want to take a risk and continue teaching, do so. If you don't want to, know that you've already gone further than most other people.'
Her body began to relax. I held her in my arms until she fell asleep, her head on my breast.
I tried to whisper a few more things to her, because I'd been through the same stages, and I knew how difficult it was – just as my protector had told me it would be and as I myself had found out through painful experience. However, the fact that it was difficult didn't make the experience any less interesting.
What experience? Living as a human being and as a divinity. Moving from tension into relaxation. From relaxation into trance. From trance into a more intense contact with other people. From that contact back into tension and so on, like the serpent swallowing its own tail.
It was no easy matter, mainly because it requires unconditional love, which does not fear suffering, rejection, loss.
Whoever drinks this water once can never quench her thirst at other springs.
Andrea McCain, actress
'The other day you mentioned Gaia, who created herself and had a child without the help of a man. You said, quite rightly, that the Great Mother was eventually superseded by the male gods. But you forgot about Hera, a descendant of your favourite goddess. Hera is more important because she's more practical. She rules the skies and the Earth, the seasons of the year and storms. According to the same Greeks you cited, the Milky Way that we see in the sky was created out of the milk that spurted forth from her breast. A beautiful breast, it must be said, because all-powerful Zeus changed himself into a bird purely in order to be able to have his way with her without being rejected.'
We were walking through a large department store in Knightsbridge. I'd phoned her, saying that I'd like to talk, and she'd invited me to the winter sales. It would have been far more pleasant to have a cup of tea together or lunch in some quiet restaurant.
'Your son could get lost in this crowd.'
'Don't worry about him. Go on with what you were telling me.'
'Hera discovered the trick and forced Zeus to marry her. Immediately after the ceremony, however, the great king of Olympus returned to his playboy lifestyle, seducing any woman, mortal or immortal, who happened by. Hera, however, remained faithful. Rather than blame her husband, she blamed the women for their
loose behaviour.'
'Isn't that what we all do?'
I didn't know what she meant and so I carried on talking as if I hadn't heard what she'd said.
'Then she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine and find a god or a man to take to her bed. Look, couldn't we stop for a while and have a coffee?'
But Athena had just gone into a lingerie shop.
'Do you think this is pretty?' she asked, holding up a provocative flesh-coloured bra and pantie set. 'Yes, very. Will anyone see it if you wear it?'
'Of course, or do you think I'm a saint? But go on with what you were saying about Hera.'
'Zeus was horrified by her behaviour, but Hera was leading an independent life and didn't give two hoots about her marriage. Have you really got a boyfriend?'
'Yes.'
'I've never seen him.'
She went over to the cash desk, paid for the lingerie and put it in her bag.
'Viorel's hungry, and I'm sure he's not the slightest bit interested in Greek myths, so hurry up and finish Hera's story.'
'It has a rather silly ending. Zeus, afraid of losing his beloved, pretended that he was getting married again. When Hera found out, she saw that things had gone too far. Lovers were one thing, but divorce was unthinkable.'
'Nothing new there, then.'
'She decided to go to the ceremony and kick up a fuss, and it was only then that she realised Zeus was marrying a statue.'
'What did Hera do?'
'She roared with laughter. That broke the ice between them, and she became once more the queen of the skies.'
'Great. So if that ever happens to you…' 'What?'
'If your man gets himself another woman, don't forget to laugh.'
'I'm not a goddess. I'd be much more vengeful. Anyway, why is it I've never seen your boyfriend?' 'Because he's always busy.'
'Where did you meet him?'
'At the bank where I used to work. He had an account there. And now, if you don't mind, my son's waiting for me. You're right, if I don't keep my eye on him, he could get lost amongst all these people. By the way, we're having a meeting at
my place next week. You're invited, of course.' 'Yes, and I know who organised it.'
Athena kissed me lightly on both cheeks and left. At least, she'd got the message. That afternoon, at the theatre, the director made a point of telling me that he was annoyed because, he said, I'd arranged for a group of actors to go and visit 'that woman'. I explained that it hadn't been my idea. Heron had become obsessed with the subject of navels and had asked me if some of the other actors would be prepared to continue the interrupted 'lecture'.
'That said,' I added, 'it was my choice to ask them.'
Of course it was, but the last thing I wanted was for him to go to Athena's house alone.
The actors had all arrived, but, instead of another read-through of the new play, the director decided to change the programme.
'Today we'll do another exercise in psychodrama.' (Editor's note: a therapeutic technique, which involves people acting out their personal experiences.)
There was no need. We all knew how the characters would behave in the situations described by the playwright.
'Can I suggest a subject?'
Everyone turned to look at me. The director seemed surprised. 'What's this, a revolt?'
'No, listen. We create a situation where a man, after great difficulty, manages to get a group of people together to celebrate an important ritual in the community, something, let's say, like the autumn harvest. Meanwhile, a strange woman arrives, and because of her beauty and the various rumours circulating
– about her being a goddess in disguise, for example – the group the man has formed in order to keep alive the traditions in his village breaks up, and its members all go off to see the woman instead.'
'But that's got nothing to do with the play we're rehearsing!' said one of the actresses. The director, however, had understood what I was driving at.
'That's an excellent idea. Let's begin.' And turning to me, he said:
'Andrea, you can be the new arrival. That way you can get a better understanding of the situation in the village. And I'll be the decent man trying to preserve the old ways. The group will be made up of couples who go to church, get together on Saturdays to do work in the community, and generally help each other.'
We lay down on the floor, did some relaxation, and then began the exercise
proper, which was really very simple. The main character (in this case, me) created various situations and the others reacted to them.
When the relaxation was over, I transformed myself into Athena. In my fantasy, she roamed the world like Satan in search of subjects for her realm, but she disguised herself as Gaia, the goddess who knows everything and created everything. For fifteen minutes, the other actors paired up into 'couples', got to know each other and invented a common history involving children, farms, understanding and friendship. When I felt this little universe was ready, I sat at one corner of the stage and began to speak about love.
'Here we are in this little village, and you think I'm a stranger, which is why you're interested in what I have to tell you. You've never travelled and don't know what goes on beyond the mountains, but I can tell you: there's no need to praise the Earth. The Earth will always be generous with this community. The important thing is to praise human beings. You say you'd love to travel, but you misuse the word “love”. Love is a relationship between people.
'Your one desire is for the harvest to be a good one and that's why you've decided to love the Earth. More nonsense: love isn't desire or knowledge or admiration. It's a challenge; it's an invisible fire. That's why, if you think I'm a stranger on this Earth, you're wrong. Everything is familiar to me because I come in strength and in fire, and when I leave, no one will be the same. I bring true love, not the love they write about in books or in fairytales.'
The 'husband' of one of the 'couples' began looking at me. His 'wife' became distraught.
During the rest of the exercise, the director – or, rather, the decent man – did all he could to explain the importance of maintaining traditions, praising the Earth and asking the Earth to be as generous this year as it had been last year. I spoke only of love.
'He says the Earth needs rituals, well, I can guarantee that if there's love enough amongst you, you'll have an abundant harvest, because love is the feeling that transforms everything. But what do I see? Friendship. Passion died out a long time ago, because you've all got used to each other. That's why the Earth gives only what it gave last year, neither more nor less. And that's why, in the darkness of your souls, you silently complain that nothing in your lives changes. Why? Because you've always tried to control the force that transforms everything so that your lives can carry on without being faced by any major challenges.'
The decent man explained:
'Our community has survived because we've always respected the laws by which even love itself is guided. Anyone who falls in love without taking into account the common good, will be condemned to live in constant fear of hurting his partner, of irritating his new love, of losing everything he built. A stranger with no ties and no history can say what she likes, but she doesn't know how hard it was to get where we are now. She doesn't know the sacrifices we made for our children. She doesn't know that we work tirelessly so that the Earth will be generous with us, so that we will be at peace, and so that we can store away provisions for the future.' For an hour, I defended the passion that devours everything, while the decent man spoke of the feeling that brings peace and tranquillity. In the end, I was left talking to myself, while the whole community gathered around him.
I'd played my role with great gusto and with a conviction I didn't even know I felt. Despite everything, though, the stranger left the village without having convinced anyone.
And that made me very, very happy. Heron Ryan, journalist
An old friend of mine always says: 'People learn twenty-five per cent from their teacher, twentyfive per cent from listening to themselves, twenty-five per cent from their friends and twenty-five per cent from time.' At that first meeting at Athena's apartment, where she was trying to conclude the class she had started at the theatre, we all learned from…well, I'm not quite sure from what.
She was waiting for us, with her son, in her small living room. I noticed that the room was entirely painted in white and was completely empty apart from one item of furniture with a sound system on it, and a pile of CDs. I thought it odd that her son should be there, because he was sure to be bored by the class. I was assuming she would simply pick up from where we had stopped, giving us commands through single words. But she had other plans. She explained that she was going to play some music from Siberia and that we should all just listen.
Nothing more.
'I don't get anywhere meditating,' she said. 'I see people sitting there with their eyes closed, a smile on their lips or else grave-faced and arrogant, concentrating on absolutely nothing, convinced that they're in touch with God or with the Goddess. So instead, let's listen to some music together.'
Again that feeling of unease, as if Athena didn't know exactly what she was doing.
But nearly all the actors from the theatre were there, including the director, who, according to Andrea, had come to spy on the enemy camp.
The music stopped.
'This time I want you to dance to a rhythm that has nothing whatever to do with the melody.' Athena put the music on again, with the volume right up, and started to dance, making no attempt to move gracefully. Only an older man, who took the role of the drunken king in the latest play, did as he was told. No one else moved. They all seemed slightly constrained. One woman looked at her watch – only ten minutes had passed.
Athena stopped and looked round. 'Why are you just standing there?'
'Well,' said one of the actresses timidly, 'it seems a bit ridiculous to be doing that. We've been trained in harmony, not its opposite.'
'Just do as I say. Do you need an explanation? Right, I'll give you one. Changes only happen when we go totally against everything we're used to doing.'
Turning to the 'drunken king', she said:
'Why did you agree to dance against the rhythm of the music?' 'Oh, I've never had any sense of rhythm anyway.'
Everyone laughed, and the dark cloud hanging over us seemed to disperse.
'Right, I'm going to start again, and you can either follow me or leave. This time, I'm the one who decides when the class ends. One of the most aggressive things a human being can do is to go against what he or she believes is nice or pretty, and that's what we're going to do today. We're all going to dance badly.'
It was just another experiment and in order not to embarrass our hostess, everyone obediently danced badly. I struggled with myself, because one's natural tendency was to follow the rhythms of that marvellous, mysterious percussion. I felt as if I were insulting the musicians who were playing and the composer who created it. Every so often, my body tried to fight against that lack of harmony and I was forced to make myself behave as I'd been told to. The boy was dancing as well, laughing all the time, then, at a certain
point, he stopped and sat down on the sofa, as if exhausted by his efforts. The CD was switched off in midstream.
'Wait.'
We all waited.
'I'm going to do something I've never done before.'
She closed her eyes and held her head between her hands. 'I've never danced
unrhythmically before…'
So the experiment had been worse for her than for any of us. 'I don't feel well…' Both the director and I got to our feet. Andrea shot me a furious glance, but I still went over to Athena. Before I could reach her, however, she asked us to return to our places.
'Does anyone want to say anything?' Her voice sounded fragile, tremulous, and she had still not uncovered her face.
'I do.'
It was Andrea.
'First, pick up my son and tell him that his mother's fine. But I need to stay like this for as long as necessary.'
Viorel looked frightened. Andrea sat him on her lap and stroked him. 'What do you want to say?'
'Nothing. I've changed my mind.'
'The boy made you change your mind, but carry on anyway.'
Slowly Athena removed her hands and looked up. Her face was that of a stranger. 'No, I won't speak.'
'All right. You,' Athena said, pointing to the older actor. 'Go to the doctor tomorrow. The fact that you can't sleep and have to keep getting up in the night to go to the toilet is serious. It's cancer of the prostate.'
The man turned pale.
'And you,' she pointed at the director, 'accept your sexual identity. Don't be afraid. Accept that you hate women and love men.'
'Are you saying–'
'Don't interrupt me. I'm not saying this because of Athena. I'm merely referring to your sexuality. You love men, and there is, I believe, nothing wrong with that.'
She wasn't saying that because of Athena? But she was Athena!
'And you,' she pointed to me. 'Come over here. Kneel down before me.'
Afraid of what Andrea might do and embarrassed to have everyone's eyes on me, I nevertheless did as she asked.
'Bow your head. Let me touch the nape of your neck.'
I felt the pressure of her fingers, but nothing else. We remained like that for nearly a minute, and then she told me to get up and go back to my seat.
'You won't need to take sleeping pills any more. From now on, sleep will return.'
I glanced at Andrea. I thought she might say something, but she looked as amazed
as I did. One of the actresses, possibly the youngest, raised her hand.
'I'd like to say something, but I need to know who I'm speaking to.' 'Hagia Sofia.' 'I'd like to know if…'
She glanced round, ashamed, but the director nodded, asking her to continue. '…if my mother is all right.'
'She's by your side. Yesterday, when you left the house, she made you forget your handbag. You went back to find it and discovered that you'd locked yourself out and couldn't get in. You wasted a whole hour looking for a locksmith, when you could have kept the appointment you'd made, met the man who was waiting for you and got the job you wanted. But if everything had happened as you planned that morning, in six months' time you would have died in a car accident. Forgetting your handbag yesterday changed your life.'
The girl began to weep.
'Does anyone else want to ask anything?' Another hand went up. It was the director. 'Does he love me?'
So it was true. The story about the girl's mother had stirred up a whirlwind of emotions in the room. 'You're asking the wrong question. What you need to know is, are you in a position to give him the love he needs. And whatever happens or doesn't happen will be equally gratifying. Knowing that you are capable of love is enough. If it isn't him, it will be someone else. You've discovered a wellspring, simply allow it to flow and it will fill your world. Don't try to keep a safe distance so as to see what happens. Don't wait to be certain before you take a step. What you give, you will receive, although it might sometimes come from the place you least expect.'
Those words applied to me too. Then Athena – or whoever she was – turned to Andrea. 'You!'
My blood froze.
'You must be prepared to lose the universe you created.' 'What do you mean by “universe”?'
'What you think you already have. You've imprisoned your world, but you know that you must liberate it. I know you understand what I mean, even though you don't want to hear it.'
'I understand.'
I was sure they were talking about me. Was this all a set-up by Athena? 'It's finished,' she said. 'Bring the child to me.'
Viorel didn't want to go; he was frightened by his mother's transformation. But Andrea took him gently by the hand and led him to her.
Athena – or Hagia Sofia, or Sherine, or whoever she was – did just as she had done with me, and pressed the back of the boy's neck with her fingers.
'Don't be frightened by the things you see, my child. Don't try to push them away because they'll go away anyway. Enjoy the company of the angels while you can. You're frightened now, but you're not as frightened as you might be because you know there are lots of people in the room. You stopped laughing and dancing when you saw me embracing your mother and asking to speak through her mouth. But you know I wouldn't be doing this if she hadn't given me her permission. I've always appeared before in the form of light, and I still am that light, but today I decided to speak.'
The little boy put his arms around her.
'You can go now. Leave me alone with him.'
One by one, we left the apartment, leaving the mother with her child. In the taxi home, I tried to talk to Andrea, but she said that we could talk about anything but what had just happened.
I said nothing. My soul filled with sadness. Losing Andrea was very hard. On the other hand, I felt an immense peace. The evening's events had wrought changes in us all, and that meant I wouldn't need to go through the pain of sitting down with a woman I loved very much and telling her that I was in love with someone else.
In this case, I chose silence. I got home, turned on the TV, and Andrea went to have a bath. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, the room was full of light. It was morning, and I'd slept for ten hours. Beside me was a note, in which Andrea said that she hadn't wanted to wake me, that she'd gone straight to the theatre, but had left me some coffee. The note was a romantic one, decorated in lipstick and a small cutout heart.
She had no intention of 'letting go of her universe'. She was going to fight. And my life would become a nightmare.
That evening, she phoned, and her voice betrayed no particular emotion. She told me that the elderly actor had gone to see his doctor, who had examined him and found that he had an enlarged prostate. The next step was a blood test, where they had detected a significantly raised level of a type of protein called PSA. They took a sample for a biopsy, but the clinical picture indicated that there was a high chance he had a malignant tumour.
'The doctor said he was lucky, because even if their worst fears were proved right, they can still operate and there's a ninety-nine per cent chance of a cure.'
Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda
What do you mean, Hagia Sofia! It was her, Athena, but by touching the deepest part of the river that flows through her soul, she had come into contact with the Mother.
All she did was to see what was happening in another reality. The young actress's mother, now that she's dead, lives in a place outside of time and so was able to change the course of events, whereas we human beings can only know about the present. But that's no small thing: discovering a dormant illness before it gets worse, touching nervous systems and unblocking energies is within the reach of all of us.
Of course, many died at the stake, others were exiled and many ended up hiding or suppressing the spark of the Great Mother in their souls. I never brought Athena into contact with the Power. She decided to do this, because the Mother had already given her various signs: she was a light while she danced, she changed into letters while she was learning calligraphy, she appeared to her in a fire and in a mirror. What my student didn't know was how to live with Her, until, that is, she did something that provoked this whole chain of events.
Athena, who was always telling everyone to be different, was basically just like all other mortals. She had her own rhythm, a kind of cruise control. Was she more curious than most? Possibly. Had she managed to overcome her sense of being a victim? Definitely. Did she feel a need to share what she was learning with others, be they bank employees or actors? In some cases the answer was 'Yes', but in others, I had to encourage her, because we are not meant for solitude, and we only know ourselves when we see ourselves in the eyes of others.
But that was as far as my interference went.
Maybe the Mother wanted to appear that night, and perhaps she whispered something in her ear: 'Go against everything you've learned so far. You, who are a mistress of rhythm, allow the rhythm to pass through your body, but don't obey it.' That was why Athena suggested the exercise. Her unconscious was already prepared to receive the Mother, but Athena herself was still dancing in time to the music and so any external elements were unable to manifest themselves.
The same thing used to happen with me. The best way to meditate and enter into contact with the light was by knitting, something my mother had taught me when I
was a child. I knew how to count the stitches, manipulate the needles and create beautiful things through repetition and harmony. One day, my protector asked me to knit in a completely irrational way! I found this really distressing, because I'd learned how to knit with affection, patience and dedication. Nevertheless, he insisted on me knitting really badly.
I knitted like this for two hours, thinking all the time that it was utterly ridiculous, absurd. My head ached, but I had to resist letting the needles guide my hands. Anyone can do things badly, so why was he asking this of me? Because he knew about my obsession with geometry and with perfection.
And suddenly, it happened: I stopped moving the needles and felt a great emptiness, which was filled by a warm, loving, companionable presence. Everything around me was different, and I felt like saying things that I would never normally dare to say. I didn't lose consciousness; I knew I was still me, but, paradoxically, I wasn't the person I was used to being with.
So I can 'see' what happened, even though I wasn't there. Athena's soul following the sound of the music while her body went in a totally contrary direction. After a time, her soul disconnected from her body, a space opened, and the Mother could finally enter.
Or, rather, a spark from the Mother appeared. Ancient, but apparently very young. Wise, but not omnipotent. Special, but not in the least arrogant. Her perceptions changed, and she began to see the same things she used to see when she was a child – the parallel universes that people this world. At such moments, we can see not only the physical body, but people's emotions too. They say cats have this same power, and I believe them.
A kind of blanket lies between the physical and the spiritual world, a blanket that changes in colour, intensity and light; it's what mystics call 'aura'. From then on, everything is easy. The aura tells you what's going on. If I had been there, she would have seen a violet colour with a few yellow splodges around my body. That means that I still have a long road ahead of me and that my mission on this Earth has not yet been accomplished.
Mixed up with human auras are transparent forms, which people usually call 'ghosts'. That was the case with the young woman's mother, and only in such case can someone's fate be altered. I'm almost certain that the young actress, even before she asked, knew that her mother was beside her, and the only real surprise to her was the story about the handbag.
Confronted by that rhythmless dance, everyone was really intimidated. Why? Because we're used to doing things 'as they should be done'. No one likes to make the wrong moves, especially when we're aware that we're doing so. Even Athena. It can't have been easy for her to suggest doing something that went against everything she loved.
I'm glad that the Mother won the battle at that point. A man has been saved from cancer, another has accepted his sexuality, and a third has stopped taking sleeping pills. And all because Athena broke the rhythm, slamming on the brakes when the car was travelling at top speed and thus throwing everything into disarray.
To go back to my knitting: I used that method of knitting badly for quite some time, until I managed to provoke the presence without any artificial means, now that I knew it and was used to it. The same thing happened with Athena. Once we know where the Doors of Perception are, it's really easy to open and close them, when we get used to our own 'strange' behaviour.
And it must be said that I knitted much faster and better after that, just as Athena danced with much more soul and rhythm once she had dared to break down those barriers.
Andrea McCain, actress
The story spread like wild fire. On the following Monday, when the theatre was closed, Athena's apartment was packed. We had all brought friends. She did as she had on the previous evening; she made us dance without rhythm, as if she needed that collective energy in order to get in touch with Hagia Sofia. The boy was there again, and I decided to watch him. When he sat down on the sofa, the music stopped and the trance began.
As did the questions. The first three questions were, as you can imagine, about love
– will he stay with me, does she love me, is he cheating on me. Athena said nothing. The fourth person to receive no answer asked again, more loudly this time:
'So is he cheating on me or not?'
'I am Hagia Sofia, universal wisdom. I came into the world accompanied only by Love. I am the beginning of everything, and before I existed there was chaos. Therefore, if any of you wish to control the forces that prevailed in chaos, do not ask Hagia Sofia. For me, love fills everything. It cannot be desired because it is an end in itself. It cannot betray because it has nothing to do with possession. It cannot be held prisoner because it is a river and will overflow its banks. Anyone
who tries to imprison love will cut off the spring that feeds it, and the trapped water will grow stagnant and rank.'
Hagia looked around the group, most of whom were there for the first time, and she began to point out what she saw: the threat of disease, problems at work, frictions between parents and children, sexuality, potentialities that existed but were not being explored. I remember her turning to one woman in her thirties and saying:
'Your father told you how things should be and how a woman should behave. You have always fought against your dreams, and “I want” has never even shown its face. It was always drowned out by “I must” or “I hope” or “I need”, but you're a wonderful singer. One year's experience could make a huge difference to your work.'
'But I have a husband and a child.'
'Athena has a child too. Your husband will be upset at first, but he'll come to accept it eventually. And you don't need to be Hagia Sofia to know that.'
said.'
'Maybe I'm too old.'
'You're refusing to accept who you are, but that is not my problem. I have said what needed to be
Gradually, everyone in that small room – unable to sit down because there wasn't enough space, sweating profusely even though the winter was nearly over, feeling ridiculous for having come to such an event – was called upon to receive Hagia Sofia's advice.
I was the last.
'Stay behind afterwards if you want to stop being two and to be one instead.'
This time, I didn't have her son on my lap. He watched everything that happened, and it seemed that the conversation they'd had after the first session had been enough for him to lose his fear.
I nodded. Unlike the previous session, when people had simply left when she'd asked to talk to her son alone, this time Hagia Sofia gave a sermon before ending the ritual.
'You are not here to receive definite answers. My mission is to provoke you. In the past, both governors and governed went to oracles who would foretell the future. The future, however, is unreliable because it is guided by decisions made in the here and now. Keep the bicycle moving, because if you stop pedalling, you will fall
off.
'For those of you who came to meet Hagia Sofia wanting her merely to confirm what you hoped to be true, please, do not come back. Or else start dancing and make those around you dance too. Fate will be implacable with those who want to live in a universe that is dead and gone. The new world belongs to the Mother, who came with Love to separate the heavens from the waters. Anyone who believes they have failed will always fail. Anyone who has decided that they cannot behave any differently will be destroyed by routine. Anyone who has decided to block all changes will be transformed into dust. Cursed be those who do not dance and who prevent others from dancing!'
Her eyes glanced fire. 'You can go.'
Everyone left, and I could see the look of confusion on most of their faces. They had come in search of comfort and had found only provocation. They had arrived wanting to be told how love can be controlled and had heard that the all-devouring flame will always burn everything. They wanted to be sure that their decisions were the right ones, that their husbands, wives and bosses were pleased with them, but, instead, they were given only words of doubt.
Some people, though, were smiling. They had understood the importance of the dance and from that night on would doubtless allow their bodies and souls to drift
– even though, as always happens, they would have to pay a price.
Only the boy, Hagia Sofia, Heron and myself were left in the room. 'I asked you to stay here alone.'
Without a word, Heron picked up his coat and left.
Hagia Sofia was looking at me. And, little by little, I watched her change back into Athena. The only way of describing that change is to compare it with the change that takes place in an angry child: we can see the anger in the child's eyes, but once distracted and once the anger has gone, the child is no longer the same child who, only moments before, was crying. The 'being', if it can be called that, seemed to have vanished into the air as soon as its instrument lost concentration.
And now I was standing before an apparently exhausted woman. 'Make me some tea.'
She was giving me an order! And she was no longer universal wisdom, but merely someone my boyfriend was interested in or infatuated with. Where would this relationship take us?
But making a cup of tea wouldn't destroy my self-esteem. I went into the kitchen, boiled some water, added a few camomile leaves and returned to the living room. The child was asleep on her lap.
'You don't like me,' she said. I made no reply.
'I don't like you either,' she went on. 'You're pretty and elegant, a fine actress, and have a degree of culture and education which I, despite my family's wishes, do not. But you're also insecure, arrogant and suspicious. As Hagia Sofia said, you are two, when you could be one.'
'I didn't know you remembered what you said during the trance, because in that case, you are two people as well: Athena and Hagia Sofia.'
'I may have two names, but I am only one – or else all the people in the world. And that is precisely what I want to talk about. Because I am one and everyone, the spark that emerges when I go into a trance gives me very precise instructions. I remain semi-conscious throughout, of course, but I'm saying things that come from some unknown part of myself, as if I were suckling on the breast of the Mother, drinking the milk that flows through all our souls and carries knowledge around the Earth. Last week, which was the first time I entered into contact with this new form, I received what seemed to me to be an absurd message: that I should teach you.'
She paused.
'Obviously, this struck me as quite mad, because I don't like you at all.' She paused again, for longer this time.
'Today, though, the source repeated the same message, and so I'm giving you that choice.' 'Why do you call it Hagia Sofia?'
'That was my idea. It's the name of a really beautiful mosque I saw in a book. You could, if you like, be my student. That's what brought you here on that first day. This whole new stage in my life, including the discovery of Hagia Sofia inside me, only happened because one day you came through that door and said: “I work in the theatre and we're putting on a play about the female face of God. I heard from a journalist friend that you've spent time in the Balkan mountains with some gipsies and would be prepared to tell me about your experiences there.”'
'Are you going to teach me everything you know?'
'No, everything I don't know. I'll learn through being in contact with you, as I said the first time we met, and as I say again now. Once I've learned what I need to learn, we'll go our separate ways.'
'Can you teach someone you dislike?'
'I can love and respect someone I dislike. On the two occasions when I went into a trance, I saw your aura, and it was the most highly developed aura I've ever seen. You could make a difference in this world, if you accept my proposal.'
'Will you teach me to see auras?'
'Until it happened to me the first time, I myself didn't know I was capable of doing so. If you're on the right path, you'll learn too.'
I realised then that I, too, was capable of loving someone I disliked. I said 'Yes'. 'Then let us transform that acceptance into a ritual. A ritual throws us into an unknown world, but we know that we cannot treat the things of that world lightly. It isn't enough to say “yes”, you must put your life at risk, and without giving it much thought either. If you're the woman I think you are, you won't say: “I need to think about it.” You'll say–'
'I'm ready. Let's move on to the ritual. Where did you learn the ritual, by the way?' 'I'm going to learn it now. I no longer need to remove myself from my normal rhythm in order to enter into contact with the spark from the Mother, because, once that spark is installed inside you, it's easy to find again. I know which door I need to open, even though it's concealed amongst many other entrances and exits. All I need is a little silence.'
Silence again!
We sat there, our eyes wide and staring, as if we were about to begin a fight to the death. Rituals! Before I even rang the bell of Athena's apartment for the first time, I had already taken part in various rituals, only to feel used and diminished afterwards, standing outside a door I could see, but not open. Rituals!
All Athena did was drink a little of the tea I prepared for her.
'The ritual is over. I asked you to do something for me. You did, and I accepted it. Now it is your turn to ask me something.'
I immediately thought of Heron, but it wasn't the right moment to talk about him. 'Take your clothes off.'
She didn't ask me why. She looked at the child, checked that he was asleep, and immediately began to remove her sweater.
'No, really, you don't have to,' I said. 'I don't know why I asked that.'
But she continued to undress, first her blouse, then her jeans, then her bra. I noticed her breasts, which were the most beautiful I'd ever seen. Finally, she removed her knickers. And there she was, offering me her nakedness.
'Bless me,' said Athena.
Bless my 'teacher'? But I'd already taken the first step and couldn't stop now, so I dipped my fingers in the cup and sprinkled a little tea over her body.
'Just as this plant was transformed into tea, just as the water mingled with the plant, I bless you and ask the Great Mother that the spring from which this water came will never cease flowing, and that the earth from which this plant came will always be fertile and generous.'
I was surprised at my own words. They had come neither from inside me nor outside. It was as if I'd always known them and had done this countless times before.
'You have been blessed. You can get dressed now.'
But she didn't move, she merely smiled. What did she want? If Hagia Sofia was capable of seeing auras, she would know that I hadn't the slightest desire to have sex with another woman.
'One moment.'
She picked up the boy, carried him to his room and returned at once. 'You take your clothes off too.'
Who was asking this? Hagia Sofia, who spoke of my potential and for whom I was the perfect disciple? Or Athena, whom I hardly knew, and who seemed capable of anything – a woman whom life had taught to go beyond her limits and to satisfy any curiosity?
We had started a kind of confrontation from which there was no retreat. I got undressed with the same nonchalance, the same smile and the same look in my eyes.
She took my hand and we sat down on the sofa.
During the next half hour, both Athena and Hagia Sofia were present; they wanted to know what my next steps would be. As they asked me this question, I saw that everything really was written there before
me, and that the doors had only been closed before because I hadn't realised that I was the one person in the world with the authority to open them.
Heron Ryan, journalist
The deputy editor hands me a video and we go into the projection room to watch it.
The video was made on the morning of 26 April 1986 and shows normal life in a normal town. A man is sitting drinking a cup of coffee. A mother is taking her
baby for a walk. People in a hurry are going to work. A few people are waiting at a bus stop. A man on a bench in a square is reading a newspaper.
But there's a problem with the video. There are various horizontal lines on the screen, as if the tracking button needed to be adjusted. I get up to do this, but the deputy editor stops me.
'That's just the way it is. Keep watching.'
Images of the small provincial town continue to appear, showing nothing of interest apart from these scenes from ordinary everyday life.
'It's possible that some people may know that there's been an accident two kilometres from there,' says my boss. 'It's possible that they know there have been thirty deaths – a large number, but not enough to change the routine of the town's inhabitants.'
Now the film shows school buses parking. They will stay there for many days. The images are getting worse and worse.
'It isn't the tracking, it's radiation. The video was made by the KGB. On the night of the twentysixth of April, at twenty-three minutes past one in the morning, the worst ever man-made disaster occurred at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. When a nuclear reactor exploded, the people in the area were exposed to ninety times more radiation than that given out by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The whole region should have been evacuated at once, but no one said anything – after all, the government doesn't make mistakes. Only a week later, on page thirty-two of the local newspaper, a five-line article appeared, mentioning the deaths of workers, but giving no further explanation. Meanwhile, Workers' Day was celebrated throughout the Soviet Union, and in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, people paraded down the street unaware of the invisible death in the air.'
And he concludes:
'I want you to go and see what Chernobyl is like now. You've just been promoted to special correspondent. You'll get a twenty per cent increase in your salary and be able to suggest the kind of article you think we should be publishing.'
I should be jumping for joy, but instead I'm gripped by a feeling of intense sadness, which I have to hide. It's impossible to argue with him, to say that there are two women in my life at the moment, that I don't want to leave London, that my life and my mental equilibrium are at stake. I ask when I should leave. As soon as possible, he says, because there are rumours that other countries are significantly increasing their production of nuclear energy.
I manage to negotiate an honourable way out, saying that, first, I need to talk to experts and really get to grips with the subject, and that I'll set off once I've collected the necessary material.
He agrees, shakes my hand and congratulates me. I don't have time to talk to Andrea, because when I get home, she's still at the theatre. I fall asleep at once and again wake up to find a note saying that she's gone to work and that the coffee is on the table.
I go to the office, try to ingratiate myself with the boss who has 'improved my life', and phone various experts on radiation and energy. I discover that, in total, 9 million people worldwide were directly affected by the disaster, including 3 to 4 million children. The initial 30 deaths became, according to the expert John Gofmans, 475,000 cases of fatal cancers and an equal number of non-fatal cancers.
A total of 2,000 towns and villages were simply wiped off the map. According to the Health Ministry in Belarus, the incidence of cancer of the thyroid will increase considerably between 2005 and 2010, as a consequence of continuing high levels of radioactivity. Another specialist explains that as well as the 9 million people directly exposed to radiation, more than 65 million in many countries round the world were indirectly affected by consuming contaminated foodstuffs.
It's a serious matter, which deserves to be treated with respect. At the end of the day, I go back to the deputy editor and suggest that I travel to Chernobyl for the actual anniversary of the accident, and
meanwhile do more research, talk to more experts and find out how the British government responded to the tragedy. He agrees.
I phone Athena. After all, she claims to be going out with someone from Scotland Yard and now is the time to ask her a favour, given that Chernobyl is no longer classified as secret and the Soviet Union no longer exists. She promises that she'll talk to her 'boyfriend', but says she can't guarantee she'll get the answers I want.
She also says that she's leaving for Scotland the following day, and will only be back in time for the next group meeting.
'What group?'
The group, she says. So that's become a regular thing, has it? What I want to know is when we can meet to talk and clear up various loose ends.
But she's already hung up. I go home, watch the news, have supper alone and, later, go out again to pick Andrea up from the theatre. I get there in time to see the
end of the play and, to my surprise, the person on stage seems totally unlike the person I've been living with for nearly two years; there's something magical about her every gesture; monologues and dialogues are spoken with an unaccustomed intensity. I am seeing a stranger, a woman I would like to have by my side, then I realise that she is by my side and is in no way a stranger to me.
'How did your chat with Athena go?' I ask on the way home. 'Fine. How was work?'
She was the one to change the subject. I tell her about my promotion and about Chernobyl, but she doesn't seem interested. I start to think that I'm losing the love I have without having yet won the love I hope to win. However, as soon as we reach our apartment, she suggests we take a bath together and, before I know it, we're in bed. First, she puts on that percussion music at full volume (she explains that she managed to get hold of a copy) and tells me not to worry about the neighbours – people worry too much about them, she says, and never live their own lives.
What happens from then on is something that goes beyond my understanding. Has this woman making positively savage love with me finally discovered her sexuality, and was this taught to her or provoked in her by that other woman? While she was clinging to me with a violence I've never known before, she kept saying:
'Today I'm your man, and you're my woman.'
We carried on like this for almost an hour, and I experienced things I'd never dared experience before. At certain moments, I felt ashamed, wanted to ask her to stop, but she seemed to be in complete control of the situation and so I surrendered, because I had no choice. In fact, I felt really curious.
I was exhausted afterwards, but Andrea seemed re-energised.
'Before you go to sleep, I want you to know something,' she said. 'If you go forward, sex will offer you the chance to make love with gods and goddesses. That's what you experienced today. I want you to go to sleep knowing that I awoke the Mother that was in you.'
I wanted to ask if she'd learned this from Athena, but my courage failed. 'Tell me that you liked being a woman for a night.'
'I did. I don't know if I would always like it, but it was something that simultaneously frightened me and gave me great joy.'
'Tell me that you've always wanted to experience what you've just experienced.'
It's one thing to allow oneself to be carried away by the situation, but quite another to comment coolly on the matter. I said nothing, although I was sure that she knew my answer.
'Well,' Andrea went on, 'all of this was inside me and I had no idea. As was the person behind the mask that fell away while I was on stage today. Did you notice anything different?'
'Of course. You were radiating a special light.'
'Charisma – the divine force that manifests itself in men and women. The supernatural power we don't need to show to anyone because everyone can see it, even usually insensitive people. But it only happens when we're naked, when we die to the world and are reborn to ourselves. Last night, I died. Tonight, when I walked on stage and saw that I was doing exactly what I had chosen to do, I was reborn from my ashes. I was always trying to be who I am, but could never manage it. I was always trying to impress other people, have intelligent conversations, please my parents and, at the same time, I used every available means to do the things I would really like to do. I've always forged my path with blood, tears and will power, but last night, I realised that I was going about it the wrong way. My dream doesn't require that
of me, I have only to surrender myself to it and, if I find I'm suffering, grit my teeth, because the suffering will pass.'
'Why are you telling me this?'
'Let me finish. In that journey where suffering seemed to be the only rule, I struggled for things for which there was no point struggling. Like love, for example. People either feel it or they don't, and there isn't a force in the world that can make them feel it. We can pretend that we love each other. We can get used to each other. We can live a whole lifetime of friendship and complicity, we can bring up children, have sex every night, reach orgasm, and still feel that there's a terrible emptiness about it all, that something important is missing. In the name of all I've learned about relationships between men and women, I've been trying to fight against things that weren't really worth the struggle. And that includes you.
'Today, while we were making love, while I was giving all I have, and I could see that you, too, were giving of your best, I realised that your best no longer interests me. I will sleep beside you tonight, but tomorrow I'll leave. The theatre is my ritual, and there I can express and develop whatever I want to express and develop.'
I started to regret everything – going to Transylvania and meeting a woman who
might be destroying my life, arranging that first meeting of the 'group', confessing my love in that restaurant. At that moment, I hated Athena.
'I know what you're thinking,' said Andrea. 'That your friend Athena has brainwashed me, but that isn't true.'
'I'm a man, even though tonight in bed I behaved like a woman. I'm a species in danger of extinction because I don't see many men around. Few people would risk what I have risked.'
'I'm sure you're right, and that's why I admire you, but aren't you going to ask me who I am, what I want and what I desire?'
I asked.
'I want everything. I want savagery and tenderness. I want to upset the neighbours and placate them too. I don't want a woman in my bed, I want men, real men, like you, for example. Whether they love me or are merely using me, it doesn't matter. My love is greater than that. I want to love freely, and I want to allow the people around me to do the same.
'What I talked about to Athena were the simple ways of awakening repressed energy, like making love, for example, or walking down the street saying: “I'm here and now”. Nothing very special, no secret ritual. The only thing that made our meeting slightly different was that we were both naked. From now on, she and I will meet every Monday, and if I have any comments to make, I will do so after that session. I have no desire to be her friend. Just as, when she feels the need to share something, she goes up to Scotland to talk with that Edda woman, who, it seems, you know as well, although you've never mentioned her.'
'I can't even remember meeting her!'
I sensed that Andrea was gradually calming down. I prepared two cups of coffee and we drank them together. She recovered her smile and asked about my promotion. She said she was worried about those Monday meetings, because she'd learned only that morning that friends of friends were inviting other people, and Athena's apartment was a very small place. I made an enormous effort to pretend that everything that had happened that evening was just a fit of nerves or premenstrual tension or jealousy on her part.
I put my arms around her and she snuggled into my shoulder. And despite my own exhaustion, I waited until she fell asleep. That night, I dreamed of nothing. I had no feelings of foreboding.
And the following morning, when I woke up, I saw that her clothes were gone, the
key was on the table, and there was no letter of farewell. Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda
People read a lot of stories about witches, fairies, paranormals and children possessed by evil spirits. They go to films showing rituals featuring pentagrams, swords and invocations. That's fine; people need to give free rein to their imagination and to go through certain stages. Anyone who gets through those stages without being deceived will eventually get in touch with the Tradition.
The real Tradition is this: the teacher never tells the disciple what he or she should do. They are merely travelling companions, sharing the same uncomfortable feeling of 'estrangement' when confronted
by ever-changing perceptions, broadening horizons, closing doors, rivers that sometimes seem to block their path and which, in fact, should never be crossed, but followed.
There is only one difference between teacher and disciple: the former is slightly less afraid than the latter. Then, when they sit down at a table or in front of a fire to talk, the more experienced person might say: 'Why don't you do that?' But he or she never says: 'Go there and you'll arrive where I did', because every path and every destination are unique to the individual.
The true teacher gives the disciple the courage to throw his or her world off balance, even though the disciple is afraid of things already encountered and more afraid still of what might be around the next
corner.
I was a young, enthusiastic doctor who, filled by a desire to help my fellow human beings, travelled to the interior of Romania on an exchange programme run by the British government. I set off with my luggage full of medicines and my head full of preconceptions. I had clear ideas about how people should behave, about what we need to be happy, about the dreams we should keep alive inside us, about how human relations should evolve. I arrived in Bucharest during that crazed, bloody dictatorship and went to Transylvania to assist with a mass vaccination programme for the local population.
I didn't realise that I was merely one more piece on a very complicated chessboard, where invisible hands were manipulating my idealism, and that ulterior motives lay behind everything I believed was being done for humanitarian purposes: stabilising the government run by the dictator's son, allowing Britain to sell arms in a market dominated by the Soviets.
All my good intentions collapsed when I saw that there was barely enough vaccine to go round; that there were other diseases sweeping the region; that however often I wrote asking for more resources, they never came. I was told not to concern myself with anything beyond what I'd been asked to do.
I felt powerless and angry. I'd seen poverty from close to and would have been able to do something about it if only someone would give me some money, but they weren't interested in results. Our government just wanted a few articles in the press, so that they could say to their political parties or to their electorate that they'd despatched groups to various places in the world on a humanitarian mission. Their intentions were good – apart from selling arms, of course.
I was in despair. What kind of world was this? One night, I set off into the icy forest, cursing God, who was unfair to everything and everyone. I was sitting beneath an oak tree when my protector approached me. He said I could die of cold, and I replied that I was a doctor and knew the body's limits, and that as soon as I felt I was getting near those limits, I would go back to the camp. I asked him what he was doing there. 'I'm speaking to a woman who can hear me, in a world in which all the men have gone deaf.'
I thought he meant me, but the woman he was referring to was the forest itself. When I saw this man wandering about amongst the trees, making gestures and saying things I couldn't understand, a kind of peace settled on my heart. I was not, after all, the only person in the world left talking to myself. When I got up to return to the camp, he came over to me again.
'I know who you are,' he said. 'People in the village say that you're a very decent person, always good-humoured and prepared to help others, but I see something else: rage and frustration.'
He might have been a government spy, but I decided to tell him everything I was feeling, even though I ran the risk of being arrested. We walked together to the field hospital where I was working; I took him to the dormitory, which was empty at the time (my colleagues were all having fun at the annual festival being held in the town), and I asked if he'd like a drink. He produced a bottle from his pocket. 'Palinka,' he said, meaning the traditional drink of Romania, with an incredibly high alcohol content.
'On me.'
We drank together, and I didn't even notice that I was getting steadily drunk. I only realised the state I was in when I tried to go to the toilet, tripped over something
and fell flat.
'Don't move,' said the man. 'Look at what is there before your eyes.' A line of ants. 'They all think they're very wise. They have memory, intelligence, organisational powers, a spirit of sacrifice. They look for food in summer, store it away for the winter, and now they are setting forth again, in this icy spring, to work. If the world were destroyed by an atomic bomb tomorrow, the ants would survive.' 'How do you know all this?'
'I studied biology.'
'Why the hell don't you work to improve the living conditions of your own people? What are you doing in the middle of the forest, talking to the trees?'
'In the first place, I wasn't alone; apart from the trees, you were listening to me too. But to answer your question, I left biology to work as a blacksmith.'
I struggled to my feet. My head was still spinning, but I was thinking clearly enough to understand the poor man's situation. Despite a university education, he had been unable to find work. I told him that the same thing happened in my country too.
'No, that's not what I meant. I left biology because I wanted to work as a blacksmith. Even as a child, I was fascinated by those men hammering steel, making a strange kind of music, sending out sparks all around, plunging the red-hot metal into water and creating clouds of steam. I was unhappy as a biologist, because my dream was to make rigid metal take on soft shapes. Then, one day, a protector appeared.'
'A protector?'
'Let's say that, on seeing those ants doing exactly what they're programmed to do, you were to exclaim: “How fantastic!” The guards are genetically prepared to sacrifice themselves for the queen, the workers carry leaves ten times their own weight, the engineers make tunnels that can resist storms and floods. They enter into mortal combat with their enemies, they suffer for the community, and they never ask: “Why are we doing this?” People try to imitate the perfect society of the ants, and, as a biologist, I was playing my part, until someone came along with this question: “Are you happy doing what you're doing?” “Of course I am,” I said. “I'm being useful to my own people.” “And that's enough?”
'I didn't know whether it was enough or not, but I said that he seemed to me to be both arrogant and egotistical. He replied: “Possibly. But all you will achieve is to repeat what has been done since man was man – keeping things organised.”
'“But the world has progressed,” I said. He asked if I knew any history. Of course I did. He asked another question: “Thousands of years ago, weren't we capable of building enormous structures like the pyramids? Weren't we capable of worshipping gods, weaving, making fire, finding lovers and wives, sending written messages? Of course we were. But although we've succeeded in replacing slaves with wage slaves, all the advances we've made have been in the field of science. Human beings are still asking the same questions as their ancestors. In short, they haven't evolved at all.” At that point, I understood that the person asking me these questions was someone sent from heaven, an angel, a protector.'
'Why do you call him a protector?'
'Because he told me that there were two traditions, one that makes us repeat the same thing for centuries at a time, and another that opens the door into the unknown. However, the second tradition is difficult, uncomfortable and dangerous, and if it attracted too many followers, it would end up destroying the society which, following the example of the ants, took so long to build. And so the second tradition went underground and has only managed to survive over so many centuries because its followers created a secret language of signs.'
'Did you ask more questions?'
'Of course I did, because, although I'd denied it, he knew I was dissatisfied with what I was doing. My protector said: “I'm afraid of taking steps that are not on the map, but by taking those steps despite my fears, I have a much more interesting life.” I asked more about the Tradition, and he said something like: “As long as God is merely man, we'll always have enough food to eat and somewhere to live. When the Mother finally regains her freedom, we might have to sleep rough and live on love, or we might be able to balance emotion and work.” The man, who, it turned out, was my protector, asked: “If you weren't a biologist, what would you be?” I said: “A blacksmith, but they don't earn enough money.” And he replied: “Well, when you grow tired of being what you're not, go and have fun and celebrate life, hammering metal into shape. In time, you'll discover that it will give you more than pleasure, it will give you meaning.” “How do I follow this tradition you spoke of?” I asked. “As I said, through symbols,” he replied. “Start doing what you want to do, and everything else will be revealed to you. Believe that God is the Mother and looks after her children and never lets anything bad happen to them. I did that and I survived. I discovered that there were other people who did the same, but who are considered to be mad, irresponsible, superstitious. Since time
immemorial, they've sought their inspiration in nature. We build pyramids, but we also develop symbols.”
'Having said that, he left, and I never saw him again. I only know, from that moment on, symbols did begin to appear because my eyes had been opened by that conversation. Hard though it was, one evening, I
told my family that, although I had everything a man could dream of having, I was unhappy, and that I had, in fact, been born to be a blacksmith. My wife protested, saying: “You were born a gipsy and had to face endless humiliations to get where you are, and yet you want to go back?” My son, however, was thrilled, because he, too, liked to watch the blacksmiths in our village and hated the laboratories in the big cities.
'I started dividing my time between biological research and working as a blacksmith's apprentice. I was always tired, but I was much happier. One day, I left my job and set up my own blacksmith's business, which went completely wrong from the start. Just when I was starting to believe in life, things got markedly worse. One day, I was working away and I saw that there before me was a symbol.
'The unworked steel arrives in my workshop and I have to transform it into parts for cars, agricultural machinery, kitchen utensils. Do you know how that's done? First, I heat the metal until it's redhot, then I beat it mercilessly with my heaviest hammer until the metal takes on the form I need. Then I plunge it into a bucket of cold water and the whole workshop is filled with the roar of steam, while the metal sizzles and crackles in response to the sudden change in temperature. I have to keep repeating that process until the object I'm making is perfect: once is not enough.'
The blacksmith paused for a long time, lit a cigarette, then went on:
'Sometimes the steel I get simply can't withstand such treatment. The heat, the hammer blows, the cold water cause it to crack. And I know that I'll never be able to make it into a good ploughshare or an engine shaft. Then I throw it on the pile of scrap metal at the entrance to my forge.'
Another long pause, then the blacksmith concluded:
'I know that God is putting me through the fire of afflictions. I've accepted the blows that life has dealt me, and sometimes I feel as cold and indifferent as the water that inflicts such pain on the steel. But my one prayer is this: “Please, God, my Mother, don't give up until I've taken on the shape that You wish for me. Do this by whatever means You think best, for as long as You like, but never ever
throw me on the scrap heap of souls.”'
I may have been drunk when I finished my conversation with that man, but I knew that my life had changed. There was a tradition behind everything we learn, and I needed to go in search of people who, consciously or unconsciously, were able to make manifest the female side of God. Instead of cursing my government and all the political shenanigans, I decided to do what I really wanted to do: to heal people. I wasn't interested in anything else.
Since I didn't have the necessary resources, I approached the local men and women, and they guided me to the world of medicinal herbs. I discovered that there was a popular tradition that went back hundreds of years and was passed from generation to generation through experience rather than through technical knowledge. With their help, I was able to do far more than I would otherwise have been able to do, because I wasn't there merely to fulfil a university task or to help my government to sell arms or, unwittingly, to spread party political propaganda. I was there because healing people made me happy.
This brought me closer to nature, to the oral tradition and to plants. Back in Britain, I decided to talk to other doctors and I asked them: 'Do you always know exactly which medicines to prescribe or are you sometimes guided by intuition?' Almost all of them, once they had dropped their guard, admitted that they were often guided by a voice and that when they ignored the advice of the voice, they ended up giving the wrong treatment. Obviously they make use of all the available technology, but they know that there is a corner, a dark corner, where lies the real meaning of the cure, and the best decision to make.
My protector threw my world off balance – even though he was only a gipsy blacksmith. I used to go at least once a year to his village and we would talk about how, when we dare to see things differently, life opens up to our eyes. On one of those visits, I met other disciples of his, and together we discussed our fears and our conquests. My protector said: 'I, too, get scared, but it's at such moments that I discover a wisdom that is beyond me, and I go forward.'
Now I earn a lot of money working as a GP in Edinburgh, and I would earn even more if I went to work in London, but I prefer to make the most of life and to take time out. I do what I like: I combine the healing processes of the ancients, the Arcane Tradition, with the most modern techniques of present-day medicine, the Hippocratic Tradition. I'm writing a paper on the subject, and many people in the 'scientific' community, when they see my text published in a specialist journal, will
dare to take the steps which, deep down, they've always wanted to take.
I don't believe that the mind is the source of all ills; there are real diseases too. I think antibiotics and antivirals were great advances for humanity. I don't believe that a patient of mine with appendicitis can be cured by meditation alone; what he needs is some good, emergency surgery. So I take each step with courage and fear, combining technique and inspiration. And I'm careful who I say these things to, because I might get dubbed a witchdoctor, and then many lives I could have saved would be lost.
When I'm not sure, I ask the Great Mother for help. She has never yet failed to answer me. But she has always counselled me to be discreet. She probably gave the same advice to Athena on more than one occasion, but Athena was too fascinated by the world she was just starting to discover and she didn't listen.
A London newspaper, 24 August 1991 THE WITCH OF PORTOBELLO
London (© Jeremy Lutton): 'That's another reason why I don't believe in God, I mean, look at the behaviour of people who do believe!' This was the reaction of Robert Wilson, one of the traders in Portobello Road.
This road, known around the world for its antique shops and its Saturday flea market, was transformed last night into a battlefield, requiring the intervention of at least fifty police officers from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to restore order. By the end of the fracas, five people had been injured, although none seriously. The reason behind this pitched battle, which lasted nearly two hours, was a demonstration organised by the Rev. Ian Buck to protest about what he called 'the Satanic cult at the heart of England'.
According to Rev. Buck, a group of suspicious individuals have been keeping the neighbourhood awake every Monday night for the last six months, Monday being their chosen night for invoking the Devil. The ceremonies are led by a Lebanese woman, Sherine H. Khalil, who calls herself Athena, after the goddess of wisdom.
About two hundred people began meeting in a former East India Company warehouse, but the numbers increased over time and, in recent weeks, an equally large crowd has been gathering outside, hoping to gain entry and take part in the ceremony. When his various verbal complaints, petitions and letters to the local newspapers achieved nothing, the Rev. Buck decided to mobilise the community, calling on his parishioners to gather outside the warehouse by 1900 hours yesterday to stop the 'devil-worshippers' getting in.
'As soon as we received the first complaint, we sent someone to inspect the place, but no drugs were found nor evidence of any other kind of illicit activity,' said an official who preferred not to be identified because an inquiry has just been set up to investigate what happened. 'They aren't contravening the noise nuisance laws because they turn off the music at ten o'clock prompt, so there's really nothing more we can do. Britain, after all, allows freedom of worship.'
The Rev. Buck has another version of events.
'The fact is that this witch of Portobello, this mistress of charlatanism, has contacts with people high up in the government, which explains why the police – paid for by taxpayers' money to maintain order and decency – refuse to do anything. We're living in an age in which everything is allowed, and democracy is being devoured and destroyed by that limitless freedom.'
The vicar says that he was suspicious of the group right from the start. They had rented a crumbling old building and spent whole days trying to renovate it, 'which is clear evidence that they belong to some sect and have undergone some kind of brainwashing, because no one in today's world works for free'. When asked if his parishioners ever did any charitable work in the community, the Rev. Buck replied: 'Yes, but we do it in the name of Jesus.'
Yesterday evening, when she arrived at the warehouse to meet her waiting followers, Sherine Khalil, her son, and some of her friends were prevented from entering by the Rev. Buck's parishioners who were carrying placards and using megaphones to call on the rest of the neighbourhood to join them. This verbal aggression immediately degenerated into fighting, and soon it was impossible to control either side.
'They say they're fighting in the name of Jesus, but what they really want is for people to continue to ignore the teachings of Christ, according to which “we are all gods”,' said the well-known actress Andrea McCain, one of Sherine Khalil or Athena's followers. Ms McCain received a cut above her right eye, which was treated at once, and she left the area before your reporter could find out more about her links with the sect.
Once order was restored, Mrs Khalil was anxious to reassure her 5-year-old son, but she did tell us that all that takes place in the warehouse is some collective dancing, followed by the invocation of a being known as Hagia Sofia, of whom people are free to ask questions. The celebration ends with a kind of sermon and a group prayer to the Great Mother. The officer charged with investigating the
original complaints confirmed this.
As far as we could ascertain, the group has no name and is not registered as a charity. According to the lawyer Sheldon Williams, this is not necessary: 'We live in a free country, and people can gather together in an enclosed space for non-profit-making activities, as long as these do not break any laws such as incitement to racism or the consumption of narcotics.'
Mrs Khalil emphatically rejected any suggestion that she should stop the meetings because of the disturbances.
'We gather together to offer mutual encouragement,' she said, 'because it's very hard to face social pressures alone. I demand that your newspaper denounce the religious discrimination to which we've been subjected over the centuries. Whenever we do something that is not in accord with State-instituted and Stateapproved religions, there is always an attempt to crush us, as happened today. Before, we would have faced martyrdom, prison, being burned at the stake or sent into exile, but now we are in a position to respond, and force will be answered with force, just as compassion will be repaid with compassion.'
When faced with the Rev. Buck's accusations, she accused him of 'manipulating his parishioners and using intolerance and lies as an excuse for violence'.
According to the sociologist Arthaud Lenox, phenomena like this will become increasingly common in the future, possibly involving more serious clashes between established religions. 'Now that the Marxist utopia has shown itself incapable of channelling society's ideals, the world is ripe for a religious revival, born of civilisation's natural fear of significant dates. However, I believe that when the year 2000 does arrive and the world survives intact, common sense will prevail and religions will revert to being a refuge for the weak, who are always in search of guidance.'
This view is contested by Dom Evaristo Piazza, the Vatican's auxiliary bishop in the United Kingdom: 'What we are seeing is not the spiritual awakening that we all long for, but a wave of what Americans call New Ageism, a kind of breeding ground in which everything is permitted, where dogmas are not respected, and the most absurd ideas from the past return to lay waste to the human mind. Unscrupulous people like this young woman are trying to instil their false ideas in weak, suggestible minds, with the one aim of making money and gaining personal power.'
The German historian Franz Herbert, currently working at the Goethe Institute in
London, has a different idea: 'The established religions no longer ask fundamental questions about our identity and our reason for living. Instead, they concentrate purely on a series of dogmas and rules concerned only with fitting in with a particular social and political organisation. People in search of real spirituality are, therefore, setting off in new directions, and that inevitably means a return to the past and to primitive religions, before those religions were contaminated by the structures of power.'
At the police station where the incident was recorded, Sergeant William Morton stated that should Sherine Khalil's group decide to hold their meeting on the following Monday and feel that they are under threat, then they must apply in writing for police protection and thus avoid a repetition of last night's events. (With additional information from Andrew Fish. Photos by Mark Guillhem)
Heron Ryan, journalist
I read the report on the plane, when I was flying back from the Ukraine, feeling full of doubts. I still hadn't managed to ascertain whether the Chernobyl disaster had been as big as it was said to have been, or whether it had been used by the major oil producers to inhibit the use of other sources of energy.
Anyway, I was horrified by what I read in the article. The photos showed broken windows, a furious Rev. Buck, and – there lay the danger – a beautiful woman with fiery eyes and her son in her arms. I saw at once what could happen, both good and bad. I went straight from the airport to Portobello, convinced that both my predictions would become reality.
On the positive side, the following Monday's meeting was one of the most successful events in the area's history: many local people came, some curious to see the 'being' mentioned in the article, others bearing placards defending freedom of religion and freedom of speech. The venue would only hold two
hundred people and so the rest of the crowd were all crammed together on the pavement outside, hoping for at least a glimpse of the woman who appeared to be the priestess of the oppressed.
When she arrived, she was received with applause, handwritten notes and requests for help; some people threw flowers, and one lady of uncertain age asked her to keep on fighting for women's freedom and for the right to worship the Mother. The parishioners from the week before must have been intimidated by the crowd and so failed to turn up, despite the threats they had made during the previous days. There were no aggressive comments, and the ceremony passed off as
normal, with dancing, the appearance of Hagia Sofia (by then, I knew that she was simply another facet of Athena herself), and a final celebration (this had been added recently, when the group moved to the warehouse lent by one of its original members), and that was that.
During her sermon, Athena spoke as if possessed by someone else:
'We all have a duty to love and to allow love to manifest itself in the way it thinks best. We cannot and must not be frightened when the powers of darkness want to make themselves heard, those same powers that introduced the word “sin” merely to control our hearts and minds. Jesus Christ, whom we all know, turned to the woman taken in adultery and said: “Has no man condemned thee? Neither do I condemn thee.” He healed people on the Sabbath, he allowed a prostitute to wash his feet, he promised a thief that he would enjoy the delights of Paradise, he ate forbidden foods, and he said that we should concern ourselves only with today, because the lilies in the field toil not neither do they spin, but are arrayed in glory. 'What is sin? It is a sin to prevent Love from showing itself. And the Mother is love. We are entering a new world in which we can choose to follow our own steps, not those that society forces us to take. If necessary, we will confront the forces of darkness again, as we did last week. But no one will silence our voice or our heart.'
I was witnessing the transformation of a woman into an icon. She spoke with great conviction, with dignity and with faith in what she was saying. I hoped that things really were like that, that we truly were entering a new world, and that I would live to see it.
She left the warehouse to as much acclaim as she had entered it, and when she saw me in the crowd, she called me over and said that she'd missed me. She was happy and confident, sure that she was doing the right thing.
This was the positive side of the newspaper article, and things might have ended there. I wanted my analysis of events to be wrong, but three days later, my prediction was confirmed. The negative side emerged in full force.
Employing the services of one of the most highly regarded and conservative law practices in Britain, whose senior partners – unlike Athena – really did have contacts in all spheres of government, and basing his case on published statements made by Athena, the Rev. Buck called a news conference to say that he was suing for defamation, calumny and moral damages.
The deputy editor called me in. He knew I was friendly with the central figure in
that scandal and suggested that we publish an exclusive interview. My first reaction was of disgust: how could I use my friendship to sell newspapers?
However, after we had talked further, I started to think that it might be a good idea. She would have the chance to put her side of the story; indeed, she could use the interview to promote all the things for which she was now openly fighting. I left the deputy editor's office with the plan we had drawn up together: a series of articles on new trends in society and on radical changes that were taking place in the search for religious belief. In one of those articles, I would publish Athena's point of view.
That same afternoon, I went to her house, taking advantage of the fact that the invitation had come from her when we met outside the warehouse. The neighbours told me that, the day before, court officials had attempted to serve a summons on her, but failed.
I phoned later on, without success. I tried again as night was falling, but no one answered. From then on, I phoned every half an hour, growing more anxious with each call. Ever since Hagia Sofia had cured my insomnia, tiredness drove me to bed at eleven o'clock, but this time anxiety kept me awake.
I found her mother's number in the phone book, but it was late, and if Athena wasn't there, then I would only cause the whole family to worry. What to do? I turned on the TV to see if anything had happened – nothing special, London continued as before, with its marvels and its perils.
I decided to try one last time. The phone rang three times, and someone answered. I recognised Andrea's voice at once.
'What do you want?' she asked.
'Athena asked me to get in touch. Is everything all right?'
'Everything's all right and not all right, depending on your way of looking at things. But I think you might be able to help.'
'Where is she?'
She hung up without saying any more. Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda
Athena stayed in a hotel near my house. News from London regarding local events, especially minor conflicts in the suburbs, never reaches Scotland. We're not much interested in how the English sort out their little problems. We have our own flag, our own football team, and soon we will have our own parliament.
I let Athena rest for a whole day. The following morning, instead of going into the
little temple and performing the rituals I know, I decided to take her and her son to a wood near Edinburgh. There, while the boy played and ran about among the trees, she told me in detail what was going on.
When she'd finished, I said:
'It's daylight, the sky is cloudy, and human beings believe that beyond the clouds lives an allpowerful God, guiding the fate of men. Meanwhile, look at your son, look at your feet, listen to the sounds around you: down here is the Mother, so much closer, bringing joy to children and energy to those who walk over Her body. Why do people prefer to believe in something far away and forget what is there before their eyes, a true manifestation of the miracle?'
'I know the answer. Because up there someone is guiding us and giving his orders, hidden behind the clouds, unquestionable in his wisdom. Down here, we have physical contact with a magical reality, and the freedom to choose where our steps will go.'
'Exactly. But do you think that is what people want? Do they want the freedom to choose their own
steps?'
'Yes, I think they do. The earth I'm standing on now has laid out many strange paths for me, from a village in Transylvania to a city in the Middle East, from there to another city on an island, and then to the desert and back to Transylvania. From a suburban bank to a real estate company in the Persian Gulf. From a dance group to a bedouin. And whenever my feet drove me onwards, I said “Yes” instead of saying “No”.' 'What did you gain from all that?'
'Today I can see people's auras. I can awaken the Mother in my soul. My life now has meaning, and I know what I'm fighting for. But why do you ask? You, too, gained the most important power of all – the gift of healing. Andrea can now prophesy and converse with spirits. I've followed her spiritual development every step of the way.'
'What else have you gained?'
'The joy of being alive. I know that I'm here, and that everything is a miracle, a revelation.'
The little boy fell over and grazed his knee. Instinctively, Athena ran to him, wiped the wound clean, told him not to worry, and the boy continued running about in the forest. I used that as a signal.
'What just happened to your little boy, happened to me. And it's happening to you
too, isn't it?' 'Yes, but I don't think I stumbled and fell. I think I'm being tested again, and that my next step will be revealed to me.'
At such moments, a teacher must say nothing, only bless the disciple. Because, however much the teacher may want to save her disciple from suffering, the paths are mapped out and the disciple's feet are eager to follow them. I suggested we go back to the wood that night, just the two of us. She asked where she could leave her son, and I said that I would take care of that. I had a neighbour who owed me a favour and who would be delighted to look after Viorel.
As evening fell, we returned to that same place, and on the way, we spoke of things that had nothing to do with the ritual we were about to perform. Athena had seen me using a new kind of depilatory wax and was intrigued to know what advantages it had over the old methods. We talked animatedly about vanity, fashion, the cheapest places to buy clothes, female behaviour, feminism, hairstyles. At one point she said something along the lines of: 'But if the soul is ageless, I don't know why we should be so worried about all this', then realised that it was all right just to relax and talk about superficial subjects. More than that, such conversations were really fun, and how we look is something that's still very important in women's lives (it is in men's lives too, but in a different way, and they're not as open about it as we are).
As we approached the place I'd chosen – or, rather, which the wood was choosing for me – I started to feel the presence of the Mother. In my case, this presence manifests itself in a certain, mysterious inner joy that always touches me and almost moves me to tears. It was the moment to stop and change the subject. 'Collect some wood for kindling,' I said.
'But it's dark.'
'There's enough light from the full moon even if it's obscured by clouds. Train your eyes: they were made to see more than you think.'
She began doing as I asked, occasionally cursing because she'd scratched herself on a thorn. Almost half an hour passed, and during that time, we didn't talk. I felt the excitement of knowing that the Mother was close by, the euphoria of being there with that woman who still seemed little more than a child and who trusted me and was keeping me company in that search which sometimes seemed too mad for the human mind.
Athena was still at the stage of answering questions, just as she'd responded to mine that afternoon. I had been like that once, until I allowed myself to be
transported completely into the kingdom of mystery, where it was simply a matter of contemplating, celebrating, worshipping, praising and allowing the gift to manifest itself.
I was watching Athena collecting firewood and I saw the girl I once was, in search of veiled secrets and secret powers. Life had taught me something completely different: the powers were not secret and the secrets had been revealed a long time ago. When I saw that she had gathered enough firewood, I indicated that she should stop.
I myself looked for some larger branches and put them on top of the kindling. So it was in life. In order for the more substantial pieces of wood to catch fire, the kindling must burn first. In order for us to liberate the energy of our strength, our weakness must first have a chance to reveal itself.
In order for us to understand the powers we carry within us and the secrets that have already been revealed, it was first necessary to allow the surface – expectations, fears, appearances – to be burned away. We were entering the peace now settling upon the forest, with the gentle wind, the moonlight behind the clouds, the noises of the animals that sally forth at night to hunt, thus fulfilling the cycle of birth and death of the Mother, and without ever being criticised for following their instincts and their nature.
I lit the fire.
Neither of us felt like saying anything. For what seemed like an eternity, we merely contemplated the dance of the fire, knowing that hundreds of thousands of people, all over the world, would also be sitting by their fireside, regardless of whether they had modern heating systems in their house or not; they did this because they were sitting before a symbol.
It took a great effort to emerge from that trance, which, although it meant nothing specific to me, and did not make me see gods, auras or ghosts, nonetheless left me in the state of grace I needed to be in. I focused once more on the present, on the young woman by my side, on the ritual I needed to perform.
'How is your student?' I asked.
'Difficult, but if she wasn't, I might not learn what I need to learn.' 'And what powers is she developing?'
'She speaks with beings in the parallel world.' 'As you converse with Hagia Sofia?' 'No, as you well know, Hagia Sofia is the Mother manifesting herself in me. She speaks with invisible beings.'
I knew this, but I wanted to be sure. Athena was more silent than usual. I don't know if she had discussed the events in London with Andrea, but that didn't matter. I got up, opened the bag I had with me, took out a handful of specially chosen herbs and threw them into the flames.
'The wood has started to speak,' said Athena, as if this were something perfectly normal, and that was good, it meant that miracles were now becoming part of her life.
'What is it saying?'
'Nothing at the moment, only noises.'
Minutes later, she heard a song coming from the fire. 'Oh, it's wonderful!' There spoke the little girl, not the wife or mother.
'Stay just as you are. Don't try to concentrate or follow my steps or understand what I'm saying. Relax and feel good. That is sometimes all we can hope for from life.'
I knelt down, picked up a red-hot piece of wood and drew a circle around her, leaving a small opening through which I could enter. I could hear the same music as Athena, and I danced around her, invoking the union of the male fire with the earth, which received it now with arms and legs spread wide, the fire that purified everything, transforming into energy the strength contained in the firewood, in those branches, in those beings, both human and invisible. I danced for as long as the melody from the fire lasted, and I made protective gestures to the child who was sitting, smiling, inside the circle.
When the flames had burned down, I took a little ash and sprinkled it on Athena's head. Then with my feet I erased the circle I'd drawn around her.
'Thank you,' she said. 'I felt very loved, wanted, protected.' 'In difficult moments, remember that feeling.'
'Now that I've found my path, there will be no more difficult moments. After all, I have a mission to fulfil, don't I?'
'Yes, we all have a mission to fulfil.' She started to feel uncertain. 'And what about the difficult moments?' she asked.
'That isn't an intelligent thing to ask. Remember what you said just now: you are loved, wanted, protected.'
'I'll do my best.'
Her eyes filled with tears. Athena had understood my answer. Samira R. Khalil, housewife
My own grandson! What has my grandson got to do with all this? What kind of world are we living in? Are we still in the Middle Ages, engaging in witch-hunts? away.
I ran to him. He had a bloody nose, but he didn't seem to care about my distress and pushed me
'I know how to defend myself, and I did.'
I may never have produced a child in my own womb, but I know the hearts of children. I was far more worried about Athena than I was about Viorel. This was just one of many fights he would have to face in his life, and there was a flicker of pride in his swollen eyes.
'Some children at school said that Mum was a devil-worshipper!'
Sherine arrived shortly afterwards, soon enough to see the boy's bloodied face and to kick up a fuss. She wanted to go straight to the school and talk to the head teacher, but first I put my arms around her. I let her cry out all her tears and all her frustrations, and the best thing I could do then was to keep silent and try to convey my love for her through that silence.
When she had calmed down a little, I explained carefully that she could come back home and live with us, that we would take care of everything. When her father read about the case being brought against her, he had immediately spoken to some lawyers. We would do everything we could to get her out of this situation regardless of comments from the neighbours, ironic looks from acquaintances, and the false solidarity of friends.
Nothing in the world was more important than my daughter's happiness, even though I'd never understood why she always had to choose the most difficult and painful of paths. But a mother doesn't have to understand anything, she simply has to love and protect. And feel proud. Knowing that we could give her almost everything, she nevertheless set off early in search of her independence. She'd had her stumbles and her failures, but she insisted on facing any storms alone. She went looking for her mother, aware of the risks she was running, and in the end, that encounter brought her closer to us. I knew she had never once heeded my advice – get a degree, get married, put up with the problems of living with someone without complaint, don't try to go beyond the limits set by society. And what had been the result?
By following my daughter's story, I became a better person. Obviously I didn't understand about the Mother Goddess or Athena's need always to surround herself
with strangers, or her inability to be contented with all that she'd achieved after so much work. But deep down, even though it may be rather late in the day for such ideas, I wish I could have been like her.
I was about to get up and prepare something to eat, but she stopped me.
'I want to stay here for a while with your arms around me. That's all I need. Viorel go and watch TV. I want to talk to your grandmother.'
The boy obeyed.
'I must have caused you a lot of suffering.'
'Not at all. On the contrary, you and your son are the source of all our joy and our reason for living.' 'But I haven't exactly–'
'I'm glad it's been the way it has. I can say it now: there were moments when I hated you, when I bitterly regretted not having followed the advice of that nurse and adopted another baby. Then I'd ask myself: “How can a mother hate her own daughter?” I took tranquillizers, played bridge with my friends, went on shopping sprees, and all to make up for the love I'd given you and which I felt I wasn't getting back.
'A few months ago, when you decided to give up yet another job that was bringing you both money and prestige, I was in despair. I went to the local church. I wanted to make a promise to the Virgin and beg her to bring you back to reality, to force you to change your life and make the most of the chances you were throwing away. I was ready to do anything in exchange for that.
'I stood looking at the Virgin and Child. And I said: “You're a mother and you know what's happening. Ask anything of me, but save my child, because I think she's bent on self-destruction.”'
I felt Sherine's arms holding me tighter. She was crying again, but her tears were different this time. I was doing my best to control my feelings.
'And do you know what I felt at that moment? I felt that she was talking to me and saying: “Listen, Samira, that's what I thought too. I suffered for years because my son wouldn't listen to anything I said. I used to worry about his safety, I didn't like the friends he chose, and he showed no respect for laws, customs, religion, or his elders.” Need I go on?'
'Yes, I'd like to hear the rest of the story.'
'The Virgin concluded by saying: “But my son didn't listen to me. And now I'm very glad that he
didn't.”'
I gently removed myself from her embrace and got up. 'You two need to eat.'
I went to the kitchen, prepared some onion soup and a dish of tabbouleh, warmed up some unleavened bread, put it all on the table, and we had lunch together. We talked about trivial things, which, at such moments, always help to bring us together and justify our pleasure at being there, quietly, even if, outside, a storm is uprooting trees and sowing destruction. Of course, at the end of that afternoon, my daughter and my grandson would walk out of the door to confront the winds, the thunder and the lightning all over again, but that was their choice.
'Mum, you said that you'd do anything for me, didn't you?' It was true. I would lay down my life if necessary.
'Don't you think I should be prepared to do anything for Viorel too?'
'I think that's a mother's instinct, but instinct aside, it's the greatest proof of love there is.' She continued eating.
'You know that your father is happy to help with this case being brought against you, if you want him to, that is.'
'Of course I do. This is my family we're talking about.'
I thought twice, three times, but couldn't hold back my words:
'Can I give you some advice? I know you have some influential friends, that journalist, for example. Why don't you ask him to write about your story and tell him your version of events? The press are giving a lot of coverage to that vicar, and people will end up thinking he's right.'
'So, as well as accepting what I do, you also want to help me?'
'Yes, Sherine. Even though I may not understand you, even though I sometimes suffer as the Virgin must have suffered all her life, even if you're not Jesus Christ with an all-important message for the world, I'm on your side and I want to see you win.'
Heron Ryan, journalist
Athena arrived while I was frantically making notes for what I imagined would be the ideal interview on the events in Portobello and the rebirth of the Goddess. It was a very, very delicate affair.
What I saw at the warehouse was a woman saying: 'You can do it, let the Great Mother teach you trust in love and miracles will happen.' And the crowd agreed, but that wouldn't last long, because we were living in an age in which slavery was the only path to happiness. Free will demands immense responsibility; it's hard work, it brings with it anguish and suffering.
'I need you to write something about me,' she said.
I told her that we should wait a little – after all, the whole affair could fade from view the following week – but that, meanwhile, I'd prepared a few questions about Female Energy.
'At the moment, all the fuss and the fighting is only of interest to people in the immediate area and to the tabloids. No respectable newspaper has published a single line about it. London is full of these little local disturbances, and getting into the broadsheets really isn't advisable. It would be best if the group didn't meet for two or three weeks. However, I think that the business about the Goddess, if treated with the seriousness it deserves, could make a lot of people ask themselves some really important questions.'
'Over supper that time, you said that you loved me. And now you're not only telling me you don't want to help me, you're asking me to give up the things I believe in.'
How to interpret those words? Was she finally accepting the love I'd offered her that night, and which accompanied me every minute of my life? According to the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran, it was more important to give than to receive, but while these were wise words, I was part of what is known as 'humanity', with my frailties, my moments of indecision, my desire simply to live in peace, to be the slave
of my feelings and to surrender myself without asking any questions, without even knowing if my love was reciprocated. All she had to do was to let me love her; I was sure that Hagia Sofia would agree with me. Athena had been passing through my life now for nearly two years, and I was afraid she might simply continue on her way and disappear over the horizon, without my having even been able to accompany her on part of that journey.
'Are you talking about love?' 'I'm asking for your help.'
What to do? Control myself, stay cool, not precipitate things and end up destroying them? Or take the step I needed to take, embrace her and protect her from all dangers?
My head kept telling me to say: 'Don't you worry about a thing. I love you', but instead I said: 'I want to help. Please trust me. I'd do anything in the world for you, including saying “No” if I thought that was the right thing to do, even though you might not understand my reasoning.'
I told her that the deputy editor on my newspaper had proposed a series of articles
about the reawakening of the Goddess, which would include an interview with her. At first, it had seemed to me an excellent idea, but now I saw that it would be best to wait a little. I said:
'You either carry your mission forward or you defend yourself. You're aware, I know, that what you're doing is more important than how you're seen by other people. Do you agree?'
'I'm thinking of my son. Every day now he gets into some fight or argument at school.'
'That will pass. In a week, it'll be forgotten. That will be the moment to act, not in order to defend yourself against idiotic attacks, but to set out, confidently and wisely, the true breadth of your work. And if you have any doubts about my feelings and are determined to continue, then I'll come with you to the next meeting. And we'll see what happens.'
The following Monday I went with her to the meeting. I was not now just another person in the crowd; I could see things as she was seeing them.
People crowded into the warehouse; there were flowers and applause, young women calling her 'the priestess of the Goddess', a few smartly dressed ladies begging for a private audience because of some illness in the family. The crowd started pushing us and blocking the entrance. We had never imagined that we might need some form of security, and I was frightened. I took her arm, picked up Viorel, and we went in.
Inside the packed room, a very angry Andrea was waiting for us.
'I think you should tell them that you're not performing any miracles today!' she shouted at Athena. 'You're allowing yourself to be seduced by vanity! Why doesn't Hagia Sofia tell all these people to go away?'
'Because she can diagnose illnesses,' replied Athena defiantly. 'And the more people who benefit from that, the better.'
She was about to say more, but the crowd was applauding and she stepped up onto the improvised stage. She turned on the small sound system she'd brought from home, gave instructions for people to dance against the rhythm of the music, and the ritual began. At a certain point, Viorel went and sat down in a corner – that was the moment for Hagia Sofia to appear. Athena did as I'd seen her do many times before: she abruptly turned off the music, clutched her head in her hands, and the people waited in silence as if obeying an invisible command.
The ritual followed its unvarying path: there were questions about love, which were
rejected, although she agreed to comment on anxieties, illnesses and other personal problems. From where I was, I could see that some people had tears in their eyes, others behaved as if they were standing before a saint. Then came the moment for the closing sermon, before the group celebration of the Mother.
Since I knew what would happen next, I started thinking about the best way to get out of there with the minimum of fuss. I hoped that she would take Andrea's advice and tell them not to go looking for miracles there. I went over to where Viorel was sitting, so that we could leave the place as soon as his mother had finished speaking.
And that was when I heard the voice of Hagia Sofia.
'Today, before we close, we're going to talk about diet. Forget all about slimming regimes.' Diet? Forget about slimming regimes?
'We have survived for all these millennia because we have been able to eat. And now that seems to have become a curse. Why? What is it that makes us, at forty years old, want to have the same body we had when we were young? Is it possible to stop time? Of course not. And why should we be thin?'
I heard a kind of murmuring in the crowd. They were probably expecting a more spiritual message. 'We don't need to be thin. We buy books, we go to gyms, we expend a lot of brain power on trying to hold back time, when we should be celebrating the miracle of being here in this world. Instead of thinking about how to live better, we're obsessed with weight.
'Forget all about that. You can read all the books you want, do all the exercise you want, punish yourself as much as you want, but you will still have only two choices
– either stop living or get fat.
'Eat in moderation, but take pleasure in eating: it isn't what enters a person's mouth that's evil, but what leaves it. Remember that for millennia we have struggled in order to keep from starving. Whose idea was it that we had to be thin all our lives? I'll tell you: the vampires of the soul, those who are so afraid of the future that they think it's possible to stop the wheel of time. Hagia Sofia can guarantee that it's not possible. Use the energy and effort you put into dieting to nourish yourself with spiritual bread. Know that the Great Mother gives generously and wisely. Respect that and you will get no fatter than passing time demands. Instead of artificially burning those calories, try to transform them into the energy required to fight for your dreams. No one ever stayed slim for very long just because of a diet.'
There was complete silence. Athena began the closing ceremony, and we all
celebrated the presence of the Mother. I clasped Viorel in my arms, promising myself that next time I would bring a few friends along to provide a little improvised security. We left to the same shouts and applause as when we had arrived.
A shopkeeper grabbed my arm:
'This is absurd! If one of my windows gets smashed, I'll sue you!'
Athena was laughing and giving autographs. Viorel seemed happy. I just hoped that no journalist was there that night. When we finally managed to extricate ourselves from the crowd, we hailed a taxi.
I asked if they would like to go somewhere to eat. 'Of course,' said Athena, 'that's just what I've been talking about.'
Antoine Locadour, historian
In this long series of mistakes that came to be known as 'The Witch of Portobello affair', what surprises me most is the ingenuousness of Heron Ryan, an international journalist of many years' experience. When we spoke, he was horrified by the tabloid headlines:
'The Goddess Diet!' screamed one.
'Get thin while you eat says Witch of Portobello!' roared another from its front page.
As well as touching on the sensitive topic of religion, Athena had gone further: she had talked about diet, a subject of national interest, more important even than wars, strikes or natural disasters. We may not all believe in God, but we all want to get thin.
Reporters interviewed local shopkeepers, who all swore blind that, in the days preceding the mass meetings, they'd seen red and black candles being lit during rituals involving only a handful of people. It
may have been nothing but cheap sensationalism, but Ryan should have foreseen that, with a court case in progress, the accuser would take every opportunity to bring to the judges' attention what he considered to be not only a calumny, but an attack on all the values that kept society going.
That same week, one of the most prestigious British newspapers published in its editorial column an article by the Rev. Ian Buck, Minister at the Evangelical Church in Kensington. It said, amongst other things:
'As a good Christian, I have a duty to turn the other cheek when I am wrongly attacked or when my honour is impugned. However, we must not forget that while
Jesus may have turned the other cheek, he also used a whip to drive out those wanting to make the Lord's House into a den of thieves. That is what we are seeing at the moment in Portobello Road: unscrupulous people who pass themselves off as savers of souls, giving false hope and promising cures for all ills, even declaring that you can stay thin and elegant if you follow their teachings.
'For this reason, I have no alternative but to go to the courts to prevent this situation continuing. The movement's followers swear that they are capable of awakening hitherto unknown gifts and they deny the existence of an All-Powerful God, replacing him with pagan divinities such as Venus and Aphrodite. For them, everything is permitted, as long as it is done with “love”. But what is love? An immoral force which justifies any end? Or a commitment to society's true values, such as the family and tradition?'
At the next meeting, foreseeing a repetition of the pitched battle of August, the police brought in half a dozen officers to avoid any confrontations. Athena arrived accompanied by a bodyguard improvised by Ryan, and this time there was not only applause, there was booing and cursing too. One woman, seeing that Athena was accompanied by a child of five, brought a charge two days later under the Children Act 1989, alleging that the mother was inflicting irreversible damage on her child and that custody should be given to the father.
One of the tabloids managed to track down Lukás Jessen-Petersen, who refused to give an interview. He threatened the reporter, saying that if he so much as mentioned Viorel in his articles, he wouldn't be responsible for his actions.
The following day, the tabloid carried the headline: 'Witch of Portobello's ex would kill for son'. That same afternoon, two more charges under the Children Act 1989 were brought before the courts, calling for the child to be taken into care.
There was no meeting after that. Groups of people – for and against –gathered outside the door, and uniformed officers were on hand to keep the peace, but Athena did not appear. The same thing happened the following week, only this time, there were fewer crowds and fewer police.
The third week, there was only the occasional bunch of flowers to be seen and someone handing out photos of Athena to passers-by.
The subject disappeared from the front pages of the London dailies. And when the Rev. Ian Buck announced his decision to withdraw all charges of defamation and calumny, 'in the Christian spirit we should show to those who repent of their actions', no major paper was interested in publishing his statement, which turned
up instead on the readers' pages of some local rag.
As far as I know, it never became national news, but was restricted to the pages that dealt only with London news. I visited Brighton a month after the meetings ended, and when I tried to bring the subject up with my friends there, none of them had the faintest idea what I was talking about.
Ryan could have cleared up the whole business, and what his newspaper said would have been picked up by the rest of the media. To my surprise, though, he never published a line about Sherine Khalil.
In my view, the crime – given its nature – had nothing to do with what happened in Portobello. It was all just a macabre coincidence.
Heron Ryan, journalist
Athena asked me to turn on the tape-recorder. She had brought another one with her, of a type I'd never seen before – very sophisticated and very small.
'Firstly, I wish to state that I've been receiving death threats. Secondly, I want you to promise that, even if I die, you will wait five years before you allow anyone else to listen to this tape. In the future, people will be able to tell what is true and what is false. Say you agree; that way you will be entering a legally binding agreement.'
'I agree, but I think–'
'Don't think anything. Should I be found dead, this will be my testament, on condition that it won't be published now.'
I turned off the tape-recorder.
'You have nothing to fear. I have friends in government, people who owe me favours, who need or will need me. We can–'
'Have I mentioned before that my boyfriend works for Scotland Yard?'
Not that again. If he really did exist, why wasn't he there when we needed him, when both Athena and Viorel could have been attacked by the mob?
Questions crowded into my mind: Was she trying to test me? What was going through that woman's mind? Was she unbalanced, fickle, one hour wanting to be by my side, the next talking about this nonexistent man?
'Turn on the tape-recorder,' she said.
I felt terrible. I was beginning to think that she'd been using me all along. I would like to have been able to say: 'Go away. Get out of my life. Ever since I first met you, everything has been a hell. All I want is for you to come here, put your arms around me and kiss me and say you want to stay with me forever, but that never happens.'
'Is there anything wrong?'
She knew there was something wrong. Or, rather, she couldn't possibly not have known what I was feeling, because I had never concealed my love for her, even though I'd only spoken openly of it once. But I would cancel any appointment to see her; I was always there when she needed me; I was trying to build some kind of relationship with her son, in the belief that he would one day call me 'Dad'. I never asked her to stop what she was doing; I accepted her way of life, her decisions; I suffered in silence when she suffered; I was glad when she triumphed; I was proud of her determination.
'Why did you turn off the tape-recorder?'
I hovered for a second between heaven and hell, between rebellion and submission, between cold reason and destructive emotion. In the end, summoning up all my strength, I managed to control myself. I pressed the button.
'Let's continue.'
'As I was saying, I've been receiving death threats. I've been getting anonymous phone calls. They insult me and say I'm a menace, that I'm trying to restore the reign of Satan, and that they can't allow this to happen.'
'Have you spoken to the police?'
I deliberately omitted any reference to her boyfriend, showing that I'd never believed that story
anyway.
'Yes, I have. They've recorded the calls. They come from public phone boxes, but the police told me not to worry, that they're watching my house. They've arrested one person: he's mentally ill and believes he's the reincarnation of one of the apostles, and that “this time, he must fight so that Christ is not driven out again”. He's in a psychiatric hospital now. The police explained that he's been in hospital before for making similar threats to other people.'
'If they're on the case, there's no need to worry. Our police are the best in the world.'
'I'm not afraid of death. If I were to die today, I would carry with me moments that few people my age have had the chance to experience. What I'm afraid of, and this is why I've asked you to record our conversation today, is that I might kill someone.'
'Kill someone?'
'You know that there are legal proceedings underway to remove Viorel from me.
I've asked friends, but no one can do anything. We just have to await the verdict. According to them – depending on the judge, of course – these fanatics will get what they want. That's why I've bought a gun. I know what it means for a
child to be removed from his mother, because I've experienced it myself. And so, when the first bailiff arrives, I'll shoot, and I'll keep shooting until the bullets run out. If they don't shoot me first, I'll use the knives in my house. If they take the knives, I'll use my teeth and my nails. But no one is going to take Viorel from me, or only over my dead body. Are you recording this?'
'I am. But there are ways–'
'There aren't. My father is following the case. He says that when it comes to family law, there's little that can be done. Now turn off the tape-recorder.'
'Was that your testament?'
She didn't answer. When I did nothing, she took the initiative. She went over to the sound system and put on that music from the steppes, which I now knew almost by heart. She danced as she did during the rituals, completely out of rhythm, and I knew what she was trying to do. Her tape-recorder was still on, a silent witness to everything that was happening there. The afternoon sunlight was pouring in through the windows, but Athena was off in search of another light, one that had been there since the creation of the world.
When she felt the spark from the Mother she stopped dancing, turned off the music, put her head in her hands and didn't move for some time. Then she raised her head and looked at me.
'You know who is here, don't you?'
'Yes. Athena and her divine side, Hagia Sofia.'
'I've grown used to doing this. I don't think it's necessary, but it's the method I've discovered for getting in touch with her, and now it's become a tradition in my life. You know who you're talking to, don't you? To Athena. I am Hagia Sofia.'
'Yes, I know. The second time I danced at your house, I discovered that I had a spirit guide too: Philemon. But I don't talk to him very much, I don't listen to what he says. I only know that when he's present, it's as if our two souls have finally met.'
'That's right. And today Philemon and Hagia Sofia are going to talk about love.' 'Should I dance first?'
'There's no need. Philemon will understand me, because I can see that you were touched by my dance. The man before me suffers for something which he believes
he has never received – my love. But the man beyond your self understands that all the pain, anxiety and feelings of abandonment are unnecessary and childish. I love you. Not in the way that your human side wants, but in the way that the divine spark wants. We inhabit the same tent, which was placed on our path by Her. There we understand that we are not the slaves of our feelings, but their masters. We serve and are served, we open the doors of our rooms and we embrace. Perhaps we kiss too, because everything that happens very intensely on Earth will have its counterpart on the invisible plane. And you know that I'm not trying to provoke you, that I'm not toying with your feelings when I say that.' 'What is love, then?'
'The soul, blood and body of the Great Mother. I love you as exiled souls love each other when they meet in the middle of the desert. There will never be anything physical between us, but no passion is in vain, no love is ever wasted. If the Mother awoke that love in your heart, she awoke it in mine too, although your heart perhaps accepts it more readily. The energy of love can never be lost – it is more powerful than anything and shows itself in many ways.'
'I'm not strong enough for this. Such abstractions only leave me feeling more depressed and alone than ever.'
'I'm not strong enough either. I need someone by my side too. But one day, our eyes will open, the different forms of Love will be made manifest, and then suffering will disappear from the face of the Earth.
It won't be long now, I think. Many of us are returning from a long journey during which we were forced to search for things that were of no interest to us. Now we realise that they were false. But this return cannot be made without pain, because we have been away for a long time and feel that we are strangers in our own land. It will take some time to find the friends who also left, and the places where our roots and our treasures lie. But this will happen.'
For some reason, what she said touched me. And that drove me on. 'I want to continue talking about love,' I said.
'We are talking. That has always been the aim of everything I've looked for in my life – allowing love to manifest itself in me without barriers, letting it fill up my blank spaces, making me dance, smile,
justify my life, protect my son, get in touch with the heavens, with men and women, with all those who were placed on my path. I tried to control my feelings, saying such things as “he deserves my love” or “he doesn't”. Until, that is, I
understood my fate, when I saw that I might lose the most important thing in my life.'
'Your son.'
'Exactly. He is the most complete manifestation of love. When the possibility arose that he might be taken away from me, then I found myself and realised that I could never have anything or lose anything. I understood this after crying for many hours. It was only after intense suffering that the part of me I call Hagia Sofia said: “What nonsense! Love always stays, even though, sooner or later, your son will leave.”'
I was beginning to understand.
'Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is – love simply is. That is the testament of Athena or Sherine or Hagia Sofia – love is. No definitions. Love and don't ask too many questions. Just love.'
'That's difficult.' 'Are you recording?'
'You asked me to turn the machine off.' 'Well, turn it on again.' I did as she asked. Athena went on:
'It's difficult for me too. That's why I'm not going back home. I'm going into hiding. The police might protect me from madmen, but not from human justice. I had a mission to fulfil and it took me so far that I even risked the custody of my son. Not that I regret it. I fulfilled my destiny.'
'What was your mission?'
'You know what it was. You were there from the start. Preparing the way for the Mother. Continuing a tradition that has been suppressed for centuries, but which is now beginning to experience a resurgence.' 'Perhaps…'
I stopped, but she didn't say a word until I'd finished my sentence. '…perhaps you came too early, and people aren't yet ready.' Athena laughed.
'Of course they're not. That's why there were all those confrontations, all that aggression and obscurantism. Because the forces of darkness are dying, and they are thrown back on such things as a last resort. They seem very strong, as animals do before they die, but afterwards, they're too exhausted to get to their feet. I sowed the seed in many hearts, and each one will reveal the Renaissance in its own way, but one of those hearts will follow the full Tradition – Andrea.'
Andrea.
Who hated her, who blamed her for the collapse of our relationship, who said to anyone who would listen that Athena had been taken over by egotism and vanity,
and had destroyed something that had been very hard to create.
Athena got to her feet and picked up her bag – Hagia Sofia was still with her. 'I can see your aura. It's being healed of some needless suffering.'
'You know, of course, that Andrea doesn't like you.'
'Naturally. But we've been speaking for nearly half an hour about love. Liking has nothing to do with it. Andrea is perfectly capable of fulfilling her mission. She has more experience and more charisma than I do. She learned from my mistakes; she knows that she must be prudent because in an age in which the wild beast of obscurantism is dying, there's bound to be conflict. Andrea may hate me as a person, and that may be why she's developed her gifts so quickly – to prove that she was more able than me. When hatred makes a person grow, it's transformed into one of the many ways of loving.'
She picked up her tape-recorder, put it in her bag and left.
At the end of that week, the court gave its verdict: various witnesses were heard, and Sherine Khalil, known as Athena, was given the right to keep custody of her child.
Moreover, the head teacher at the boy's school was officially warned that any kind of discrimination against the boy would be punishable by law.
I knew there was no point in ringing the apartment where she used to live. She'd left the key with Andrea, taken her sound system, some clothes, and said that she would be gone for some time.
I waited for the telephone call to invite me to celebrate that victory together. With each day that passed, my love for Athena ceased being a source of suffering and became a lake ofjoy and serenity. I no longer felt so alone. At some point in space, our souls – and the souls of all those returning exiles – were joyfully celebrating their reunion.
The first week passed, and I assumed she was trying to recover from the recent tensions. A month later, I assumed she must have gone back to Dubai and taken up her old job; I telephoned and was told that they'd heard nothing more from her, but if I knew where she was, could I please give her a message: the door was always open, and she was greatly missed.
I decided to write a series of articles on the reawakening of the Mother, which provoked a number of offensive letters accusing me of 'promoting paganism', but which were otherwise a great success with our readership.
Two months later, when I was just about to have lunch, a colleague at work
phoned me. The body of Sherine Khalil, the Witch of Portobello, had been found in Hampstead. She had been brutally murdered.
[text2]
Now that I've finished transcribing all the taped interviews, I'm going to give her the transcript. She's probably gone for a walk in the Snowdonia National Park as she does every afternoon. It's her birthday – or, rather, the date that her parents chose for her birthday when they adopted her – and this is my present to her.
Viorel, who will be coming to the celebration with his grandparents, has also prepared a surprise for her. He's recorded hisfirst composition in afriend's studio and he's going to play it during supper.
She'll ask me afterwards: 'Why didyou do this?'
And I'll say: 'Because I needed to understandyou. ' During all the years we've been together, I've only heard what I thought were legends about her, but now I know that the legends are true.
Whenever I suggested going with her, be it to the Monday evening celebrations at her apartment, to Romania, or to get-togethers with friends, she always asked me not to. She wanted to be free, andpeople, she said, findpolicemen intimidating. Faced by someone like me, even the innocentfeel guilty.
However, I went to the Portobello warehouse twice without her knowledge. Again without her knowledge, I arrangedfor various colleagues to be around to protect her when she arrived and left, and at least one person, later identified as a militant member of some sect, was arrestedfor carrying a knife. He said he'd been told by spirits to acquire a little bloodfrom the Witch ofPortobello, who was a manifestation of the Great Mother. The blood, he said, was needed to consecrate certain offerings. He didn't intend to kill her; he merely wanted a little blood on a handkerchief. The investigation showed that there really was no intention to murder, but nevertheless, he was charged and sentenced to six months in prison.
It wasn't my idea to make it look as if she'd been murdered. Athena wanted to disappear and asked me if that would be possible. I explained that, if the courts decided that the State should have custody of her child, I couldn't go against the law, but when the judge found in herfavour, we were free to carry out her plan.
Athena wasfully aware that once the meetings at the warehouse became the focus of local gossip, her mission would be ruinedfor good. There was no point standing up in front of the crowd and denying that she was a queen, a witch, a divine manifestation, because people choose to follow the powerful and they give power
to whomever they wish. And that would go against everything she preached
–freedom to choose, to consecrate your own bread, to awaken your particular gifts, with no help from guides or shepherds.
Nor was there any point in disappearing. People would interpret such a gesture as a retreat into the wilderness, an ascent into the heavens, a secret pilgrimage to meet teachers in the Himalayas, and they would always be awaiting her return. Legends andpossibly a cult could grow up around her. We started to notice this when she stopped going to Portobello. My informants said that, contrary to everyone's expectations, her cult was growing with frightening speed: other similar groups were being created, people turned up claiming to be the 'heirs' ofHagia Sofia, the newspaper photograph of her holding Viorel was being sold on the black market, depicting her as a victim, a martyr to intolerance. Occultists started talking about an 'Order ofAthena', through which – upon payment – one could be put in touch with the founder.
All that remained was 'death', but the death had to take place in completely normal circumstances, like the death of any other person murdered in a big city. This obliged us to take certain precautions:
(a) The crime could not in any way be associated with martyrdom for religious reasons, because, if it was, we would only aggravate the very situation we were trying to avoid.
(b) The victim would have to be so badly disfigured as to be unrecognisable.
(c) The murderer could not be arrested.
(d) We would need a corpse.
In a city like London, dead, disfigured, burned bodies turn up every day, but normally we find the culprit. So we had to wait nearly two months until the Hampstead murder. We found a murderer too, who was also conveniently dead – he hadfled to Portugal and committed suicide by blowing his brains out. Justice had been done, and all I needed was a little cooperation from my closestfriends. One hand washes the other: they sometimes asked me to do things that were not entirely orthodox, and as long as no major law was broken, there was – shall we say – a certain degree offlexibility in interpreting the facts.
That is what happened. As soon as the body wasfound, I and a colleague of many years' standing were given the case and, almost simultaneously, we got news that the Portuguese police hadfound the body of a suicide in Guimarães, along with a note confessing to a murder whose detailsfitted the case we were
dealing with, and giving instructionsfor all his money to be donated to charitable institutions. It had been a crime ofpassion – love often ends like that.
In the note he left behind, the dead man said that he'd brought the woman from one of the ex-Soviet republics and done everything he could to help her. He was prepared to marry her so that she would have the same rights as a British citizen, and then he'dfound a letter she was about to send to some German man, who had invited her to spend afew days at his castle.
In the letter, she said she couldn't wait to leave and asked the German to send her a plane ticket at once so that they could meet again as soon as possible. They had met in a London café and had only exchanged two letters.
We had the perfect scenario.
Myfriend hesitated – no one likes to have an unsolved crime on theirfiles – but when I said that I'd take the blame for this, he agreed.
I went to the place where Athena was in hiding – a delightful house in Oxford. I used a syringe to take some of her blood. I cut off a lock of her hair and singed it slightly. Back at the scene of the crime, I scattered this 'evidence' around. I knew that since no one knew the identity of her real mother andfather, no DNA identification would be possible, and so all I needed was to cross myfingers and hope the murder didn't get too much coverage in the press.
A few journalists turned up. I told them the story of the murderer's suicide, mentioning only the country, not the town. I said that no motive had been foundfor the crime, but that we had completely discounted any idea that it was a revenge killing or that there had been some religious motive. As I understood it (after all, the police can make mistakes too), the victim had been raped. She hadpresumably recognised her attacker, who had then killed and mutilated her.
If the German ever wrote again, his letters would have been sent back marked 'Return to sender'. Athena's photograph had appeared only once in the newspapers, during the first demonstration in Portobello, and so the chances of her being recognised were minimal. Apartfrom me, only three people know this story – her parents and her son. They all attended the burial of 'her' remains and the gravestone bears her name.
Her son goes to see her every weekend and is doing brilliantly at school.
Of course, Athena may one day tire of this isolated life and decide to return to London. Nevertheless, people have very short memories, and apartfrom her closestfriends, no one will remember her. By then, Andrea will be the catalyst and
– to be fair – she is better able than Athena to continue the mission. As well as having all the necessary gifts, she's an actress and knows how deal with the public. I understand that Andrea's work is spreading, although without attracting unwanted attention. I hear about people in key positions in society who are in contact with her and, when necessary, when the right critical mass is reached, they will put an end to the hypocrisy of the Rev. Ian Bucks of this world.
And that's what Athena wants, notfame for herself, as many (including Andrea) thought, but that the mission should be completed.
At the start of my investigations, ofwhich this transcript is the result, I thought I was reconstructing her life so that she would see how brave and important she had been. But as the conversations went on, I gradually discovered my own hidden side, even though I don't much believe in these things. And I reached the conclusion that the real reason behind all this work was a desire to answer a question to which I'd never known the answer: why did Athena love me, when we're so different and when we don't even share the same world view?
I remember when I kissed herfor the first time, in a bar near Victoria Station. She was workingfor a bank at the time, and I was a detective at Scotland Yard. After we'd been out together afew times, she invited me to go and dance at her landlord's apartment, but I never did – it's not really my style.
And instead ofgetting annoyed, she said that she respected my decision. When I re-read the statements made by herfriends, Ifeel really proud, because Athena doesn't seem to have respected anyone else's decisions.
Months later, before she set off to Dubai, I told her that I loved her. She said that she felt the same way, but added that we must be prepared to spend long periods apart. Each of us would work in a different country, but true love could withstand such a separation.
That was the only time I dared to ask her: 'Why do you love me?' She replied: 'I don't know and I don't care. '
Now, as Iput the finishing touches to these pages, I believe I may have found the answer in her last conversation with the journalist.
Love simply is.
25 February 2006 19:47:00 Revised version completed on St Expeditus' Day, 2006
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1. ENGAGED
No one is staring at you, I promised myself. No one is staring at you. No one is staring at you.
But, because I couldn’t lie convincingly even to myself, I had to check.
As I sat waiting for one of the three traffic lights in town to turn green, I peeked to the right—in her minivan, Mrs. Weber had turned her whole torso in my direction. Her eyes bored into mine, and I flinched back, wondering why she didn’t drop her gaze or look ashamed. It was still considered rude to stare at people, wasn’t it? Didn’t that apply to me anymore?
Then I remembered that these windows were so darkly tinted that she probably had no idea if it was even me in here, let alone that I’d caught her looking. I tried to take some comfort in the fact that she wasn’t really staring at me, just the car.
My car. Sigh.
I glanced to the left and groaned. Two pedestrians were frozen on the sidewalk, missing their chance to cross as they stared. Behind them, Mr. Marshall was gawking through the plate-glass window of his little souvenir shop. At least he didn’t have his nose pressed up against the glass. Yet.
The light turned green and, in my hurry to escape, I stomped on the gas pedal without thinking—the normal way I would have punched it to get my ancient Chevy truck moving.
Engine snarling like a hunting panther, the car jolted forward so fast that my body slammed into the black leather seat and my stomach flattened against my spine.
“Arg!” I gasped as I fumbled for the brake. Keeping my head, I merely tapped the pedal. The car lurched to an absolute standstill anyway.
I couldn’t bear to look around at the reaction. If there had been any doubt as to who was driving this car before, it was gone now. With the toe of my shoe, I gently nudged the gas pedal down one half millimeter, and the car shot forward again.
I managed to reach my goal, the gas station. If I hadn’t been running on vapors, I wouldn’t have come into town at all. I was going without a lot of things these days, like Pop-Tarts and shoelaces, to avoid spending time in public.
Moving as if I were in a race, I got the hatch open, the cap off, the card scanned, and the nozzle in the tank within seconds. Of course, there was nothing I could do
to make the numbers on the gauge pick up the pace. They ticked by sluggishly, almost as if they were doing it just to annoy me.
It wasn’t bright out—a typical drizzly day in Forks, Washington—but I still felt like a spotlight was trained on me, drawing attention to the delicate ring on my left hand. At times like this, sensing the eyes on my back, it felt as if the ring were pulsing like a neon sign: Look at me, look at me.
It was stupid to be so self-conscious, and I knew that. Besides my dad and mom, did it really matter what people were saying about my engagement? About my new car? About my mysterious acceptance into an Ivy League college? About the shiny black credit card that felt red-hot in my back pocket right now?
“Yeah, who cares what they think,” I muttered under my breath. “Um, miss?” a man’s voice called.
I turned, and then wished I hadn’t.
Two men stood beside a fancy SUV with brand-new kayaks tied to the top. Neither of them was looking at me; they both were staring at the car.
Personally, I didn’t get it. But then, I was just proud I could distinguish between the symbols for Toyota, Ford, and Chevy. This car was glossy black, sleek, and pretty, but it was still just a car to me.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but could you tell me what kind of car you’re driving?” the tall one asked.
“Um, a Mercedes, right?”
“Yes,” the man said politely while his shorter friend rolled his eyes at my answer. “I know. But I was wondering, is that… are you driving a Mercedes Guardian?” The man said the name with reverence. I had a feeling this guy would get along well with Edward Cullen, my… my fiancé (there really was no getting around that truth with the wedding just days away). “They aren’t supposed to be available in Europe yet,” the man went on, “let alone here.”
While his eyes traced the contours of my car—it didn’t look much different from any other Mercedes sedan to me, but what did I know?—I briefly contemplated my issues with words like fiancé, wedding, husband, etc.
I just couldn’t put it together in my head.
On the one hand, I had been raised to cringe at the very thought of poofy white dresses and bouquets. But more than that, I just couldn’t reconcile a staid, respectable, dull concept like husband with my concept of Edward. It was like
casting an archangel as an accountant; I couldn’t visualize him in any commonplace role.
Like always, as soon as I started thinking about Edward I was caught up in a dizzy spin of fantasies. The stranger had to clear his throat to get my attention; he was still waiting for an answer about the car’s make and model.
“I don’t know,” I told him honestly.
“Do you mind if I take a picture with it?”
It took me a second to process that. “Really? You want to take a picture with the car?”
“Sure—nobody is going to believe me if I don’t get proof.” “Um. Okay. Fine.”
I swiftly put away the nozzle and crept into the front seat to hide while the enthusiast dug a huge professional-looking camera out of his backpack. He and his friend took turns posing by the hood, and then they went to take pictures at the back end.
“I miss my truck,” I whimpered to myself.
Very, very convenient—too convenient—that my truck would wheeze its last wheeze just weeks after Edward and I had agreed to our lopsided compromise, one detail of which was that he be allowed to replace my truck when it passed on. Edward swore it was only to be expected; my truck had lived a long, full life and then expired of natural causes. According to him. And, of course, I had no way to verify his story or to try to raise my truck from the dead on my own. My favorite mechanic—
I stopped that thought cold, refusing to let it come to a conclusion. Instead, I listened to the men’s voices outside, muted by the car walls.
“. . . went at it with a flamethrower in the online video. Didn’t even pucker the paint.”
“Of course not. You could roll a tank over this baby. Not much of a market for one over here. Designed for Middle East diplomats, arms dealers, and drug lords mostly.”
“Think she’s something?” the short one asked in a softer voice. I ducked my head, cheeks flaming.
“Huh,” the tall one said. “Maybe. Can’t imagine what you’d need missile-proof glass and four thousand pounds of body armor for around here. Must be headed somewhere more hazardous.”
Body armor. Four thousand pounds of body armor. And missile-proof glass? Nice. What had happened to good old-fashioned bulletproof?
Well, at least this made some sense—if you had a twisted sense of humor.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t expected Edward to take advantage of our deal, to weight it on his side so that he could give so much more than he would receive. I’d agreed that he could replace my truck when it needed replacing, not expecting that moment to come quite so soon, of course. When I’d been forced to admit that the truck had become no more than a still-life tribute to classic Chevys on my curb, I knew his idea of a replacement was probably going to embarrass me. Make me the focus of stares and whispers. I’d been right about that part. But even in my darkest imaginings I had not foreseen that he would get me two cars.
The “before” car and the “after” car, he’d explained when I’d flipped out.
This was just the “before” car. He’d told me it was a loaner and promised that he was returning it after the wedding. It all had made absolutely no sense to me.
Until now.
Ha ha. Because I was so fragilely human, so accident-prone, so much a victim to my own dangerous bad luck, apparently I needed a tank-resistant car to keep me safe. Hilarious. I was sure he and his brothers had enjoyed the joke quite a bit behind my back.
Or maybe, just maybe, a small voice whispered in my head, it’s not a joke, silly. Maybe he’s really that worried about you. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s gone a little overboard trying to protect you.
I sighed.
I hadn’t seen the “after” car yet. It was hidden under a sheet in the deepest corner of the Cullens’ garage. I knew most people would have peeked by now, but I really didn’t want to know.
Probably no body armor on that car—because I wouldn’t need it after the honeymoon. Virtual indestructibility was just one of the many perks I was looking forward to. The best parts about being a Cullen were not expensive cars and impressive credit cards.
“Hey,” the tall man called, cupping his hands to the glass in an effort to peer in. “We’re done now. Thanks a lot!”
“You’re welcome,” I called back, and then tensed as I started the engine and eased the pedal—ever so gently—down. . . .
No matter how many times I drove down the familiar road home, I still couldn’t make the rain-faded flyers fade into the background. Each one of them, stapled to telephone poles and taped to street signs, was like a fresh slap in the face. A well- deserved slap in the face. My mind was sucked back into the thought I’d interrupted so immediately before. I couldn’t avoid it on this road. Not with pictures of my favorite mechanic flashing past me at regular intervals.
My best friend. My Jacob.
The HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY? posters were not Jacob’s father’s idea. It had been
my father, Charlie, who’d printed up the flyers and spread them all over town. And not just Forks, but Port Angeles and Sequim and Hoquiam and Aberdeen and every other town in the Olympic Peninsula. He’d made sure that all the police stations in the state of Washington had the same flyer hanging on the wall, too.
His own station had a whole corkboard dedicated to finding Jacob. A corkboard that was mostly empty, much to his disappointment and frustration.
My dad was disappointed with more than the lack of response. He was most disappointed with Billy, Jacob’s father—and Charlie’s closest friend.
For Billy’s not being more involved with the search for his sixteen-year-old “runaway.” For Billy’s refusing to put up the flyers in La Push, the reservation on the coast that was Jacob’s home. For his seeming resigned to Jacob’s disappearance, as if there was nothing he could do. For his saying, “Jacob’s grown up now. He’ll come home if he wants to.”
And he was frustrated with me, for taking Billy’s side.
I wouldn’t put up posters, either. Because both Billy and I knew where Jacob was, roughly speaking, and we also knew that no one had seen this boy.
The flyers put the usual big, fat lump in my throat, the usual stinging tears in my eyes, and I was glad Edward was out hunting this Saturday. If Edward saw my reaction, it would only make him feel terrible, too.
Of course, there were drawbacks to it being Saturday. As I turned slowly and carefully onto my street, I could see my dad’s police cruiser in the driveway of our home. He’d skipped fishing again today. Still sulking about the wedding.
So I wouldn’t be able to use the phone inside. But I had to call. . . .
I parked on the curb behind the Chevy sculpture and pulled the cell phone Edward had given me for emergencies out of the glove compartment. I dialed, keeping my finger on the “end” button as the phone rang. Just in case.
“Hello?” Seth Clearwater answered, and I sighed in relief. I was way too chicken to speak to his older sister, Leah. The phrase “bite my head off” was not entirely a figure of speech when it came to Leah.
“Hey, Seth, it’s Bella.”
“Oh, hiya, Bella! How are you?”
Choked up. Desperate for reassurance. “Fine.” “Calling for an update?”
“You’re psychic.”
“Not hardly. I’m no Alice—you’re just predictable,” he joked. Among the Quileute pack down at La Push, only Seth was comfortable even mentioning the Cullens by name, let alone joking about things like my nearly omniscient sister-in-law-to-be.
“I know I am.” I hesitated for a minute. “How is he?”
Seth sighed. “Same as ever. He won’t talk, though we know he hears us. He’s trying not to think human, you know. Just going with his instincts.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Somewhere in northern Canada. I can’t tell you which province. He doesn’t pay much attention to state lines.”
“Any hint that he might . . .”
“He’s not coming home, Bella. Sorry.”
I swallowed. “S’okay, Seth. I knew before I asked. I just can’t help wishing.” “Yeah. We all feel the same way.”
“Thanks for putting up with me, Seth. I know the others must give you a hard time.”
“They’re not your hugest fans,” he agreed cheerfully. “Kind of lame, I think. Jacob made his choices, you made yours. Jake doesn’t like their attitude about it. ’Course, he isn’t super thrilled that you’re checking up on him, either.”
I gasped. “I thought he wasn’t talking to you?”
“He can’t hide everything from us, hard as he’s trying.”
So Jacob knew I was worried. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Well, at least he knew I hadn’t skipped off into the sunset and forgotten him completely. He might have imagined me capable of that.
“I guess I’ll see you at the… wedding,” I said, forcing the word out through my teeth.
“Yeah, me and my mom will be there. It was cool of you to ask us.”
I smiled at the enthusiasm in his voice. Though inviting the Clearwaters had been Edward’s idea, I was glad he’d thought of it. Having Seth there would be nice—a link, however tenuous, to my missing best man. “It wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“Tell Edward I said hi, ’kay?” “Sure thing.”
I shook my head. The friendship that had sprung up between Edward and Seth was something that still boggled my mind. It was proof, though, that things didn’t have to be this way. That vampires and werewolves could get along just fine, thank you very much, if they were of a mind to.
Not everybody liked this idea.
“Ah,” Seth said, his voice cracking up an octave. “Er, Leah’s home.” “Oh! Bye!”
The phone went dead. I left it on the seat and prepared myself mentally to go inside the house, where Charlie would be waiting.
My poor dad had so much to deal with right now. Jacob-the-runaway was just one of the straws on his overburdened back. He was almost as worried about me, his barely-a-legal-adult daughter who was about to become a Mrs. in just a few days’ time.
I walked slowly through the light rain, remembering the night we’d told him. . . .
As the sound of Charlie’s cruiser announced his return, the ring suddenly weighed a hundred pounds on my finger. I wanted to shove my left hand in a pocket, or maybe sit on it, but Edward’s cool, firm grasp kept it front and center.
“Stop fidgeting, Bella. Please try to remember that you’re not confessing to a murder here.”
“Easy for you to say.”
I listened to the ominous sound of my father’s boots clomping up the sidewalk. The key rattled in the already open door. The sound reminded me of that part of the horror movie when the victim realizes she’s forgotten to lock her deadbolt.
“Calm down, Bella,” Edward whispered, listening to the acceleration of my heart. The door slammed against the wall, and I flinched like I’d been Tasered.
“Hey, Charlie,” Edward called, entirely relaxed. “No!” I protested under my breath.
“What?” Edward whispered back. “Wait till he hangs his gun up!”
Edward chuckled and ran his free hand through his tousled bronze hair.
Charlie came around the corner, still in his uniform, still armed, and tried not to make a face when he spied us sitting together on the loveseat. Lately, he’d been putting forth a lot of effort to like Edward more. Of course, this revelation was sure to end that effort immediately.
“Hey, kids. What’s up?”
“We’d like to talk to you,” Edward said, so serene. “We have some good news.”
Charlie’s expression went from strained friendliness to black suspicion in a second.
“Good news?” Charlie growled, looking straight at me. “Have a seat, Dad.”
He raised one eyebrow, stared at me for five seconds, then stomped to the recliner and sat down on the very edge, his back ramrod straight.
“Don’t get worked up, Dad,” I said after a moment of loaded silence. “Everything’s okay.”
Edward grimaced, and I knew it was in objection to the word okay. He probably would have used something more like wonderful or perfect or glorious.
“Sure it is, Bella, sure it is. If everything is so great, then why are you sweating bullets?”
“I’m not sweating,” I lied.
I leaned away from his fierce scowl, cringing into Edward, and instinctively wiped the back of my right hand across my forehead to remove the evidence.
“You’re pregnant!” Charlie exploded. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
Though the question was clearly meant for me, he was glaring at Edward now, and I could have sworn I saw his hand twitch toward the gun.
“No! Of course I’m not!” I wanted to elbow Edward in the ribs, but I knew that move would only give me a bruise. I’d told Edward that people would immediately jump to this conclusion! What other possible reason would sane people have for getting married at eighteen? (His answer then had made me roll my eyes. Love. Right.)
Charlie’s glower lightened a shade. It was usually pretty clear on my face when I was telling the truth, and he believed me now. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Apology accepted.”
There was a long pause. After a moment, I realized everyone was waiting for me to say something. I looked up at Edward, panic-stricken. There was no way I was going to get the words out.
He smiled at me and then squared his shoulders and turned to my father.
“Charlie, I realize that I’ve gone about this out of order. Traditionally, I should have asked you first. I mean no disrespect, but since Bella has already said yes and I don’t want to diminish her choice in the matter, instead of asking you for her hand, I’m asking you for your blessing. We’re getting married, Charlie. I love her more than anything in the world, more than my own life, and—by some miracle—she loves me that way, too. Will you give us your blessing?”
He sounded so sure, so calm. For just an instant, listening to the absolute confidence in his voice, I experienced a rare moment of insight. I could see, fleetingly, the way the world looked to him. For the length of one heartbeat, this news made perfect sense.
And then I caught sight of the expression on Charlie’s face, his eyes now locked on the ring.
I held my breath while his skin changed colors—fair to red, red to purple, purple to blue. I started to get up—I’m not sure what I planned to do; maybe use the Heimlich maneuver to make sure he wasn’t choking—but Edward squeezed my hand and murmured “Give him a minute” so low that only I could hear.
The silence was much longer this time. Then, gradually, shade by shade, Charlie’s color returned to normal. His lips pursed, and his eyebrows furrowed; I
recognized his “deep in thought” expression. He studied the two of us for a long moment, and I felt Edward relax at my side.
“Guess I’m not that surprised,” Charlie grumbled. “Knew I’d have to deal with something like this soon enough.”
I exhaled.
“You sure about this?” Charlie demanded, glaring at me.
“I’m one hundred percent sure about Edward,” I told him without missing a beat. “Getting married, though? What’s the rush?” He eyed me suspiciously again.
The rush was due to the fact that I was getting closer to nineteen every stinking day, while Edward stayed frozen in all his seventeen-year-old perfection, as he had for over ninety years. Not that this fact necessitated marriage in my book, but the wedding was required due to the delicate and tangled compromise Edward and I had made to finally get to this point, the brink of my transformation from mortal to immortal.
These weren’t things I could explain to Charlie.
“We’re going away to Dartmouth together in the fall, Charlie,” Edward reminded him. “I’d like to do that, well, the right way. It’s how I was raised.” He shrugged.
He wasn’t exaggerating; they’d been big on old-fashioned morals during World War I.
Charlie’s mouth twisted to the side. Looking for an angle to argue from. But what could he say? I’d prefer you live in sin first? He was a dad; his hands were tied.
“Knew this was coming,” he muttered to himself, frowning. Then, suddenly, his face went perfectly smooth and blank.
“Dad?” I asked anxiously. I glanced at Edward, but I couldn’t read his face, either, as he watched Charlie.
“Ha!” Charlie exploded. I jumped in my seat. “Ha, ha, ha!”
I stared incredulously as Charlie doubled over in laughter; his whole body shook with it.
I looked at Edward for a translation, but Edward had his lips pressed tightly together, like he was trying to hold back laughter himself.
“Okay, fine,” Charlie choked out. “Get married.” Another roll of laughter shook through him. “But . . .”
“But what?” I demanded.
“But you have to tell your mom! I’m not saying one word to Renée! That’s all yours!” He busted into loud guffaws.
I paused with my hand on the doorknob, smiling. Sure, at the time, Charlie’s words had terrified me. The ultimate doom: telling Renée. Early marriage was higher up on her blacklist than boiling live puppies.
Who could have foreseen her response? Not me. Certainly not Charlie. Maybe Alice, but I hadn’t thought to ask her.
“Well, Bella,” Renée had said after I’d choked and stuttered out the impossible words: Mom, I’m marrying Edward. “I’m a little miffed that you waited so long to tell me. Plane tickets only get more expensive. Oooh,” she’d fretted. “Do you think Phil’s cast will be off by then? It will spoil the pictures if he’s not in a tux—”
“Back up a second, Mom.” I’d gasped. “What do you mean, waited so long? I just got en-en . . .”—I’d been unable to force out the word engaged—“things settled, you know, today.”
“Today? Really? That is a surprise. I assumed . . .” “What did you assume? When did you assume?”
“Well, when you came to visit me in April, it looked like things were pretty much sewn up, if you know what I mean. You’re not very hard to read, sweetie. But I didn’t say anything because I knew it wouldn’t do any good. You’re exactly like Charlie.” She’d sighed, resigned. “Once you make up your mind, there is no reasoning with you. Of course, exactly like Charlie, you stick by your decisions, too.”
And then she’d said the last thing that I’d ever expected to hear from my mother.
“You’re not making my mistakes, Bella. You sound like you’re scared silly, and I’m guessing it’s because you’re afraid of me.” She’d giggled. “Of what I’m going to think. And I know I’ve said a lot of things about marriage and stupidity—and I’m not taking them back—but you need to realize that those things specifically applied to me. You’re a completely different person than I am. You make your own kinds of mistakes, and I’m sure you’ll have your share of regrets in life. But commitment was never your problem, sweetie. You have a better chance of making this work than most forty-year-olds I know.” Renée had laughed again. “My little middle-aged child. Luckily, you seem to have found another old soul.”
“You’re not… mad? You don’t think I’m making a humongous mistake?”
“Well, sure, I wish you’d wait a few more years. I mean, do I look old enough to be a mother-in-law to you? Don’t answer that. But this isn’t about me. This is about you. Are you happy?”
“I don’t know. I’m having an out-of-body experience right now.” Renée had chuckled. “Does he make you happy, Bella?”
“Yes, but—”
“Are you ever going to want anyone else?” “No, but—”
“But what?”
“But aren’t you going to say that I sound exactly like every other infatuated teenager since the dawn of time?”
“You’ve never been a teenager, sweetie. You know what’s best for you.”
For the last few weeks, Renée had unexpectedly immersed herself in wedding plans. She’d spent hours every day on the phone with Edward’s mother, Esme— no worries about the in-laws getting along. Renée adored Esme, but then, I doubted anyone could help responding that way to my lovable almost-mother-in- law.
It let me right off the hook. Edward’s family and my family were taking care of the nuptials together without my having to do or know or think too hard about any of it.
Charlie was furious, of course, but the sweet part was that he wasn’t furious at me. Renée was the traitor. He’d counted on her to play the heavy. What could he do now, when his ultimate threat—telling Mom—had turned out to be utterly empty? He had nothing, and he knew it. So he moped around the house, muttering things about not being able to trust anyone in this world. . . .
“Dad?” I called as I pushed open the front door. “I’m home.” “Hold on, Bells, stay right there.”
“Huh?” I asked, pausing automatically. “Gimme a second. Ouch, you got me, Alice.”
Alice?
“Sorry, Charlie,” Alice’s trilling voice responded. “How’s that?” “I’m bleeding on it.”
“You’re fine. Didn’t break the skin—trust me.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded, hesitating in the doorway.
“Thirty seconds, please, Bella,” Alice told me. “Your patience will be rewarded.” “Humph,” Charlie added.
I tapped my foot, counting each beat. Before I got to thirty, Alice said, “Okay, Bella, come in!”
Moving with caution, I rounded the little corner into our living room. “Oh,” I huffed. “Aw. Dad. Don’t you look—”
“Silly?” Charlie interrupted.
“I was thinking more like debonair.”
Charlie blushed. Alice took his elbow and tugged him around into a slow spin to showcase the pale gray tux.
“Now cut that out, Alice. I look like an idiot.” “No one dressed by me ever looks like an idiot.”
“She’s right, Dad. You look fabulous! What’s the occasion?”
Alice rolled her eyes. “It’s the final check on the fit. For both of you.”
I peeled my gaze off the unusually elegant Charlie for the first time and saw the dreaded white garment bag laid carefully across the sofa.
“Aaah.”
“Go to your happy place, Bella. It won’t take long.”
I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes. Keeping them shut, I stumbled my way up the stairs to my room. I stripped down to my underwear and held my arms straight out.
“You’d think I was shoving bamboo splinters under your nails,” Alice muttered to herself as she followed me in.
I paid no attention to her. I was in my happy place.
In my happy place, the whole wedding mess was over and done. Behind me. Already repressed and forgotten.
We were alone, just Edward and me. The setting was fuzzy and constantly in flux—it morphed from misty forest to cloud-covered city to arctic night—because Edward was keeping the location of our honeymoon a secret to surprise me. But I wasn’t especially concerned about the where part.
Edward and I were together, and I’d fulfilled my side of our compromise perfectly. I’d married him. That was the big one. But I’d also accepted all his outrageous gifts and was registered, however futilely, to attend Dartmouth College in the fall. Now it was his turn.
Before he turned me into a vampire—his big compromise—he had one other stipulation to make good on.
Edward had an obsessive sort of concern over the human things that I would be giving up, the experiences he didn’t want me to miss. Most of them—like the prom, for example—seemed silly to me. There was only one human experience I worried about missing. Of course it would be the one he wished I would forget completely.
Here was the thing, though. I knew a little about what I was going to be like when I wasn’t human anymore. I’d seen newborn vampires firsthand, and I’d heard all my family-to-be’s stories about those wild early days. For several years, my biggest personality trait was going to be thirsty. It would take some time before I could be me again. And even when I was in control of myself, I would never feel exactly the way I felt now.
Human… and passionately in love.
I wanted the complete experience before I traded in my warm, breakable, pheromone-riddled body for something beautiful, strong… and unknown. I wanted a real honeymoon with Edward. And, despite the danger he feared this would put me in, he’d agreed to try.
I was only vaguely aware of Alice and the slip and slide of satin over my skin. I didn’t care, for the moment, that the whole town was talking about me. I didn’t think about the spectacle I would have to star in much too soon. I didn’t worry about tripping on my train or giggling at the wrong moment or being too young or the staring audience or even the empty seat where my best friend should be.
I was with Edward in my happy place.
2. LONG NIGHT
“I miss you already.”
“I don’t need to leave. I can stay ”
“Mmm.”
It was quiet for a long moment, just the thud of my heart hammering, the broken rhythm of our ragged breathing, and the whisper of our lips moving in synchronization.
Sometimes it was so easy to forget that I was kissing a vampire. Not because he seemed ordinary or human—I could never for a second forget that I was holding someone more angel than man in my arms—but because he made it seem like nothing at all to have his lips against my lips, my face, my throat. He claimed he was long past the temptation my blood used to be for him, that the idea of losing me had cured him of any desire for it. But I knew the smell of my blood still caused him pain—still burned his throat like he was inhaling flames.
I opened my eyes and found his open, too, staring at my face. It made no sense when he looked at me that way. Like I was the prize rather than the outrageously lucky winner.
Our gazes locked for a moment; his golden eyes were so deep that I imagined I could see all the way into his soul. It seemed silly that this fact—the existence of his soul—had ever been in question, even if he was a vampire. He had the most beautiful soul, more beautiful than his brilliant mind or his incomparable face or his glorious body.
He looked back at me as if he could see my soul, too, and as if he liked what he saw.
He couldn’t see into my mind, though, the way he saw into everyone else’s. Who knew why—some strange glitch in my brain that made it immune to all the extraordinary and frightening things some immortals could do. (Only my mind was immune; my body was still subject to vampires with abilities that worked in ways other than Edward’s.) But I was seriously grateful to whatever malfunction it was that kept my thoughts a secret. It was just too embarrassing to consider the alternative.
I pulled his face to mine again.
“Definitely staying,” he murmured a moment later. “No, no. It’s your bachelor party. You have to go.”
I said the words, but the fingers of my right hand locked into his bronze hair, my left pressed tighter against the small of his back. His cool hands stroked my face.
“Bachelor parties are designed for those who are sad to see the passing of their single days. I couldn’t be more eager to have mine behind me. So there’s really no point.”
“True.” I breathed against the winter-cold skin of his throat.
This was pretty close to my happy place. Charlie slept obliviously in his room, which was almost as good as being alone. We were curled up on my small bed, intertwined as much as it was possible, considering the thick afghan I was swathed in like a cocoon. I hated the necessity of the blanket, but it sort of ruined the romance when my teeth started chattering. Charlie would notice if I turned the heat on in August. . . .
At least, if I had to be bundled up, Edward’s shirt was on the floor. I never got over the shock of how perfect his body was—white, cool, and polished as marble. I ran my hand down his stone chest now, tracing across the flat planes of his stomach, just marveling. A light shudder rippled through him, and his mouth found mine again. Carefully, I let the tip of my tongue press against his glass- smooth lip, and he sighed. His sweet breath washed—cold and delicious—over my face.
He started to pull away—that was his automatic response whenever he decided things had gone too far, his reflex reaction whenever he most wanted to keep going. Edward had spent most of his life rejecting any kind of physical gratification. I knew it was terrifying to him trying to change those habits now.
“Wait,” I said, gripping his shoulders and hugging myself close to him. I kicked one leg free and wrapped it around his waist. “Practice makes perfect.”
He chuckled. “Well, we should be fairly close to perfection by this point, then, shouldn’t we? Have you slept at all in the last month?”
“But this is the dress rehearsal,” I reminded him, “and we’ve only practiced certain scenes. It’s no time for playing safe.”
I thought he would laugh, but he didn’t answer, and his body was motionless with sudden stress. The gold in his eyes seemed to harden from a liquid to a solid.
I thought over my words, realized what he would have heard in them. “Bella…,” he whispered.
“Don’t start this again,” I said. “A deal’s a deal.”
“I don’t know. It’s too hard to concentrate when you’re with me like this. I—I can’t think straight. I won’t be able to control myself. You’ll get hurt.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Bella . . .”
“Shh!” I pressed my lips to his to stop his panic attack. I’d heard it before. He wasn’t getting out of this deal. Not after insisting I marry him first.
He kissed me back for a moment, but I could tell he wasn’t as into it as before. Worrying, always worrying. How different it would be when he didn’t need to worry about me anymore. What would he do with all his free time? He’d have to get a new hobby.
“How are your feet?” he asked.
Knowing he didn’t mean that literally, I answered, “Toasty warm.” “Really? No second thoughts? It’s not too late to change your mind.” “Are you trying to ditch me?”
He chuckled. “Just making sure. I don’t want you to do anything you’re not sure about.”
“I’m sure about you. The rest I can live through.”
He hesitated, and I wondered if I’d put my foot in my mouth again.
“Can you?” he asked quietly. “I don’t mean the wedding—which I am positive you will survive despite your qualms—but afterward… what about Renée, what about Charlie?”
I sighed. “I’ll miss them.” Worse, that they would miss me, but I didn’t want to give him any fuel.
“Angela and Ben and Jessica and Mike.”
“I’ll miss my friends, too.” I smiled in the darkness. “Especially Mike. Oh, Mike! How will I go on?”
He growled.
I laughed but then was serious. “Edward, we’ve been through this and through this. I know it will be hard, but this is what I want. I want you, and I want you forever. One lifetime is simply not enough for me.”
“Frozen forever at eighteen,” he whispered. “Every woman’s dream come true,” I teased. “Never changing… never moving forward.” “What does that mean?”
He answered slowly. “Do you remember when we told Charlie we were getting married? And he thought you were… pregnant?”
“And he thought about shooting you,” I guessed with a laugh. “Admit it—for one second, he honestly considered it.”
He didn’t answer. “What, Edward?”
“I just wish… well, I wish that he’d been right.” “Gah,” I gasped.
“More that there was some way he could have been. That we had that kind of potential. I hate taking that away from you, too.”
It took me a minute. “I know what I’m doing.”
“How could you know that, Bella? Look at my mother, look at my sister. It’s not as easy a sacrifice as you imagine.”
“Esme and Rosalie get by just fine. If it’s a problem later, we can do what Esme did—we’ll adopt.”
He sighed, and then his voice was fierce. “It’s not right! I don’t want you to have to make sacrifices for me. I want to give you things, not take things away from you. I don’t want to steal your future. If I were human—”
I put my hand over his lips. “You are my future. Now stop. No moping, or I’m calling your brothers to come and get you. Maybe you need a bachelor party.”
“I’m sorry. I am moping, aren’t I? Must be the nerves.” “Are your feet cold?”
“Not in that sense. I’ve been waiting a century to marry you, Miss Swan. The wedding ceremony is the one thing I can’t wait—” He broke off mid-thought. “Oh, for the love of all that’s holy!”
“What’s wrong?”
He gritted his teeth. “You don’t have to call my brothers. Apparently Emmett and Jasper are not going to let me bow out tonight.”
I clutched him closer for one second and then released him. I didn’t have a prayer of winning a tug-of-war with Emmett. “Have fun.”
There was a squeal against the window—someone deliberately scraping their steel nails across the glass to make a horrible, cover-your-ears, goose-bumps-down- your-spine noise. I shuddered.
“If you don’t send Edward out,” Emmett—still invisible in the night—hissed menacingly, “we’re coming in after him!”
“Go,” I laughed. “Before they break my house.”
Edward rolled his eyes, but he got to his feet in one fluid movement and had his shirt back on in another. He leaned down and kissed my forehead.
“Get to sleep. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.” “Thanks! That’s sure to help me wind down.” “I’ll meet you at the altar.”
“I’ll be the one in white.” I smiled at how perfectly blasé I sounded.
He chuckled, said, “Very convincing,” and then suddenly sank into a crouch, his muscles coiled like a spring. He vanished—launching himself out my window too swiftly for my eyes to follow.
Outside, there was a muted thud, and I heard Emmett curse.
“You’d better not make him late,” I murmured, knowing they could hear.
And then Jasper’s face was peering in my window, his honey hair silver in the weak moonlight that worked through the clouds.
“Don’t worry, Bella. We’ll get him home in plenty of time.”
I was suddenly very calm, and my qualms all seemed unimportant. Jasper was, in his own way, just as talented as Alice with her uncannily accurate predictions.
Jasper’s medium was moods rather than the future, and it was impossible to resist feeling the way he wanted you to feel.
I sat up awkwardly, still tangled in my blanket. “Jasper? What do vampires do for bachelor parties? You’re not taking him to a strip club, are you?”
“Don’t tell her anything!” Emmett growled from below. There was another thud, and Edward laughed quietly.
“Relax,” Jasper told me—and I did. “We Cullens have our own version. Just a few mountain lions, a couple of grizzly bears. Pretty much an ordinary night out.”
I wondered if I would ever be able to sound so cavalier about the “vegetarian” vampire diet.
“Thanks, Jasper.”
He winked and dropped from sight.
It was completely silent outside. Charlie’s muffled snores droned through the walls.
I lay back against my pillow, sleepy now. I stared at the walls of my little room, bleached pale in the moonlight, from under heavy lids.
My last night in my room. My last night as Isabella Swan. Tomorrow night, I would be Bella Cullen. Though the whole marriage ordeal was a thorn in my side, I had to admit that I liked the sound of that.
I let my mind wander idly for a moment, expecting sleep to take me. But, after a few minutes, I found myself more alert, anxiety creeping back into my stomach, twisting it into uncomfortable positions. The bed seemed too soft, too warm without Edward in it. Jasper was far away, and all the peaceful, relaxed feelings were gone with him.
It was going to be a very long day tomorrow.
I was aware that most of my fears were stupid—I just had to get over myself. Attention was an inevitable part of life. I couldn’t always blend in with the scenery. However, I did have a few specific worries that were completely valid.
First there was the wedding dress’s train. Alice clearly had let her artistic sense overpower practicalities on that one. Maneuvering the Cullens’ staircase in heels and a train sounded impossible. I should have practiced.
Then there was the guest list.
Tanya’s family, the Denali clan, would be arriving sometime before the ceremony.
It would be touchy to have Tanya’s family in the same room with our guests from the Quileute reservation, Jacob’s father and the Clearwaters. The Denalis were no fans of the werewolves. In fact, Tanya’s sister Irina was not coming to the wedding at all. She still nursed a vendetta against the werewolves for killing her friend Laurent (just as he was about to kill me). Thanks to that grudge, the Denalis had abandoned Edward’s family in their worst hour of need. It had been the unlikely alliance with the Quileute wolves that had saved all our lives when the horde of newborn vampires had attacked. . . .
Edward had promised me it wouldn’t be dangerous to have the Denalis near the Quileutes. Tanya and all her family—besides Irina—felt horribly guilty for that defection. A truce with the werewolves was a small price to make up some of that debt, a price they were prepared to pay.
That was the big problem, but there was a small problem, too: my fragile self- esteem.
I’d never seen Tanya before, but I was sure that meeting her wouldn’t be a pleasant experience for my ego. Once upon a time, before I was born probably, she’d made her play for Edward—not that I blamed her or anyone else for wanting him. Still, she would be beautiful at the very least and magnificent at best. Though Edward clearly—if inconceivably—preferred me, I wouldn’t be able to help making comparisons.
I had grumbled a little until Edward, who knew my weaknesses, made me feel guilty.
“We’re the closest thing they have to family, Bella,” he’d reminded me. “They still feel like orphans, you know, even after all this time.”
So I’d conceded, hiding my frown.
Tanya had a big family now, almost as big as the Cullens. There were five of them; Tanya, Kate, and Irina had been joined by Carmen and Eleazar much the same way the Cullens had been joined by Alice and Jasper, all of them bonded by their desire to live more compassionately than normal vampires did.
For all the company, though, Tanya and her sisters were still alone in one way. Still in mourning. Because a very long time ago, they’d had a mother, too.
I could imagine the hole that loss would leave, even after a thousand years; I tried to visualize the Cullen family without their creator, their center, and their guide— their father, Carlisle. I couldn’t see it.
Carlisle had explained Tanya’s history during one of the many nights I’d stayed late at the Cullens’ home, learning as much as I could, preparing as much as was possible for the future I’d chosen. Tanya’s mother’s story was one among many, a
cautionary tale illustrating just one of the rules I would need to be aware of when I joined the immortal world. Only one rule, actually—one law that broke down into a thousand different facets: Keep the secret.
Keeping the secret meant a lot of things—living inconspicuously like the Cullens, moving on before humans could suspect they weren’t aging. Or keeping clear of humans altogether—except at mealtime—the way nomads like James and Victoria had lived; the way Jasper’s friends, Peter and Charlotte, still lived. It meant keeping control of whatever new vampires you created, like Jasper had done when he’d lived with Maria. Like Victoria had failed to do with her newborns.
And it meant not creating some things in the first place, because some creations were uncontrollable.
“I don’t know Tanya’s mother’s name,” Carlisle had admitted, his golden eyes, almost the exact shade of his fair hair, sad with remembering Tanya’s pain. “They never speak of her if they can avoid it, never think of her willingly.
“The woman who created Tanya, Kate, and Irina—who loved them, I believe— lived many years before I was born, during a time of plague in our world, the plague of the immortal children.
“What they were thinking, those ancient ones, I can’t begin to understand. They created vampires out of humans who were barely more than infants.”
I’d had to swallow back the bile that rose in my throat as I’d pictured what he was describing.
“They were very beautiful,” Carlisle had explained quickly, seeing my reaction. “So endearing, so enchanting, you can’t imagine. You had but to be near them to love them; it was an automatic thing.
“However, they could not be taught. They were frozen at whatever level of development they’d achieved before being bitten. Adorable two-year-olds with dimples and lisps that could destroy half a village in one of their tantrums. If they hungered, they fed, and no words of warning could restrain them. Humans saw them, stories circulated, fear spread like fire in dry brush. . . .
“Tanya’s mother created such a child. As with the other ancients, I cannot fathom her reasons.” He’d taken a deep, steadying breath. “The Volturi became involved, of course.”
I’d flinched as I always did at that name, but of course the legion of Italian vampires—royalty in their own estimation—was central to this story. There couldn’t be a law if there was no punishment; there couldn’t be a punishment if there was no one to deliver it. The ancients Aro, Caius, and Marcus ruled the
Volturi forces; I’d only met them once, but in that brief encounter, it seemed to me that Aro, with his powerful mind-reading gift—one touch, and he knew every thought a mind had ever held—was the true leader.
“The Volturi studied the immortal children, at home in Volterra and all around the world. Caius decided the young ones were incapable of protecting our secret. And so they had to be destroyed.
“I told you they were loveable. Well, covens fought to the last man—were utterly decimated—to protect them. The carnage was not as widespread as the southern wars on this continent, but more devastating in its own way. Long-established covens, old traditions, friends… Much was lost. In the end, the practice was completely eliminated. The immortal children became unmentionable, a taboo.
“When I lived with the Volturi, I met two immortal children, so I know firsthand the appeal they had. Aro studied the little ones for many years after the catastrophe they’d caused was over. You know his inquisitive disposition; he was hopeful that they could be tamed. But in the end, the decision was unanimous: the immortal children could not be allowed to exist.”
I’d all but forgotten the Denali sisters’ mother when the story returned to her.
“It is unclear precisely what happened with Tanya’s mother,” Carlisle had said. “Tanya, Kate, and Irina were entirely oblivious until the day the Volturi came for them, their mother and her illegal creation already their prisoners. It was ignorance that saved Tanya’s and her sisters’ lives. Aro touched them and saw their total innocence, so they were not punished with their mother.
“None of them had ever seen the boy before, or dreamed of his existence, until the day they watched him burn in their mother’s arms. I can only guess that their mother had kept her secret to protect them from this exact outcome. But why had she created him in the first place? Who was he, and what had he meant to her that would cause her to cross this most uncrossable of lines? Tanya and the others never received an answer to any of these questions. But they could not doubt their mother’s guilt, and I don’t think they’ve ever truly forgiven her.
“Even with Aro’s perfect assurance that Tanya, Kate, and Irina were innocent, Caius wanted them to burn. Guilty by association. They were lucky that Aro felt like being merciful that day. Tanya and her sisters were pardoned, but left with unhealing hearts and a very healthy respect for the law ”
I’m not sure where exactly the memory turned into a dream. One moment it seemed that I was listening to Carlisle in my memory, looking at his face, and then a moment later I was looking at a gray, barren field and smelling the thick scent of burning incense in the air. I was not alone there.
The huddle of figures in the center of the field, all shrouded in ashy cloaks, should have terrified me—they could only be Volturi, and I was, against what they’d decreed at our last meeting, still human. But I knew, as I sometimes did in dreams, that I was invisible to them.
Scattered all around me were smoking heaps. I recognized the sweetness in the air and did not examine the mounds too closely. I had no desire to see the faces of the vampires they had executed, half afraid that I might recognize someone in the smoldering pyres.
The Volturi soldiers stood in a circle around something or someone, and I heard their whispery voices raised in agitation. I edged closer to the cloaks, compelled by the dream to see whatever thing or person they were examining with such intensity. Creeping carefully between two of the tall hissing shrouds, I finally saw the object of their debate, raised up on a little hillock above them.
He was beautiful, adorable, just as Carlisle had described. The boy was a toddler still, maybe two years of age. Light brown curls framed his cherubic face with its round cheeks and full lips. And he was trembling, his eyes closed as if he was too frightened to watch death coming closer every second.
I was struck with such a powerful need to save the lovely, terrified child that the Volturi, despite all their devastating menace, no longer mattered to me. I shoved past them, not caring if they realized my presence. Breaking free of them altogether, I sprinted toward the boy.
Only to stagger to a halt as I got a clear view of the hillock that he sat upon. It was not earth and rock, but a pile of human bodies, drained and lifeless. Too late not to see these faces. I knew them all—Angela, Ben, Jessica, Mike.… And directly beneath the adorable boy were the bodies of my father and my mother.
The child opened his bright, bloodred eyes.
3. BIG DAY
My own eyes flew open.
I lay shivering and gasping in my warm bed for several minutes, trying to break free of the dream. The sky outside my window turned gray and then pale pink while I waited for my heart to slow.
When I was fully back to the reality of my messy, familiar room, I was a little annoyed with myself. What a dream to have the night before my wedding! That’s what I got for obsessing over disturbing stories in the middle of the night.
Eager to shake off the nightmare, I got dressed and headed down to the kitchen long before I needed to. First I cleaned the already tidy rooms, and then when Charlie was up I made him pancakes. I was much too keyed up to have any interest in eating breakfast myself—I sat bouncing in my seat while he ate.
“You’re picking up Mr. Weber at three o’clock,” I reminded him.
“I don’t have that much to do today besides bring the minister, Bells. I’m not likely to forget my only job.” Charlie had taken the entire day off for the wedding, and he was definitely at loose ends. Now and then, his eyes flickered furtively to the closet under the stairs, where he kept his fishing gear.
“That’s not your only job. You also have to be dressed and presentable.”
He scowled into his cereal bowl and muttered the words “monkey suit” under his breath.
There was a brisk tapping on the front door.
“You think you have it bad,” I said, grimacing as I rose. “Alice will be working on me all day long.”
Charlie nodded thoughtfully, conceding that he did have the lesser ordeal. I ducked in to kiss the top of his head as I passed—he blushed and harrumphed— and then continued on to get the door for my best girlfriend and soon-to-be sister.
Alice’s short black hair was not in its usual spiky do—it was smoothed into sleek pin curls around her pixie face, which wore a contrastingly businesslike expression. She dragged me from the house with barely a “Hey, Charlie” called over her shoulder.
Alice appraised me as I got into her Porsche.
“Oh, hell, look at your eyes!” She tsked in reproach. “What did you do? Stay up all night?”
“Almost.”
She glowered. “I’ve only allotted so much time to make you stunning, Bella—you might have taken better care of my raw material.”
“No one expects me to be stunning. I think the bigger problem is that I might fall asleep during the ceremony and not be able to say ‘I do’ at the right part, and then Edward will make his escape.”
She laughed. “I’ll throw my bouquet at you when it gets close.” “Thanks.”
“At least you’ll have plenty of time to sleep on the plane tomorrow.”
I raised one eyebrow. Tomorrow, I mused. If we were heading out tonight after the reception, and we would still be on a plane tomorrow… well, we weren’t going to Boise, Idaho. Edward hadn’t dropped a single hint. I wasn’t too stressed about the mystery, but it was strange not knowing where I would be sleeping tomorrow night. Or hopefully not sleeping . . .
Alice realized that she’d given something away, and she frowned. “You’re all packed and ready,” she said to distract me.
It worked. “Alice, I wish you would let me pack my own things!” “It would have given too much away.”
“And denied you an opportunity to shop.”
“You’ll be my sister officially in ten short hours… it’s about time to get over this aversion to new clothes.”
I glowered groggily out the windshield until we were almost to the house. “Is he back yet?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be there before the music starts. But you don’t get to see him, no matter when he gets back. We’re doing this the traditional way.”
I snorted. “Traditional!”
“Okay, aside from the bride and groom.”
“You know he’s already peeked.”
“Oh no—that’s why I’m the only one who’s seen you in the dress. I’ve been very careful to not think about it when he’s around.”
“Well,” I said as we turned into the drive, “I see you got to reuse your graduation decorations.” Three miles of drive were once again wrapped in hundreds of thousands of twinkle lights. This time, she’d added white satin bows.
“Waste not, want not. Enjoy this, because you don’t get to see the inside decorations until it’s time.” She pulled into the cavernous garage north of the main house; Emmett’s big Jeep was still gone.
“Since when is the bride not allowed to see the decorations?” I protested.
“Since she put me in charge. I want you to get the full impact coming down the stairs.”
She clapped her hand over my eyes before she let me inside the kitchen. I was immediately assailed by the scent.
“What is that?” I wondered as she guided me into the house.
“Is it too much?” Alice’s voice was abruptly worried. “You’re the first human in here; I hope I got it right.”
“It smells wonderful!” I assured her—almost intoxicating, but not at all overwhelming, the balance of the different fragrances was subtle and flawless. “Orange blossoms… lilac… and something else—am I right?”
“Very good, Bella. You only missed the freesia and the roses.”
She didn’t uncover my eyes until we were in her oversized bathroom. I stared at the long counter, covered in all the paraphernalia of a beauty salon, and began to feel my sleepless night.
“Is this really necessary? I’m going to look plain next to him no matter what.”
She pushed me down into a low pink chair. “No one will dare to call you plain when I’m through with you.”
“Only because they’re afraid you’ll suck their blood,” I muttered. I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, hoping I’d be able to nap through it. I did drift in and out a little bit while she masked, buffed, and polished every surface of my body.
It was after lunchtime when Rosalie glided past the bathroom door in a shimmery silver gown with her golden hair piled up in a soft crown on top of her head. She was so beautiful it made me want to cry. What was even the point of dressing up with Rosalie around?
“They’re back,” Rosalie said, and immediately my childish fit of despair passed. Edward was home.
“Keep him out of here!”
“He won’t cross you today,” Rosalie reassured her. “He values his life too much. Esme’s got them finishing things up out back. Do you want some help? I could do her hair.”
My jaw fell open. I floundered around in my head, trying to remember how to close it.
I had never been Rosalie’s favorite person in the world. Then, making things even more strained between us, she was personally offended by the choice I was making now. Though she had her impossible beauty, her loving family, and her soul mate in Emmett, she would have traded it all to be human. And here I was, callously throwing away everything she wanted in life like it was garbage. It didn’t exactly warm her to me.
“Sure,” Alice said easily. “You can start braiding. I want it intricate. The veil goes here, underneath.” Her hands started combing through my hair, hefting it, twisting it, illustrating in detail what she wanted. When she was done, Rosalie’s hands replaced hers, shaping my hair with a feather-light touch. Alice moved back to my face.
Once Rosalie received Alice’s commendation on my hair, she was sent off to retrieve my dress and then to locate Jasper, who had been dispatched to pick up my mother and her husband, Phil, from their hotel. Downstairs, I could faintly hear the door opening and closing over and over. Voices began to float up to us.
Alice made me stand so that she could ease the dress over my hair and makeup. My knees shook so badly as she fastened the long line of pearl buttons up my back that the satin quivered in little wavelets down to the floor.
“Deep breaths, Bella,” Alice said. “And try to lower your heart rate. You’re going to sweat off your new face.”
I gave her the best sarcastic expression I could manage. “I’ll get right on that.” “I have to get dressed now. Can you hold yourself together for two minutes?” “Um… maybe?”
She rolled her eyes and darted out the door.
I concentrated on my breathing, counting each movement of my lungs, and stared at the patterns that the bathroom light made on the shiny fabric of my skirt. I was afraid to look in the mirror—afraid the image of myself in the wedding dress would send me over the edge into a full-scale panic attack.
Alice was back before I had taken two hundred breaths, in a dress that flowed down her slender body like a silvery waterfall.
“Alice—wow.”
“It’s nothing. No one will be looking at me today. Not while you’re in the room.” “Har har.”
“Now, are you in control of yourself, or do I have to bring Jasper up here?” “They’re back? Is my mom here?”
“She just walked in the door. She’s on her way up.”
Renée had flown in two days ago, and I’d spent every minute I could with her— every minute that I could pry her away from Esme and the decorations, in other words. As far as I could tell, she was having more fun with this than a kid locked inside Disneyland overnight. In a way, I felt almost as cheated as Charlie. All that wasted terror over her reaction . . .
“Oh, Bella!” she squealed now, gushing before she was all the way through the door. “Oh, honey, you’re so beautiful! Oh, I’m going to cry! Alice, you’re amazing! You and Esme should go into business as wedding planners. Where did you find this dress? It’s gorgeous! So graceful, so elegant. Bella, you look like you just stepped out of an Austen movie.” My mother’s voice sounded a little distance away, and everything in the room was slightly blurry. “Such a creative idea, designing the theme around Bella’s ring. So romantic! To think it’s been in Edward’s family since the eighteen hundreds!”
Alice and I exchanged a brief conspiratorial look. My mom was off on the dress style by more than a hundred years. The wedding wasn’t actually centered around the ring, but around Edward himself.
There was a loud, gruff throat-clearing in the doorway.
“Renée, Esme said it’s time you got settled down there,” Charlie said.
“Well, Charlie, don’t you look dashing!” Renée said in a tone that was almost shocked. That might have explained the crustiness of Charlie’s answer.
“Alice got to me.”
“Is it really time already?” Renée said to herself, sounding almost as nervous as I felt. “This has all gone so fast. I feel dizzy.”
That made two of us.
“Give me a hug before I go down,” Renée insisted. “Carefully now, don’t tear anything.”
My mother squeezed me gently around the waist, then wheeled for the door, only to complete the spin and face me again.
“Oh goodness, I almost forgot! Charlie, where’s the box?”
My dad rummaged in his pockets for a minute and then produced a small white box, which he handed to Renée. Renée lifted the lid and held it out to me.
“Something blue,” she said.
“Something old, too. They were your Grandma Swan’s,” Charlie added. “We had a jeweler replace the paste stones with sapphires.”
Inside the box were two heavy silver hair combs. Dark blue sapphires were clustered into intricate floral shapes atop the teeth.
My throat got all thick. “Mom, Dad… you shouldn’t have.”
“Alice wouldn’t let us do anything else,” Renée said. “Every time we tried, she all but ripped our throats out.”
A hysterical giggle burst through my lips.
Alice stepped up and quickly slid both combs into my hair under the edge of the thick braids. “That’s something old and something blue,” Alice mused, taking a few steps back to admire me. “And your dress is new… so here—”
She flicked something at me. I held my hands out automatically, and the filmy white garter landed in my palms.
“That’s mine and I want it back,” Alice told me. I blushed.
“There,” Alice said with satisfaction. “A little color—that’s all you needed. You are officially perfect.” With a little self-congratulatory smile, she turned to my parents. “Renée, you need to get downstairs.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Renée blew me a kiss and hurried out the door. “Charlie, would you grab the flowers, please?”
While Charlie was out of the room, Alice hooked the garter out of my hands and then ducked under my skirt. I gasped and tottered as her cold hand caught my ankle; she yanked the garter into place.
She was back on her feet before Charlie returned with the two frothy white bouquets. The scent of roses and orange blossom and freesia enveloped me in a soft mist.
Rosalie—the best musician in the family next to Edward—began playing the piano downstairs. Pachelbel’s Canon. I began hyperventilating.
“Easy, Bells,” Charlie said. He turned to Alice nervously. “She looks a little sick. Do you think she’s going to make it?”
His voice sounded far away. I couldn’t feel my legs. “She’d better.”
Alice stood right in front of me, on her tiptoes to better stare me in the eye, and gripped my wrists in her hard hands.
“Focus, Bella. Edward is waiting for you down there.” I took a deep breath, willing myself into composure.
The music slowly morphed into a new song. Charlie nudged me. “Bells, we’re up to bat.”
“Bella?” Alice asked, still holding my gaze.
“Yes,” I squeaked. “Edward. Okay.” I let her pull me from the room, with Charlie tagging along at my elbow.
The music was louder in the hall. It floated up the stairs along with the fragrance of a million flowers. I concentrated on the idea of Edward waiting below to get my feet to shuffle forward.
The music was familiar, Wagner’s traditional march surrounded by a flood of embellishments.
“It’s my turn,” Alice chimed. “Count to five and follow me.” She began a slow, graceful dance down the staircase. I should have realized that having Alice as my
only bridesmaid was a mistake. I would look that much more uncoordinated coming behind her.
A sudden fanfare trilled through the soaring music. I recognized my cue.
“Don’t let me fall, Dad,” I whispered. Charlie pulled my hand through his arm and then grasped it tightly.
One step at a time, I told myself as we began to descend to the slow tempo of the march. I didn’t lift my eyes until my feet were safely on the flat ground, though I could hear the murmurs and rustling of the audience as I came into view. Blood flooded my cheeks at the sound; of course I could be counted on to be the blushing bride.
As soon as my feet were past the treacherous stairs, I was looking for him. For a brief second, I was distracted by the profusion of white blossoms that hung in garlands from everything in the room that wasn’t alive, dripping with long lines of white gossamer ribbons. But I tore my eyes from the bowery canopy and searched across the rows of satin-draped chairs—blushing more deeply as I took in the crowd of faces all focused on me—until I found him at last, standing before an arch overflowing with more flowers, more gossamer.
I was barely conscious that Carlisle stood by his side, and Angela’s father behind them both. I didn’t see my mother where she must have been sitting in the front row, or my new family, or any of the guests—they would have to wait till later.
All I really saw was Edward’s face; it filled my vision and overwhelmed my mind. His eyes were a buttery, burning gold; his perfect face was almost severe with the depth of his emotion. And then, as he met my awed gaze, he broke into a breathtaking smile of exultation.
Suddenly, it was only the pressure of Charlie’s hand on mine that kept me from sprinting headlong down the aisle.
The march was too slow as I struggled to pace my steps to its rhythm. Mercifully, the aisle was very short. And then, at last, at last, I was there. Edward held out his hand. Charlie took my hand and, in a symbol as old as the world, placed it in Edward’s. I touched the cool miracle of his skin, and I was home.
Our vows were the simple, traditional words that had been spoken a million times, though never by a couple quite like us. We’d asked Mr. Weber to make only one small change. He obligingly traded the line “till death do us part” for the more appropriate “as long as we both shall live.”
In that moment, as the minister said his part, my world, which had been upside down for so long now, seemed to settle into its proper position. I saw just how silly I’d been for fearing this—as if it were an unwanted birthday gift or an
embarrassing exhibition, like the prom. I looked into Edward’s shining, triumphant eyes and knew that I was winning, too. Because nothing else mattered but that I could stay with him.
I didn’t realize I was crying until it was time to say the binding words.
“I do,” I managed to choke out in a nearly unintelligible whisper, blinking my eyes clear so I could see his face.
When it was his turn to speak, the words rang clear and victorious. “I do,” he vowed.
Mr. Weber declared us husband and wife, and then Edward’s hands reached up to cradle my face, carefully, as if it were as delicate as the white petals swaying above our heads. I tried to comprehend, through the film of tears blinding me, the surreal fact that this amazing person was mine. His golden eyes looked as if they would have tears, too, if such a thing were not impossible. He bent his head toward mine, and I stretched up on the tips of my toes, throwing my arms— bouquet and all—around his neck.
He kissed me tenderly, adoringly; I forgot the crowd, the place, the time, the reason… only remembering that he loved me, that he wanted me, that I was his.
He began the kiss, and he had to end it; I clung to him, ignoring the titters and the throat-clearing in the audience. Finally, his hands restrained my face and he pulled back—too soon—to look at me. On the surface his sudden smile was amused, almost a smirk. But underneath his momentary entertainment at my public exhibition was a deep joy that echoed my own.
The crowd erupted into applause, and he turned our bodies to face our friends and family. I couldn’t look away from his face to see them.
My mother’s arms were the first to find me, her tear-streaked face the first thing I saw when I finally tore my eyes unwillingly from Edward. And then I was handed through the crowd, passed from embrace to embrace, only vaguely aware of who held me, my attention centered on Edward’s hand clutched tightly in my own. I did recognize the difference between the soft, warm hugs of my human friends and the gentle, cool embraces of my new family.
One scorching hug stood out from all the others—Seth Clearwater had braved the throng of vampires to stand in for my lost werewolf friend.
4. GESTURE
The wedding flowed into the reception party smoothly—proof of Alice’s flawless planning. It was just twilight over the river; the ceremony had lasted exactly the right amount of time, allowing the sun to set behind the trees. The lights in the trees glimmered as Edward led me through the glass back doors, making the white flowers glow. There were another ten thousand flowers out here, serving as a fragrant, airy tent over the dance floor set up on the grass under two of the ancient cedars.
Things slowed down, relaxed as the mellow August evening surrounded us. The little crowd spread out under the soft shine of the twinkle lights, and we were greeted again by the friends we’d just embraced. There was time to talk now, to laugh.
“Congrats, guys,” Seth Clearwater told us, ducking his head under the edge of a flower garland. His mother, Sue, was tight by his side, eyeing the guests with wary intensity. Her face was thin and fierce, an expression that was accented by her short, severe hairstyle; it was as short as her daughter Leah’s—I wondered if she’d cut it the same way in a show of solidarity. Billy Black, on Seth’s other side, was not as tense as Sue.
When I looked at Jacob’s father, I always felt like I was seeing two people rather than just one. There was the old man in the wheelchair with the lined face and the white smile that everyone else saw. And then there was the direct descendant of a long line of powerful, magical chieftains, cloaked in the authority he’d been born with. Though the magic had—in the absence of a catalyst—skipped his generation, Billy was still a part of the power and the legend. It flowed straight through him. It flowed to his son, the heir to the magic, who had turned his back on it. That left Sam Uley to act as the chief of legends and magic now. . . .
Billy seemed oddly at ease considering the company and the event—his black eyes sparkled like he’d just gotten some good news. I was impressed by his composure. This wedding must have seemed a very bad thing, the worst thing that could happen to his best friend’s daughter, in Billy’s eyes.
I knew it wasn’t easy for him to restrain his feelings, considering the challenge this event foreshadowed to the ancient treaty between the Cullens and the Quileutes—the treaty that prohibited the Cullens from ever creating another vampire. The wolves knew a breach was coming, but the Cullens had no idea how they would react. Before the alliance, it would have meant an immediate attack. A war. But now that they knew each other better, would there be forgiveness instead?
As if in response to that thought, Seth leaned toward Edward, arms extended. Edward returned the hug with his free arm.
I saw Sue shudder delicately.
“It’s good to see things work out for you, man,” Seth said. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you, Seth. That means a lot to me.” Edward pulled away from Seth and looked at Sue and Billy. “Thank you, as well. For letting Seth come. For supporting Bella today.”
“You’re welcome,” Billy said in his deep, gravelly voice, and I was surprised at the optimism in his tone. Perhaps a stronger truce was on the horizon.
A bit of a line was forming, so Seth waved goodbye and wheeled Billy toward the food. Sue kept one hand on each of them.
Angela and Ben were the next to claim us, followed by Angela’s parents and then Mike and Jessica—who were, to my surprise, holding hands. I hadn’t heard that they were together again. That was nice.
Behind my human friends were my new cousins-in-law, the Denali vampire clan. I realized I was holding my breath as the vampire in front—Tanya, I assumed from the strawberry tint in her blond curls—reached out to embrace Edward.
Next to her, three other vampires with golden eyes stared at me with open curiosity. One woman had long, pale blond hair, straight as corn silk. The other woman and the man beside her were both black-haired, with a hint of an olive tone to their chalky complexions.
And they were all four so beautiful that it made my stomach hurt. Tanya was still holding Edward.
“Ah, Edward,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
Edward chuckled and deftly maneuvered out of the hug, placing his hand lightly on her shoulder and stepping back, as if to get a better look at her. “It’s been too long, Tanya. You look well.”
“So do you.”
“Let me introduce you to my wife.” It was the first time Edward had said that word since it was officially true; he seemed like he would explode with satisfaction saying it now. The Denalis all laughed lightly in response. “Tanya, this is my Bella.”
Tanya was every bit as lovely as my worst nightmares had predicted. She eyed me with a look that was much more speculative than it was resigned, and then reached out to take my hand.
“Welcome to the family, Bella.” She smiled, a little rueful. “We consider ourselves Carlisle’s extended family, and I am sorry about the, er, recent incident when we did not behave as such. We should have met you sooner. Can you forgive us?”
“Of course,” I said breathlessly. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“The Cullens are all evened up in numbers now. Perhaps it will be our turn next, eh, Kate?” She grinned at the blonde.
“Keep the dream alive,” Kate said with a roll of her golden eyes. She took my hand from Tanya’s and squeezed it gently. “Welcome, Bella.”
The dark-haired woman put her hand on top of Kate’s. “I’m Carmen, this is Eleazar. We’re all so very pleased to finally meet you.”
“M-me, too,” I stuttered.
Tanya glanced at the people waiting behind her—Charlie’s deputy, Mark, and his wife. Their eyes were huge as they took in the Denali clan.
“We’ll get to know each other later. We’ll have eons of time for that!” Tanya laughed as she and her family moved on.
All the standard traditions were kept. I was blinded by flashbulbs as we held the knife over a spectacular cake—too grand, I thought, for our relatively intimate group of friends and family. We took turns shoving cake in each other’s faces; Edward manfully swallowed his portion as I watched in disbelief. I threw my bouquet with atypical skill, right into Angela’s surprised hands. Emmett and Jasper howled with laughter at my blush while Edward removed my borrowed garter—which I’d shimmied down nearly to my ankle—very carefully with his teeth. With a quick wink at me, he shot it straight into Mike Newton’s face.
And when the music started, Edward pulled me into his arms for the customary first dance; I went willingly, despite my fear of dancing—especially dancing in front of an audience—just happy to have him holding me. He did all the work, and I twirled effortlessly under the glow of a canopy of lights and the bright flashes from the cameras.
“Enjoying the party, Mrs. Cullen?” he whispered in my ear. I laughed. “That will take a while to get used to.”
“We have a while,” he reminded me, his voice exultant, and he leaned down to kiss me while we danced. Cameras clicked feverishly.
The music changed, and Charlie tapped on Edward’s shoulder.
It wasn’t nearly as easy to dance with Charlie. He was no better at it than I was, so we moved safely from side to side in a tiny square formation. Edward and Esme spun around us like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
“I’m going to miss you at home, Bella. I’m already lonely.”
I spoke through a tight throat, trying to make a joke of it. “I feel just horrible, leaving you to cook for yourself—it’s practically criminal negligence. You could arrest me.”
He grinned. “I suppose I’ll survive the food. Just call me whenever you can.” “I promise.”
It seemed like I danced with everyone. It was good to see all my old friends, but I really wanted to be with Edward more than anything else. I was happy when he finally cut in, just half a minute after a new dance started.
“Still not that fond of Mike, eh?” I commented as Edward whirled me away from him.
“Not when I have to listen to his thoughts. He’s lucky I didn’t kick him out. Or worse.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Have you had a chance to look at yourself?” “Um. No, I guess not. Why?”
“Then I suppose you don’t realize how utterly, heart-breakingly beautiful you are tonight. I’m not surprised Mike’s having difficulty with improper thoughts about a married woman. I am disappointed that Alice didn’t make sure you were forced to look in a mirror.”
“You are very biased, you know.”
He sighed and then paused and turned me around to face the house. The wall of glass reflected the party back like a long mirror. Edward pointed to the couple in the mirror directly across from us.
“Biased, am I?”
I caught just a glimpse of Edward’s reflection—a perfect duplicate of his perfect face—with a dark-haired beauty at his side. Her skin was cream and roses, her eyes were huge with excitement and framed with thick lashes. The narrow sheath of the shimmering white dress flared out subtly at the train almost like an
inverted calla lily, cut so skillfully that her body looked elegant and graceful— while it was motionless, at least.
Before I could blink and make the beauty turn back into me, Edward suddenly stiffened and turned automatically in the other direction, as if someone had called his name.
“Oh!” he said. His brow furrowed for an instant and then smoothed out just as quickly.
Suddenly, he was smiling a brilliant smile. “What is it?” I asked.
“A surprise wedding gift.” “Huh?”
He didn’t answer; he just started dancing again, spinning me the opposite way we’d been headed before, away from the lights and then into the deep swath of night that ringed the luminous dance floor.
He didn’t pause until we reached the dark side of one of the huge cedars. Then Edward looked straight into the blackest shadow.
“Thank you,” Edward said to the darkness. “This is very… kind of you.”
“Kind is my middle name,” a husky familiar voice answered from the black night. “Can I cut in?”
My hand flew up to my throat, and if Edward hadn’t been holding me I would have collapsed.
“Jacob!” I choked as soon as I could breathe. “Jacob!” “Hey there, Bells.”
I stumbled toward the sound of his voice. Edward kept his grip under my elbow until another set of strong hands caught me in the darkness. The heat from Jacob’s skin burned right through the thin satin dress as he pulled me close. He made no effort to dance; he just hugged me while I buried my face in his chest. He leaned down to press his cheek to the top of my head.
“Rosalie won’t forgive me if she doesn’t get her official turn on the dance floor,” Edward murmured, and I knew he was leaving us, giving me a gift of his own— this moment with Jacob.
“Oh, Jacob.” I was crying now; I couldn’t get the words out clearly. “Thank you.” “Stop blubbering, Bella. You’ll ruin your dress. It’s just me.”
“Just? Oh, Jake! Everything is perfect now.”
He snorted. “Yeah—the party can start. The best man finally made it.” “Now everyone I love is here.”
I felt his lips brush my hair. “Sorry I’m late, honey.” “I’m just so happy you came!”
“That was the idea.”
I glanced toward the guests, but I couldn’t see through the dancers to the spot where I’d last seen Jacob’s father. I didn’t know if he’d stayed. “Does Billy know you’re here?” As soon as I asked, I knew that he must have—it was the only way to explain his uplifted expression before.
“I’m sure Sam’s told him. I’ll go see him when… when the party’s over.” “He’ll be so glad you’re home.”
Jacob pulled back a little bit and straightened up. He left one hand on the small of my back and grabbed my right hand with the other. He cradled our hands to his chest; I could feel his heart beat under my palm, and I guessed that he hadn’t placed my hand there accidentally.
“I don’t know if I get more than just this one dance,” he said, and he began pulling me around in a slow circle that didn’t match the tempo of the music coming from behind us. “I’d better make the best of it.”
We moved to the rhythm of his heart under my hand.
“I’m glad I came,” Jacob said quietly after a moment. “I didn’t think I would be. But it’s good to see you… one more time. Not as sad as I’d thought it would be.”
“I don’t want you to feel sad.”
“I know that. And I didn’t come tonight to make you feel guilty.”
“No—it makes me very happy that you came. It’s the best gift you could have given me.”
He laughed. “That’s good, because I didn’t have time to stop for a real present.”
My eyes were adjusting, and I could see his face now, higher up than I expected. Was it possible that he was still growing? He had to be closer to seven feet than to six. It was a relief to see his familiar features again after all this time—his deep- set eyes shadowed under his shaggy black brows, his high cheekbones, his full lips stretched over his bright teeth in the sarcastic smile that matched his tone.
His eyes were tight around the edges—careful; I could see that he was being very careful tonight. He was doing all he could to make me happy, to not slip and show how much this cost him.
I’d never done anything good enough to deserve a friend like Jacob. “When did you decide to come back?”
“Consciously or subconsciously?” He took a deep breath before he answered his own question. “I don’t really know. I guess I’ve been wandering back this direction for a while, and maybe it’s because I was headed here. But it wasn’t until this morning that I really started running. I didn’t know if I could make it.” He laughed. “You wouldn’t believe how weird this feels—walking around on two legs again. And clothes! And then it’s more bizarre because it feels weird. I didn’t expect that. I’m out of practice with the whole human thing.”
We revolved steadily.
“It would have been a shame to miss seeing you like this, though. That’s worth the trip right there. You look unbelievable, Bella. So beautiful.”
“Alice invested a lot of time in me today. The dark helps, too.” “It’s not so dark for me, you know.”
“Right.” Werewolf senses. It was easy to forget all the things he could do, he seemed so human. Especially right now.
“You cut your hair,” I noted.
“Yeah. Easier, you know. Thought I’d better take advantage of the hands.” “It looks good,” I lied.
He snorted. “Right. I did it myself, with rusty kitchen shears.” He grinned widely for a moment, and then his smile faded. His expression turned serious. “Are you happy, Bella?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” I felt his shoulders shrug. “That’s the main thing, I guess.”
“How are you, Jacob? Really?”
“I’m fine, Bella, really. You don’t need to worry about me anymore. You can stop bugging Seth.”
“I’m not just bugging him because of you. I like Seth.”
“He’s a good kid. Better company than some. I tell you, if I could get rid of the voices in my head, being a wolf would be about perfect.”
I laughed at the way it sounded. “Yeah, I can’t get mine to shut up, either.”
“In your case, that would mean you’re insane. Of course, I already knew that you were insane,” he teased.
“Thanks.”
“Insanity is probably easier than sharing a pack mind. Crazy people’s voices don’t send babysitters to watch them.”
“Huh?”
“Sam’s out there. And some of the others. Just in case, you know.” “In case of what?”
“In case I can’t keep it together, something like that. In case I decide to trash the party.” He flashed a quick smile at what was probably an appealing thought to him. “But I’m not here to ruin your wedding, Bella. I’m here to . . .” He trailed off.
“To make it perfect.” “That’s a tall order.” “Good thing you’re so tall.”
He groaned at my bad joke and then sighed. “I’m just here to be your friend. Your best friend, one last time.”
“Sam should give you more credit.”
“Well, maybe I’m being oversensitive. Maybe they’d be here anyway, to keep an eye on Seth. There are a lot of vampires here. Seth doesn’t take that as seriously as he should.”
“Seth knows that he’s not in any danger. He understands the Cullens better than Sam does.”
“Sure, sure,” Jacob said, making peace before it could turn into a fight. It was strange to have him being the diplomat.
“Sorry about those voices,” I said. “Wish I could make it better.” In so many ways. “It’s not that bad. I’m just whining a little.”
“You’re… happy?”
“Close enough. But enough about me. You’re the star today.” He chuckled. “I bet you’re just loving that. Center of attention.”
“Yeah. Can’t get enough attention.”
He laughed and then stared over my head. With pursed lips, he studied the shimmering glow of the reception party, the graceful whirl of the dancers, the fluttering petals falling from the garlands; I looked with him. It all seemed very distant from this black, quiet space. Almost like watching the white flurries swirling inside a snow globe.
“I’ll give them this much,” he said. “They know how to throw a party.” “Alice is an unstoppable force of nature.”
He sighed. “Song’s over. Do you think I get another one? Or is that asking too much?”
I tightened my hand around his. “You can have as many dances as you want.”
He laughed. “That would be interesting. I think I’d better stick with two, though. Don’t want to start talk.”
We turned in another circle.
“You’d think I’d be used to telling you goodbye by now,” he murmured. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but I couldn’t force it down.
Jacob looked at me and frowned. He wiped his fingers across my cheek, catching the tears there.
“You’re not supposed to be the one crying, Bella.” “Everyone cries at weddings,” I said thickly. “This is what you want, right?”
“Right.” “Then smile.”
I tried. He laughed at my grimace.
“I’m going to try to remember you like this. Pretend that . . .” “That what? That I died?”
He clenched his teeth. He was struggling with himself—with his decision to make his presence here a gift and not a judgment. I could guess what he wanted to say.
“No,” he finally answered. “But I’ll see you this way in my head. Pink cheeks. Heartbeat. Two left feet. All of that.”
I deliberately stomped on his foot as hard as I could. He smiled. “That’s my girl.”
He started to say something else and then snapped his mouth closed. Struggling again, teeth gritted against the words he didn’t want to say.
My relationship with Jacob used to be so easy. Natural as breathing. But since Edward had come back into my life, it was a constant strain. Because—in Jacob’s eyes—by choosing Edward, I was choosing a fate that was worse than death, or at least equivalent to it.
“What is it, Jake? Just tell me. You can tell me anything.” “I—I… I don’t have anything to tell you.”
“Oh please. Spit it out.”
“It’s true. It’s not… it’s—it’s a question. It’s something I want you to tell me.” “Ask me.”
He struggled for another minute and then exhaled. “I shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m just morbidly curious.”
Because I knew him so well, I understood. “It’s not tonight, Jacob,” I whispered.
Jacob was even more obsessed with my humanity than Edward. He treasured every one of my heartbeats, knowing that they were numbered.
“Oh,” he said, trying to smother his relief. “Oh.”
A new song started playing, but he didn’t notice the change this time. “When?” he whispered.
“I don’t know for sure. A week or two, maybe.”
His voice changed, took on a defensive, mocking edge. “What’s the holdup?” “I just didn’t want to spend my honeymoon writhing in pain.”
“You’d rather spend it how? Playing checkers? Ha ha.” “Very funny.”
“Kidding, Bells. But, honestly, I don’t see the point. You can’t have a real honeymoon with your vampire, so why go through the motions? Call a spade a spade. This isn’t the first time you’ve put this off. That’s a good thing, though,” he said, suddenly earnest. “Don’t be embarrassed about it.”
“I’m not putting anything off,” I snapped. “And yes I can have a real honeymoon! I can do anything I want! Butt out!”
He stopped our slow circling abruptly. For a moment, I wondered if he’d finally noticed the music change, and I scrambled in my head for a way to patch up our little tiff before he said goodbye to me. We shouldn’t part on this note.
And then his eyes bulged wide with a strange kind of confused horror. “What?” he gasped. “What did you say?”
“About what… ? Jake? What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean? Have a real honeymoon? While you’re still human? Are you kidding? That’s a sick joke, Bella!”
I glared at him. “I said butt out, Jake. This is so not your business. I shouldn’t have… we shouldn’t even be talking about this. It’s private—”
His enormous hands gripped the tops of my arms, wrapping all the way around, fingers overlapping.
“Ow, Jake! Let go!” He shook me.
“Bella! Have you lost your mind? You can’t be that stupid! Tell me you’re joking!”
He shook me again. His hands, tight as tourniquets, were quivering, sending vibrations deep into my bones.
“Jake—stop!”
The darkness was suddenly very crowded.
“Take your hands off her!” Edward’s voice was cold as ice, sharp as razors.
Behind Jacob, there was a low snarl from the black night, and then another, overlapping the first.
“Jake, bro, back away,” I heard Seth Clearwater urge. “You’re losing it.” Jacob seemed frozen as he was, his horrified eyes wide and staring. “You’ll hurt her,” Seth whispered. “Let her go.”
“Now!” Edward snarled.
Jacob’s hands dropped to his sides, and the sudden gush of blood through my waiting veins was almost painful. Before I could register more than that, cold hands replaced the hot ones, and the air was suddenly whooshing past me.
I blinked, and I was on my feet a half dozen feet away from where I’d been standing. Edward was tensed in front of me. There were two enormous wolves braced between him and Jacob, but they did not seem aggressive to me. More like they were trying to prevent the fight.
And Seth—gangly, fifteen-year-old Seth—had his long arms around Jacob’s shaking body, and he was tugging him away. If Jacob phased with Seth so close…
“C’mon, Jake. Let’s go.”
“I’ll kill you,” Jacob said, his voice so choked with rage that it was low as a whisper. His eyes, focused on Edward, burned with fury. “I’ll kill you myself! I’ll do it now!” He shuddered convulsively.
The biggest wolf, the black one, growled sharply. “Seth, get out of the way,” Edward hissed.
Seth tugged on Jacob again. Jacob was so bewildered with rage that Seth was able to yank him a few feet farther back. “Don’t do it, Jake. Walk away. C’mon.”
Sam—the bigger wolf, the black one—joined Seth then. He put his massive head against Jacob’s chest and shoved.
The three of them—Seth towing, Jake trembling, Sam pushing—disappeared swiftly into the darkness.
The other wolf stared after them. I wasn’t sure, in the weak light, about the color of his fur—chocolate brown, maybe? Was it Quil, then?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the wolf.
“It’s all right now, Bella,” Edward murmured.
The wolf looked at Edward. His gaze was not friendly. Edward gave him one cold nod. The wolf huffed and then turned to follow the others, vanishing as they had.
“All right,” Edward said to himself, and then he looked at me. “Let’s get back.” “But Jake—”
“Sam has him in hand. He’s gone.” “Edward, I’m so sorry. I was stupid—” “You did nothing wrong—”
“I have such a big mouth! Why would I… I shouldn’t have let him get to me like that. What was I thinking?”
“Don’t worry.” He touched my face. “We need to get back to the reception before someone notices our absence.”
I shook my head, trying to reorient myself. Before someone noticed? Had anyone
missed that?
Then, as I thought about it, I realized the confrontation that had seemed so catastrophic to me had, in reality, been very quiet and short here in the shadows.
“Give me two seconds,” I pleaded.
My insides were chaotic with panic and grief, but that didn’t matter—only the outside mattered right now. Putting on a good show was something I knew I had to master.
“My dress?”
“You look fine. Not a hair out of place.”
I took two deep breaths. “Okay. Let’s go.”
He put his arms around me and led me back to the light. When we passed under the twinkle lights, he spun me gently onto the dance floor. We melted in with the other dancers as if our dance had never been interrupted.
I glanced around at the guests, but no one seemed shocked or frightened. Only the very palest faces there showed any signs of stress, and they hid it well. Jasper and Emmett were on the edge of the floor, close together, and I guessed that they had been nearby during the confrontation.
“Are you—”
“I’m fine,” I promised. “I can’t believe I did that. What’s wrong with me?” “Nothing is wrong with you.”
I’d been so glad to see Jacob here. I knew the sacrifice it had taken him. And then I’d ruined it, turned his gift into a disaster. I should be quarantined.
But my idiocy would not ruin anything else tonight. I would put this away, shove it in a drawer and lock it up to deal with later. There would be plenty of time to flagellate myself for this, and nothing I could do now would help.
“It’s over,” I said. “Let’s not think of it again tonight.”
I expected a quick agreement from Edward, but he was silent. “Edward?”
He closed his eyes and touched his forehead to mine. “Jacob is right,” he whispered. “What am I thinking?”
“He is not.” I tried to keep my face smooth for the watching crowd of friends. “Jacob is way too prejudiced to see anything clearly.”
He mumbled something low that sounded almost like “should let him kill me for even thinking . . .”
“Stop it,” I said fiercely. I grabbed his face in my hands and waited until he opened his eyes. “You and me. That’s the only thing that matters. The only thing you’re allowed to think about now. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” he sighed.
“Forget Jacob came.” I could do that. I would do that. “For me. Promise that you’ll let this go.”
He stared into my eyes for a moment before answering. “I promise.” “Thank you. Edward, I’m not afraid.”
“I am,” he whispered.
“Don’t be.” I took deep breath and smiled. “By the way, I love you.” He smiled just a little in return. “That’s why we’re here.”
“You’re monopolizing the bride,” Emmett said, coming up behind Edward’s shoulder. “Let me dance with my little sister. This could be my last chance to make her blush.” He laughed loudly, as unaffected as he usually was by any serious atmosphere.
It turned out there were actually lots of people I hadn’t danced with yet, and that gave me a chance to truly compose and resolve myself. When Edward claimed me again, I found that the Jacob-drawer was shut nice and tight. As he wrapped his arms around me, I was able to unearth my earlier sense of joy, my certainty that everything in my life was in the right place tonight. I smiled and laid my head against his chest. His arms tightened.
“I could get used to this,” I said.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gotten over your dancing issues?”
“Dancing isn’t so bad—with you. But I was thinking more of this,”—and I pressed myself to him even tighter—“of never having to let you go.”
“Never,” he promised, and he leaned down to kiss me.
It was a serious kind of kiss—intense, slow but building.…
I’d pretty much forgotten where I was when I heard Alice call, “Bella! It’s time!” I felt a brief flicker of irritation with my new sister for the interruption.
Edward ignored her; his lips were hard against mine, more urgent than before. My heart broke into a sprint and my palms were slick against his marble neck.
“Do you want to miss your plane?” Alice demanded, right next to me now. “I’m sure you’ll have a lovely honeymoon camped out in the airport waiting for another flight.”
Edward turned his face slightly to murmur, “Go away, Alice,” and then pressed his lips to mine again.
“Bella, do you want to wear that dress on the airplane?” she demanded.
I wasn’t really paying much attention. At the moment, I simply didn’t care.
Alice growled quietly. “I’ll tell her where you’re taking her, Edward. So help me, I will.”
He froze. Then he lifted his face from mine and glared at his favorite sister. “You’re awfully small to be so hugely irritating.”
“I didn’t pick out the perfect going-away dress to have it wasted,” she snapped back, taking my hand. “Come with me, Bella.”
I tugged against her hold, stretching up on my toes to kiss him one more time. She jerked my arm impatiently, hauling me away from him. There were a few chuckles from the watching guests. I gave up then and let her lead me into the empty house.
She looked annoyed. “Sorry, Alice,” I apologized.
“I don’t blame you, Bella.” She sighed. “You don’t seem to be able help yourself.” I giggled at her martyred expression, and she scowled.
“Thank you, Alice. It was the most beautiful wedding anyone ever had,” I told her earnestly. “Everything was exactly right. You’re the best, smartest, most talented sister in the whole world.”
That thawed her out; she smiled a huge smile. “I’m glad you liked it.”
Renée and Esme were waiting upstairs. The three of them quickly had me out of my dress and into Alice’s deep blue going-away ensemble. I was grateful when someone pulled the pins out of my hair and let it fall loose down my back, wavy from the braids, saving me from a hairpin headache later. My mother’s tears streamed without a break the entire time.
“I’ll call you when I know where I’m going,” I promised as I hugged her goodbye. I knew the honeymoon secret was probably driving her crazy; my mother hated secrets, unless she was in on them.
“I’ll tell you as soon as she’s safely away,” Alice outdid me, smirking at my wounded expression. How unfair, for me to be the last to know.
“You have to visit me and Phil very, very soon. It’s your turn to go south—see the sun for once,” Renée said.
“It didn’t rain today,” I reminded her, avoiding her request. “A miracle.”
“Everything’s ready,” Alice said. “Your suitcases are in the car—Jasper’s bringing it around.” She pulled me back toward the stairs with Renée following, still halfway embracing me.
“I love you, Mom,” I whispered as we descended. “I’m so glad you have Phil. Take care of each other.”
“I love you, too, Bella, honey.”
“Goodbye, Mom. I love you,” I said again, my throat thick.
Edward was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. I took his outstretched hand but leaned away, scanning the little crowd that was waiting to see us off.
“Dad?” I asked, my eyes searching.
“Over here,” Edward murmured. He pulled me through the guests; they made a pathway for us. We found Charlie leaning awkwardly against the wall behind everyone else, looking a little like he was hiding. The red rims around his eyes explained why.
“Oh, Dad!”
I hugged him around the waist, tears streaming again—I was crying so much tonight. He patted my back.
“There, now. You don’t want to miss your plane.”
It was hard to talk about love with Charlie—we were so much alike, always reverting to trivial things to avoid embarrassing emotional displays. But this was no time for being self-conscious.
“I love you forever, Dad,” I told him. “Don’t forget that.” “You, too, Bells. Always have, always will.”
I kissed his cheek at the same time that he kissed mine. “Call me,” he said.
“Soon,” I promised, knowing this was all I could promise. Just a phone call. My father and my mother could not be allowed to see me again; I would be too different, and much, much too dangerous.
“Go on, then,” he said gruffly. “Don’t want to be late.”
The guests made another aisle for us. Edward pulled me close to his side as we made our escape.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“I am,” I said, and I knew that it was true.
Everyone applauded when Edward kissed me on the doorstep. Then he rushed me to the car as the rice storm began. Most of it went wide, but someone, probably Emmett, threw with uncanny precision, and I caught a lot of the ricochets off Edward’s back.
The car was decorated with more flowers that trailed in streamers along its length, and long gossamer ribbons that were tied to a dozen shoes—designer shoes that looked brand-new—dangling behind the bumper.
Edward shielded me from the rice while I climbed in, and then he was in and we were speeding away as I waved out the window and called “I love you” to the porch, where my families waved back.
The last image I registered was one of my parents. Phil had both arms wrapped tenderly around Renée. She had one arm tight around his waist but had her free hand reached out to hold Charlie’s. So many different kinds of love, harmonious in this one moment. It seemed a very hopeful picture to me.
Edward squeezed my hand. “I love you,” he said.
I leaned my head against his arm. “That’s why we’re here,” I quoted him. He kissed my hair.
As we turned onto the black highway and Edward really hit the accelerator, I heard a noise over the purr of the engine, coming from the forest behind us. If I could hear it, then he certainly could. But he said nothing as the sound slowly faded in the distance. I said nothing, either.
The piercing, heartbroken howling grew fainter and then disappeared entirely.
5. ISLE ESME
“Houston?” I asked, raising my eyebrows when we reached the gate in Seattle. “Just a stop along the way,” Edward assured me with a grin.
It felt like I’d barely fallen asleep when he woke me. I was groggy as he pulled me through the terminals, struggling to remember how to open my eyes after every blink. It took me a few minutes to catch up with what was going on when we stopped at the international counter to check in for our next flight.
“Rio de Janeiro?” I asked with slightly more trepidation. “Another stop,” he told me.
The flight to South America was long but comfortable in the wide first-class seat, with Edward’s arms cradled around me. I slept myself out and awoke unusually alert as we circled toward the airport with the light of the setting sun slanting through the plane’s windows.
We didn’t stay in the airport to connect with another flight as I’d expected. Instead we took a taxi through the dark, teeming, living streets of Rio. Unable to understand a word of Edward’s Portuguese instructions to the driver, I guessed that we were off to find a hotel before the next leg of our journey. A sharp twinge of something very close to stage fright twisted in the pit of my stomach as I considered that. The taxi continued through the swarming crowds until they thinned somewhat, and we appeared to be nearing the extreme western edge of the city, heading into the ocean.
We stopped at the docks.
Edward led the way down the long line of white yachts moored in the night- blackened water. The boat he stopped at was smaller than the others, sleeker, obviously built for speed instead of space. Still luxurious, though, and more graceful than the rest. He leaped in lightly, despite the heavy bags he carried. He dropped those on the deck and turned to help me carefully over the edge.
I watched in silence while he prepared the boat for departure, surprised at how skilled and comfortable he seemed, because he’d never mentioned an interest in boating before. But then again, he was good at just about everything.
As we headed due east into the open ocean, I reviewed basic geography in my head. As far as I could remember, there wasn’t much east of Brazil… until you got to Africa.
But Edward sped forward while the lights of Rio faded and ultimately disappeared behind us. On his face was a familiar exhilarated smile, the one produced by any form of speed. The boat plunged through the waves and I was showered with sea spray.
Finally the curiosity I’d suppressed so long got the best of me. “Are we going much farther?” I asked.
It wasn’t like him to forget that I was human, but I wondered if he planned for us to live on this small craft for any length of time.
“About another half hour.” His eyes took in my hands, clenched on the seat, and he grinned.
Oh well, I thought to myself. He was a vampire, after all. Maybe we were going to Atlantis.
Twenty minutes later, he called my name over the roar of the engine. “Bella, look there.” He pointed straight ahead.
I saw only blackness at first, and the moon’s white trail across the water. But I searched the space where he pointed until I found a low black shape breaking into the sheen of moonlight on the waves. As I squinted into the darkness, the silhouette became more detailed. The shape grew into a squat, irregular triangle, with one side trailing longer than the other before sinking into the waves. We drew closer, and I could see the outline was feathery, swaying to the light breeze.
And then my eyes refocused and the pieces all made sense: a small island rose out of the water ahead of us, waving with palm fronds, a beach glowing pale in the light of the moon.
“Where are we?” I murmured in wonder while he shifted course, heading around to the north end of the island.
He heard me, despite the noise of the engine, and smiled a wide smile that gleamed in the moonlight.
“This is Isle Esme.”
The boat slowed dramatically, drawing with precision into position against a short dock constructed of wooden planks, bleached into whiteness by the moon. The engine cut off, and the silence that followed was profound. There was nothing but the waves, slapping lightly against the boat, and the rustle of the breeze in the palms. The air was warm, moist, and fragrant—like the steam left behind after a hot shower.
“Isle Esme?” My voice was low, but it still sounded too loud as it broke into the quiet night.
“A gift from Carlisle—Esme offered to let us borrow it.”
A gift. Who gives an island as a gift? I frowned. I hadn’t realized that Edward’s extreme generosity was a learned behavior.
He placed the suitcases on the dock and then turned back, smiling his perfect smile as he reached for me. Instead of taking my hand, he pulled me right up into his arms.
“Aren’t you supposed to wait for the threshold?” I asked, breathless, as he sprung lightly out of the boat.
He grinned. “I’m nothing if not thorough.”
Gripping the handles of both huge steamer trunks in one hand and cradling me in the other arm, he carried me up the dock and onto a pale sand pathway through the dark vegetation.
For a short while it was pitch black in the jungle-like growth, and then I could see a warm light ahead. It was about at the point when I realized the light was a house—the two bright, perfect squares were wide windows framing a front door— that the stage fright attacked again, more forcefully than before, worse than when I’d thought we were headed for a hotel.
My heart thudded audibly against my ribs, and my breath seemed to get stuck in my throat. I felt Edward’s eyes on my face, but I refused to meet his gaze. I stared straight ahead, seeing nothing.
He didn’t ask what I was thinking, which was out of character for him. I guessed that meant that he was just as nervous as I suddenly was.
He set the suitcases on the deep porch to open the doors—they were unlocked.
Edward looked down at me, waiting until I met his gaze before he stepped through the threshold.
He carried me through the house, both of us very quiet, flipping on lights as he went. My vague impression of the house was that it was quite large for a tiny island, and oddly familiar. I’d gotten used to the pale-on-pale color scheme preferred by the Cullens; it felt like home. I couldn’t focus on any specifics, though. The violent pulse beating behind my ears made everything a little blurry.
Then Edward stopped and turned on the last light.
The room was big and white, and the far wall was mostly glass—standard décor for my vampires. Outside, the moon was bright on white sand and, just a few yards away from the house, glistening waves. But I barely noted that part. I was more focused on the absolutely huge white bed in the center of the room, hung with billowy clouds of mosquito netting.
Edward set me on my feet. “I’ll… go get the luggage.”
The room was too warm, stuffier than the tropical night outside. A bead of sweat dewed up on the nape of my neck. I walked slowly forward until I could reach out and touch the foamy netting. For some reason I felt the need to make sure everything was real.
I didn’t hear Edward return. Suddenly, his wintry finger caressed the back of my neck, wiping away the drop of perspiration.
“It’s a little hot here,” he said apologetically. “I thought… that would be best.”
“Thorough,” I murmured under my breath, and he chuckled. It was a nervous sound, rare for Edward.
“I tried to think of everything that would make this… easier,” he admitted.
I swallowed loudly, still facing away from him. Had there ever been a honeymoon like this before?
I knew the answer to that. No. There had not.
“I was wondering,” Edward said slowly, “if… first… maybe you’d like to take a midnight swim with me?” He took a deep breath, and his voice was more at ease when he spoke again. “The water will be very warm. This is the kind of beach you approve of.”
“Sounds nice.” My voice broke.
“I’m sure you’d like a human minute or two.… It was a long journey.”
I nodded woodenly. I felt barely human; maybe a few minutes alone would help.
His lips brushed against my throat, just below my ear. He chuckled once and his cool breath tickled my overheated skin. “Don’t take too long, Mrs. Cullen.”
I jumped a little at the sound of my new name.
His lips brushed down my neck to the tip of my shoulder. “I’ll wait for you in the water.”
He walked past me to the French door that opened right onto the beach sand. On the way, he shrugged out of his shirt, dropping it on the floor, and then slipped through the door into the moonlit night. The sultry, salty air swirled into the room behind him.
Did my skin burst into flames? I had to look down to check. Nope, nothing was burning. At least, not visibly.
I reminded myself to breathe, and then I stumbled toward the giant suitcase that Edward had opened on top of a low white dresser. It must be mine, because my familiar bag of toiletries was right on top, and there was a lot of pink in there, but I didn’t recognize even one article of clothing. As I pawed through the neatly folded piles—looking for something familiar and comfortable, a pair of old sweats maybe—it came to my attention that there was an awful lot of sheer lace and skimpy satin in my hands. Lingerie. Very lingerie-ish lingerie, with French tags.
I didn’t know how or when, but someday, Alice was going to pay for this.
Giving up, I went to the bathroom and peeked out through the long windows that opened to the same beach as the French doors. I couldn’t see him; I guessed he was there in the water, not bothering to come up for air. In the sky above, the moon was lopsided, almost full, and the sand was bright white under its shine. A small movement caught my eye—draped over a bend in one of the palm trees that fringed the beach, the rest of his clothes were swaying in the light breeze.
A rush of heat flashed across my skin again.
I took a couple of deep breaths and then went to the mirrors above the long stretch of counters. I looked exactly like I’d been sleeping on a plane all day. I found my brush and yanked it harshly through the snarls on the back of my neck until they were smoothed out and the bristles were full of hair. I brushed my teeth meticulously, twice. Then I washed my face and splashed water on the back of my neck, which was feeling feverish. That felt so good that I washed my arms as well, and finally I decided to just give up and take the shower. I knew it was ridiculous to shower before swimming, but I needed to calm down, and hot water was one reliable way to do that.
Also, shaving my legs again seemed like a pretty good idea.
When I was done, I grabbed a huge white towel off the counter and wrapped it under my arms.
Then I was faced with a dilemma I hadn’t considered. What was I supposed to put on? Not a swimsuit, obviously. But it seemed silly to put my clothes back on, too. I didn’t even want to think about the things Alice had packed for me.
My breathing started to accelerate again and my hands trembled—so much for the calming effects of the shower. I started to feel a little dizzy, apparently a full- scale panic attack on the way. I sat down on the cool tile floor in my big towel and put my head between my knees. I prayed he wouldn’t decide to come look for me before I could pull myself together. I could imagine what he would think if he saw me going to pieces this way. It wouldn’t be hard for him to convince himself that we were making a mistake.
And I wasn’t freaking out because I thought we were making a mistake. Not at all. I was freaking out because I had no idea how to do this, and I was afraid to walk out of this room and face the unknown. Especially in French lingerie. I knew I wasn’t ready for that yet.
This felt exactly like having to walk out in front of a theater full of thousands with no idea what my lines were.
How did people do this—swallow all their fears and trust someone else so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had—with less than the absolute commitment Edward had given me? If it weren’t Edward out there, if I didn’t know in every cell of my body that he loved me as much as I loved him— unconditionally and irrevocably and, to be honest, irrationally—I’d never be able to get up off this floor.
But it was Edward out there, so I whispered the words “Don’t be a coward” under my breath and scrambled to my feet. I hitched the towel tighter under my arms and marched determinedly from the bathroom. Past the suitcase full of lace and the big bed without looking at either. Out the open glass door onto the powder- fine sand.
Everything was black-and-white, leached colorless by the moon. I walked slowly across the warm powder, pausing beside the curved tree where he had left his clothes. I laid my hand against the rough bark and checked my breathing to make sure it was even. Or even enough.
I looked across the low ripples, black in the darkness, searching for him.
He wasn’t hard to find. He stood, his back to me, waist deep in the midnight water, staring up at the oval moon. The pallid light of the moon turned his skin a perfect white, like the sand, like the moon itself, and made his wet hair black as the ocean. He was motionless, his hands resting palms down against the water; the low waves broke around him as if he were a stone. I stared at the smooth lines of his back, his shoulders, his arms, his neck, the flawless shape of him.…
The fire was no longer a flash burn across my skin—it was slow and deep now; it smoldered away all my awkwardness, my shy uncertainty. I slipped the towel off without hesitation, leaving it on the tree with his clothes, and walked out into the white light; it made me pale as the snowy sand, too.
I couldn’t hear the sound of my footsteps as I walked to the water’s edge, but I guessed that he could. Edward did not turn. I let the gentle swells break over my toes, and found that he’d been right about the temperature—it was very warm, like bath water. I stepped in, walking carefully across the invisible ocean floor, but my care was unnecessary; the sand continued perfectly smooth, sloping gently toward Edward. I waded through the weightless current till I was at his side, and then I placed my hand lightly over his cool hand lying on the water.
“Beautiful,” I said, looking up at the moon, too.
“It’s all right,” he answered, unimpressed. He turned slowly to face me; little waves rolled away from his movement and broke against my skin. His eyes looked silver in his ice-colored face. He twisted his hand up so that he could twine our fingers beneath the surface of the water. It was warm enough that his cool skin did not raise goose bumps on mine.
“But I wouldn’t use the word beautiful,” he continued. “Not with you standing here in comparison.”
I half-smiled, then raised my free hand—it didn’t tremble now—and placed it over his heart. White on white; we matched, for once. He shuddered the tiniest bit at my warm touch. His breath came rougher now.
“I promised we would try,” he whispered, suddenly tense. “If… if I do something wrong, if I hurt you, you must tell me at once.”
I nodded solemnly, keeping my eyes on his. I took another step through the waves and leaned my head against his chest.
“Don’t be afraid,” I murmured. “We belong together.”
I was abruptly overwhelmed by the truth of my own words. This moment was so perfect, so right, there was no way to doubt it.
His arms wrapped around me, holding me against him, summer and winter. It felt like every nerve ending in my body was a live wire.
“Forever,” he agreed, and then pulled us gently into deeper water.
The sun, hot on the bare skin of my back, woke me in the morning. Late morning, maybe afternoon, I wasn’t sure. Everything besides the time was clear, though; I knew exactly where I was—the bright room with the big white bed, brilliant
sunlight streaming through the open doors. The clouds of netting would soften the shine.
I didn’t open my eyes. I was too happy to change anything, no matter how small. The only sounds were the waves outside, our breathing, my heartbeat.…
I was comfortable, even with the baking sun. His cool skin was the perfect antidote to the heat. Lying across his wintry chest, his arms wound around me, felt very easy and natural. I wondered idly what I’d been so panicky about last night. My fears all seemed silly now.
His fingers softly trailed down the contours of my spine, and I knew that he knew I was awake. I kept my eyes shut and tightened my arms around his neck, holding myself closer to him.
He didn’t speak; his fingers moved up and down my back, barely touching it as he lightly traced patterns on my skin.
I would have been happy to lie here forever, to never disturb this moment, but my body had other ideas. I laughed at my impatient stomach. It seemed sort of prosaic to be hungry after all that had passed last night. Like being brought back down to earth from some great height.
“What’s funny?” he murmured, still stroking my back. The sound of his voice, serious and husky, brought with it a deluge of memories from the night, and I felt a blush color my face and neck.
To answer his question, my stomach growled. I laughed again. “You just can’t escape being human for very long.”
I waited, but he did not laugh with me. Slowly, sinking through the many layers of bliss that clouded my head, came the realization of a different atmosphere outside my own glowing sphere of happiness.
I opened my eyes; the first thing I saw was the pale, almost silvery skin of his throat, the arc of his chin above my face. His jaw was taut. I propped myself up on my elbow so I could see his face.
He was staring at the frothy canopy above us, and he didn’t look at me as I studied his grave features. His expression was a shock—it sent a physical jolt through my body.
“Edward,” I said, a strange little catch in my throat, “what is it? What’s wrong?” “You have to ask?” His voice was hard, cynical.
My first instinct, the product of a lifetime of insecurities, was to wonder what I had done wrong. I thought through everything that had happened, but I couldn’t find any sour note in the memory. It had all been simpler than I’d expected; we’d fit together like corresponding pieces, made to match up. This had given me a secret satisfaction—we were compatible physically, as well as all the other ways. Fire and ice, somehow existing together without destroying each other. More proof that I belonged with him.
I couldn’t think of any part that would make him look like this—so severe and cold. What had I missed?
His finger smoothed the worried lines on my forehead. “What are you thinking?” he whispered.
“You’re upset. I don’t understand. Did I… ?” I couldn’t finish.
His eyes tightened. “How badly are you hurt, Bella? The truth—don’t try to downplay it.”
“Hurt?” I repeated; my voice came out higher than usual because the word took me so by surprise.
He raised one eyebrow, his lips a tight line.
I made a quick assessment, stretching my body automatically, tensing and flexing my muscles. There was stiffness, and a lot of soreness, too, it was true, but mostly there was the odd sensation that my bones all had become unhinged at the joints, and I had changed halfway into the consistency of a jellyfish. It was not an unpleasant feeling.
And then I was a little angry, because he was darkening this most perfect of all mornings with his pessimistic assumptions.
“Why would you jump to that conclusion? I’ve never been better than I am now.” His eyes closed. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop acting like I’m not a monster for having agreed to this.”
“Edward!” I whispered, really upset now. He was pulling my bright memory through the darkness, staining it. “Don’t ever say that.”
He didn’t open his eyes; it was like he didn’t want to see me.
“Look at yourself, Bella. Then tell me I’m not a monster.”
Wounded, shocked, I followed his instruction unthinkingly and then gasped.
What had happened to me? I couldn’t make sense of the fluffy white snow that clung to my skin. I shook my head, and a cascade of white drifted out of my hair.
I pinched one soft white bit between my fingers. It was a piece of down. “Why am I covered in feathers?” I asked, confused.
He exhaled impatiently. “I bit a pillow. Or two. That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“You… bit a pillow? Why?”
“Look, Bella!” he almost growled. He took my hand—very gingerly—and stretched my arm out. “Look at that.”
This time, I saw what he meant.
Under the dusting of feathers, large purplish bruises were beginning to blossom across the pale skin of my arm. My eyes followed the trail they made up to my shoulder, and then down across my ribs. I pulled my hand free to poke at a discoloration on my left forearm, watching it fade where I touched and then reappear. It throbbed a little.
So lightly that he was barely touching me, Edward placed his hand against the bruises on my arm, one at a time, matching his long fingers to the patterns.
“Oh,” I said.
I tried to remember this—to remember pain—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t recall a moment when his hold had been too tight, his hands too hard against me. I only remembered wanting him to hold me tighter, and being pleased when he did.…
“I’m… so sorry, Bella,” he whispered while I stared at the bruises. “I knew better than this. I should not have—” He made a low, revolted sound in the back of his throat. “I am more sorry than I can tell you.”
He threw his arm over his face and became perfectly still.
I sat for one long moment in total astonishment, trying to come to terms—now that I understood it—with his misery. It was so contrary to the way that I felt that it was difficult to process.
The shock wore off slowly, leaving nothing in its absence. Emptiness. My mind was blank. I couldn’t think of what to say. How could I explain it to him in the right way? How could I make him as happy as I was—or as I had been, a moment ago?
I touched his arm, and he didn’t respond. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and tried to pry his arm off his face, but I could have been yanking on a sculpture for all the good it did me.
“Edward.”
He didn’t move. “Edward?”
Nothing. So, this would be a monologue, then.
“I’m not sorry, Edward. I’m… I can’t even tell you. I’m so happy. That doesn’t cover it. Don’t be angry. Don’t. I’m really f—”
“Do not say the word fine.” His voice was ice cold. “If you value my sanity, do not say that you are fine.”
“But I am,” I whispered.
“Bella,” he almost moaned. “Don’t.” “No. You don’t, Edward.”
He moved his arm; his gold eyes watched me warily. “Don’t ruin this,” I told him. “I. Am. Happy.”
“I’ve already ruined this,” he whispered. “Cut it out,” I snapped.
I heard his teeth grind together.
“Ugh!” I groaned. “Why can’t you just read my mind already? It’s so inconvenient
to be a mental mute!”
His eyes widened a little bit, distracted in spite of himself. “That’s a new one. You love that I can’t read your mind.” “Not today.”
He stared at me. “Why?”
I threw my hands up in frustration, feeling an ache in my shoulder that I ignored. My palms fell back against his chest with a sharp smack. “Because all this angst would be completely unnecessary if you could see how I feel right now! Or five minutes ago, anyway. I was perfectly happy. Totally and completely blissed out. Now—well, I’m sort of pissed, actually.”
“You should be angry at me.”
“Well, I am. Does that make you feel better?”
He sighed. “No. I don’t think anything could make me feel better now.”
“That,” I snapped. “That right there is why I’m angry. You are killing my buzz, Edward.”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
I took a deep breath. I was feeling more of the soreness now, but it wasn’t that bad. Sort of like the day after lifting weights. I’d done that with Renée during one of her fitness obsessions. Sixty-five lunges with ten pounds in each hand. I couldn’t walk the next day. This was not as painful as that had been by half.
I swallowed my irritation and tried to make my voice soothing. “We knew this was going to be tricky. I thought that was assumed. And then—well, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. And this is really nothing.” I brushed my fingers along my arm. “I think for a first time, not knowing what to expect, we did amazing. With a little practice—”
His expression was suddenly so livid that I broke off mid-sentence.
“Assumed? Did you expect this, Bella? Were you anticipating that I would hurt you? Were you thinking it would be worse? Do you consider the experiment a success because you can walk away from it? No broken bones—that equals a victory?”
I waited, letting him get it all out. Then I waited some more while his breathing went back to normal. When his eyes were calm, I answered, speaking with slow precision.
“I didn’t know what to expect—but I definitely did not expect how… how… just wonderful and perfect it was.” My voice dropped to a whisper, my eyes slipped from his face down to my hands. “I mean, I don’t know how it was for you, but it was like that for me.”
A cool finger pulled my chin back up.
“Is that what you’re worried about?” he said through his teeth. “That I didn’t
enjoy myself?”
My eyes stayed down. “I know it’s not the same. You’re not human. I just was trying to explain that, for a human, well, I can’t imagine that life gets any better than that.”
He was quiet for so long that, finally, I had to look up. His face was softer now, thoughtful.
“It seems that I have more to apologize for.” He frowned. “I didn’t dream that you would construe the way I feel about what I did to you to mean that last night wasn’t… well, the best night of my existence. But I don’t want to think of it that way, not when you were . . .”
My lips curved up a little at the edges. “Really? The best ever?” I asked in a small voice.
He took my face between his hands, still introspective. “I spoke to Carlisle after you and I made our bargain, hoping he could help me. Of course he warned me that this would be very dangerous for you.” A shadow crossed his expression. “He had faith in me, though—faith I didn’t deserve.”
I started to protest, and he put two fingers over my lips before I could comment.
“I also asked him what I should expect. I didn’t know what it would be for me… what with my being a vampire.” He smiled halfheartedly. “Carlisle told me it was a very powerful thing, like nothing else. He told me physical love was something I should not treat lightly. With our rarely changing temperaments, strong emotions can alter us in permanent ways. But he said I did not need to worry about that part—you had already altered me so completely.” This time his smile was more genuine.
“I spoke to my brothers, too. They told me it was a very great pleasure. Second only to drinking human blood.” A line creased his brow. “But I’ve tasted your blood, and there could be no blood more potent than that.… I don’t think they were wrong, really. Just that it was different for us. Something more.”
“It was more. It was everything.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that it was wrong. Even if it were possible that you really did feel that way.”
“What does that mean? Do you think I’m making this up? Why?”
“To ease my guilt. I can’t ignore the evidence, Bella. Or your history of trying to let me off the hook when I make mistakes.”
I grabbed his chin and leaned forward so that our faces were inches apart. “You listen to me, Edward Cullen. I am not pretending anything for your sake, okay? I didn’t even know there was a reason to make you feel better until you started being all miserable. I’ve never been so happy in all my life—I wasn’t this happy when you decided that you loved me more than you wanted to kill me, or the first morning I woke up and you were there waiting for me.… Not when I heard your voice in the ballet studio”—he flinched at the old memory of my close call with a hunting vampire, but I didn’t pause—“or when you said ‘I do’ and I realized that, somehow, I get to keep you forever. Those are the happiest memories I have, and this is better than any of it. So just deal with it.”
He touched the frown line between my eyebrows. “I’m making you unhappy now. I don’t want to do that.”
“Then don’t you be unhappy. That’s the only thing that’s wrong here.”
His eyes tightened, then he took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. The past is past and I can’t do anything to change it. There’s no sense in letting my mood sour this time for you. I’ll do whatever I can to make you happy now.”
I examined his face suspiciously, and he gave me a serene smile. “Whatever makes me happy?”
My stomach growled at the same time that I asked.
“You’re hungry,” he said quickly. He was swiftly out of the bed, stirring up a cloud of feathers. Which reminded me.
“So, why exactly did you decide to ruin Esme’s pillows?” I asked, sitting up and shaking more down from my hair.
He had already pulled on a pair of loose khaki pants, and he stood by the door, rumpling his hair, dislodging a few feathers of his own.
“I don’t know if I decided to do anything last night,” he muttered. “We’re just lucky it was the pillows and not you.” He inhaled deeply and then shook his head, as if shaking off the dark thought. A very authentic-looking smile spread across his face, but I guessed it took a lot of work to put it there.
I slid carefully off the high bed and stretched again, more aware, now, of the aches and sore spots. I heard him gasp. He turned away from me, and his hands balled up, knuckles white.
“Do I look that hideous?” I asked, working to keep my tone light. His breath caught, but he didn’t turn, probably to hide his expression from me. I walked to the bathroom to check for myself.
I stared at my naked body in the full-length mirror behind the door.
I’d definitely had worse. There was a faint shadow across one of my cheekbones, and my lips were a little swollen, but other than that, my face was fine. The rest of me was decorated with patches of blue and purple. I concentrated on the bruises that would be the hardest to hide—my arms and my shoulders. They weren’t so bad. My skin marked up easily. By the time a bruise showed I’d usually forgotten how I’d come by it. Of course, these were just developing. I’d look even worse tomorrow. That would not make things any easier.
I looked at my hair, then, and groaned.
“Bella?” He was right there behind me as soon as I’d made a sound.
“I’ll never get this all out of my hair!” I pointed to my head, where it looked like a chicken was nesting. I started picking at the feathers.
“You would be worried about your hair,” he mumbled, but he came to stand behind me, pulling out the feathers much more quickly.
“How did you keep from laughing at this? I look ridiculous.”
He didn’t answer; he just kept plucking. And I knew the answer anyway—there was nothing that would be funny to him in this mood.
“This isn’t going to work,” I sighed after a minute. “It’s all dried in. I’m going to have to try to wash it out.” I turned around, wrapping my arms around his cool waist. “Do you want to help me?”
“I’d better find some food for you,” he said in a quiet voice, and he gently unwound my arms. I sighed as he disappeared, moving too fast.
It looked like my honeymoon was over. The thought put a big lump in my throat.
When I was mostly feather-free and dressed in an unfamiliar white cotton dress that concealed the worst of the violet blotches, I padded off barefoot to where the smell of eggs and bacon and cheddar cheese was coming from.
Edward stood in front of the stainless steel stove, sliding an omelet onto the light blue plate waiting on the counter. The scent of the food overwhelmed me. I felt like I could eat the plate and the frying pan, too; my stomach snarled.
“Here,” he said. He turned with a smile on his face and set the plate on a small tiled table.
I sat in one of the two metal chairs and started snarfing down the hot eggs. They burned my throat, but I didn’t care.
He sat down across from me. “I’m not feeding you often enough.”
I swallowed and then reminded him, “I was asleep. This is really good, by the way. Impressive for someone who doesn’t eat.”
“Food Network,” he said, flashing my favorite crooked smile.
I was happy to see it, happy that he seemed more like his normal self. “Where did the eggs come from?”
“I asked the cleaning crew to stock the kitchen. A first, for this place. I’ll have to ask them to deal with the feathers.… ” He trailed off, his gaze fixed on a space above my head. I didn’t respond, trying to avoid saying anything that would upset him again.
I ate everything, though he’d made enough for two.
“Thank you,” I told him. I leaned across the table to kiss him. He kissed me back automatically, and then suddenly stiffened and leaned away.
I gritted my teeth, and the question I meant to ask came out sounding like an accusation. “You aren’t going to touch me again while we’re here, are you?”
He hesitated, then half-smiled and raised his hand to stroke my cheek. His fingers lingered softly on my skin, and I couldn’t help leaning my face into his palm.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
He sighed and dropped his hand. “I know. And you’re right.” He paused, lifting his chin slightly. And then he spoke again with firm conviction. “I will not make love with you until you’ve been changed. I will never hurt you again.”
6. DISTRACTIONS
My entertainment became the number-one priority on Isle Esme. We snorkeled (well, I snorkeled while he flaunted his ability to go without oxygen indefinitely). We explored the small jungle that ringed the rocky little peak. We visited the parrots that lived in the canopy on the south end of the island. We watched the sunset from the rocky western cove. We swam with the porpoises that played in the warm, shallow waters there. Or at least I did; when Edward was in the water, the porpoises disappeared as if a shark was near.
I knew what was going on. He was trying to keep me busy, distracted, so I that wouldn’t continue badgering him about the sex thing. Whenever I tried to talk him into taking it easy with one of the million DVDs under the big-screen plasma TV, he would lure me out of the house with magic words like coral reefs and submerged caves and sea turtles. We were going, going, going all day, so that I found myself completely famished and exhausted when the sun eventually set.
I drooped over my plate after I finished dinner every night; once I’d actually fallen asleep right at the table and he’d had to carry me to bed. Part of it was that Edward always made too much food for one, but I was so hungry after swimming and climbing all day that I ate most of it. Then, full and worn out, I could barely keep my eyes open. All part of the plan, no doubt.
Exhaustion didn’t help much with my attempts at persuasion. But I didn’t give up. I tried reasoning, pleading, and grouching, all to no avail. I was usually unconscious before I could really press my case far. And then my dreams felt so real—nightmares mostly, made more vivid, I guessed, by the too-bright colors of the island—that I woke up tired no matter how long I slept.
About a week or so after we’d gotten to the island, I decided to try compromise. It had worked for us in the past.
I was sleeping in the blue room now. The cleaning crew wasn’t due until the next day, and so the white room still had a snowy blanket of down. The blue room was smaller, the bed more reasonably proportioned. The walls were dark, paneled in teak, and the fittings were all luxurious blue silk.
I’d taken to wearing some of Alice’s lingerie collection to sleep in at night—which weren’t so revealing compared to the scanty bikinis she’d packed for me when it came right down to it. I wondered if she’d seen a vision of why I would want such things, and then shuddered, embarrassed by that thought.
I’d started out slow with innocent ivory satins, worried that revealing more of my skin would be the opposite of helpful, but ready to try anything. Edward seemed to notice nothing, as if I were wearing the same ratty old sweats I wore at home.
The bruises were much better now—yellowing in some places and disappearing altogether in others—so tonight I pulled out one of the scarier pieces as I got ready in the paneled bathroom. It was black, lacy, and embarrassing to look at even when it wasn’t on. I was careful not to look in the mirror before I went back to the bedroom. I didn’t want to lose my nerve.
I had the satisfaction of watching his eyes pop open wide for just a second before he controlled his expression.
“What do you think?” I asked, pirouetting so that he could see every angle. He cleared his throat. “You look beautiful. You always do.”
“Thanks,” I said a bit sourly.
I was too tired to resist climbing quickly into the soft bed. He put his arms around me and pulled me against his chest, but this was routine—it was too hot to sleep without his cool body close.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I said sleepily.
“I will not make any deals with you,” he answered. “You haven’t even heard what I’m offering.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I sighed. “Dang it. And I really wanted… Oh well.” He rolled his eyes.
I closed mine and let the bait sit there. I yawned.
It took only a minute—not long enough for me to zonk out. “All right. What is it you want?”
I gritted my teeth for a second, fighting a smile. If there was one thing he couldn’t resist, it was an opportunity to give me something.
“Well, I was thinking… I know that the whole Dartmouth thing was just supposed to be a cover story, but honestly, one semester of college probably wouldn’t kill me,” I said, echoing his words from long ago, when he’d tried to persuade me to put off becoming a vampire. “Charlie would get a thrill out of Dartmouth stories, I bet. Sure, it might be embarrassing if I can’t keep up with all the brainiacs. Still… eighteen, nineteen. It’s really not such a big difference. It’s not like I’m going to get crow’s feet in the next year.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then, in a low voice, he said, “You would wait. You would stay human.”
I held my tongue, letting the offer sink in.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he said through his teeth, his tone suddenly angry. “Isn’t it hard enough without all of this?” He grabbed a handful of lace that was ruffled on my thigh. For a moment, I thought he was going to rip it from the seam. Then his hand relaxed. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t make any deals with you.”
“I want to go to college.”
“No, you don’t. And there is nothing that is worth risking your life again. That’s worth hurting you.”
“But I do want to go. Well, it’s not college as much as it’s that I want—I want to be human a little while longer.”
He closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose. “You are making me insane, Bella. Haven’t we had this argument a million times, you always begging to be a vampire without delay?”
“Yes, but… well, I have a reason to be human that I didn’t have before.” “What’s that?”
“Guess,” I said, and I dragged myself off the pillows to kiss him.
He kissed me back, but not in a way that made me think I was winning. It was more like he was being careful not to hurt my feelings; he was completely, maddeningly in control of himself. Gently, he pulled me away after a moment and cradled me against his chest.
“You are so human, Bella. Ruled by your hormones.” He chuckled.
“That’s the whole point, Edward. I like this part of being human. I don’t want to give it up yet. I don’t want to wait through years of being a blood-crazed newborn for some part of this to come back to me.”
I yawned, and he smiled.
“You’re tired. Sleep, love.” He started humming the lullaby he’d composed for me when we first met.
“I wonder why I’m so tired,” I muttered sarcastically. “That couldn’t be part of your scheme or anything.”
He just chuckled once and went back to humming. “For as tired as I’ve been, you’d think I’d sleep better.”
The song broke off. “You’ve been sleeping like the dead, Bella. You haven’t said a word in your sleep since we got here. If it weren’t for the snoring, I’d worry you were slipping into a coma.”
I ignored the snoring jibe; I didn’t snore. “I haven’t been tossing? That’s weird. Usually I’m all over the bed when I’m having nightmares. And shouting.”
“You’ve been having nightmares?”
“Vivid ones. They make me so tired.” I yawned. “I can’t believe I haven’t been babbling about them all night.”
“What are they about?”
“Different things—but the same, you know, because of the colors.” “Colors?”
“It’s all so bright and real. Usually, when I’m dreaming, I know that I am. With these, I don’t know I’m asleep. It makes them scarier.”
He sounded disturbed when he spoke again. “What is frightening you?” I shuddered slightly. “Mostly . . .” I hesitated.
“Mostly?” he prompted.
I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want to tell him about the child in my recurring nightmare; there was something private about that particular horror. So, instead of giving him the full description, I gave him just one element. Certainly enough to frighten me or anyone else.
“The Volturi,” I whispered.
He hugged me tighter. “They aren’t going to bother us anymore. You’ll be immortal soon, and they’ll have no reason.”
I let him comfort me, feeling a little guilty that he’d misunderstood. The nightmares weren’t like that, exactly. It wasn’t that I was afraid for myself—I was afraid for the boy.
He wasn’t the same boy as that first dream—the vampire child with the bloodred eyes who sat on a pile of dead people I loved. This boy I’d dreamed of four times
in the last week was definitely human; his cheeks were flushed and his wide eyes were a soft green. But just like the other child, he shook with fear and desperation as the Volturi closed in on us.
In this dream that was both new and old, I simply had to protect the unknown child. There was no other option. At the same time, I knew that I would fail.
He saw the desolation on my face. “What can I do to help?” I shook it off. “They’re just dreams, Edward.”
“Do you want me to sing to you? I’ll sing all night if it will keep the bad dreams away.”
“They’re not all bad. Some are nice. So… colorful. Underwater, with the fish and the coral. It all seems like it’s really happening—I don’t know that I’m dreaming. Maybe this island is the problem. It’s really bright here.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“No. No, not yet. Can’t we stay awhile longer?”
“We can stay as long as you want, Bella,” he promised me.
“When does the semester start? I wasn’t paying attention before.”
He sighed. He may have started humming again, too, but I was under before I could be sure.
Later, when I awoke in the dark, it was with shock. The dream had been so very real… so vivid, so sensory.… I gasped aloud, now, disoriented by the dark room. Only a second ago, it seemed, I had been under the brilliant sun.
“Bella?” Edward whispered, his arms tight around me, shaking me gently. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”
“Oh,” I gasped again. Just a dream. Not real. To my utter astonishment, tears overflowed from my eyes without warning, gushing down my face.
“Bella!” he said—louder, alarmed now. “What’s wrong?” He wiped the tears from my hot cheeks with cold, frantic fingers, but others followed.
“It was only a dream.” I couldn’t contain the low sob that broke in my voice. The senseless tears were disturbing, but I couldn’t get control of the staggering grief that gripped me. I wanted so badly for the dream to be real.
“It’s okay, love, you’re fine. I’m here.” He rocked me back and forth, a little too fast to soothe. “Did you have another nightmare? It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real.”
“Not a nightmare.” I shook my head, scrubbing the back of my hand against my eyes. “It was a good dream.” My voice broke again.
“Then why are you crying?” he asked, bewildered.
“Because I woke up,” I wailed, wrapping my arms around his neck in a chokehold and sobbing into his throat.
He laughed once at my logic, but the sound was tense with concern. “Everything’s all right, Bella. Take deep breaths.”
“It was so real,” I cried. “I wanted it to be real.” “Tell me about it,” he urged. “Maybe that will help.”
“We were on the beach ” I trailed off, pulling back to look with tear-filled eyes
at his anxious angel’s face, dim in the darkness. I stared at him broodingly as the unreasonable grief began to ebb.
“And?” he finally prompted.
I blinked the tears out of my eyes, torn. “Oh, Edward ”
“Tell me, Bella,” he pleaded, eyes wild with worry at the pain in my voice.
But I couldn’t. Instead I clutched my arms around his neck again and locked my mouth with his feverishly. It wasn’t desire at all—it was need, acute to the point of pain. His response was instant but quickly followed by his rebuff.
He struggled with me as gently as he could in his surprise, holding me away, grasping my shoulders.
“No, Bella,” he insisted, looking at me as if he was worried that I’d lost my mind.
My arms dropped, defeated, the bizarre tears spilling in a fresh torrent down my face, a new sob rising in my throat. He was right—I must be crazy.
He stared at me with confused, anguished eyes. “I’m s-s-s-orry,” I mumbled.
But he pulled me to him then, hugging me tightly to his marble chest.
“I can’t, Bella, I can’t!” His moan was agonized.
“Please,” I said, my plea muffled against his skin. “Please, Edward?”
I couldn’t tell if he was moved by the tears trembling in my voice, or if he was unprepared to deal with the suddenness of my attack, or if his need was simply as unbearable in that moment as my own. But whatever the reason, he pulled my lips back to his, surrendering with a groan.
And we began where my dream had left off.
I stayed very still when I woke up in the morning and tried to keep my breathing even. I was afraid to open my eyes.
I was lying across Edward’s chest, but he was very still and his arms were not wrapped around me. That was a bad sign. I was afraid to admit I was awake and face his anger—no matter whom it was directed at today.
Carefully, I peeked through my eyelashes. He was staring up at the dark ceiling, his arms behind his head. I pulled myself up on my elbow so that I could see his face better. It was smooth, expressionless.
“How much trouble am I in?” I asked in a small voice. “Heaps,” he said, but turned his head and smirked at me.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “I am sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean… Well, I don’t know exactly what that was last night.” I shook my head at the memory of the irrational tears, the crushing grief.
“You never did tell me what your dream was about.”
“I guess I didn’t—but I sort of showed you what it was about.” I laughed nervously.
“Oh,” he said. His eyes widened, and then he blinked. “Interesting.”
“It was a very good dream,” I murmured. He didn’t comment, so a few seconds later I asked, “Am I forgiven?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
I sat up, planning to examine myself—there didn’t seem to be any feathers, at least. But as I moved, an odd wave of vertigo hit. I swayed and fell back against the pillows.
“Whoa… head rush.”
His arms were around me then. “You slept for a long time. Twelve hours.”
“Twelve?” How strange.
I gave myself a quick once-over while I spoke, trying to be inconspicuous about it. I looked fine. The bruises on my arms were still a week old, yellowing. I stretched experimentally. I felt fine, too. Well, better than fine, actually.
“Is the inventory complete?”
I nodded sheepishly. “The pillows all appear to have survived.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for your, er, nightgown.” He nodded toward the foot of the bed, where several scraps of black lace were strewn across the silk sheets.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “I liked that one.” “I did, too.”
“Were there any other casualties?” I asked timidly.
“I’ll have to buy Esme a new bed frame,” he confessed, glancing over his shoulder. I followed his gaze and was shocked to see that large chunks of wood had apparently been gouged from the left side of the headboard.
“Hmm.” I frowned. “You’d think I would have heard that.”
“You seem to be extraordinarily unobservant when your attention is otherwise involved.”
“I was a bit absorbed,” I admitted, blushing a deep red.
He touched my burning cheek and sighed. “I’m really going to miss that.”
I stared at his face, searching for any signs of the anger or remorse I feared. He gazed back at me evenly, his expression calm but otherwise unreadable.
“How are you feeling?” He laughed.
“What?” I demanded.
“You look so guilty—like you’ve committed a crime.” “I feel guilty,” I muttered.
“So you seduced your all-too-willing husband. That’s not a capital offense.” He seemed to be teasing.
My cheeks got hotter. “The word seduced implies a certain amount of premeditation.”
“Maybe that was the wrong word,” he allowed. “You’re not angry?”
He smiled ruefully. “I’m not angry.” “Why not?”
“Well . . .” He paused. “I didn’t hurt you, for one thing. It was easier this time, to control myself, to channel the excesses.” His eyes flickered to the damaged frame again. “Maybe because I had a better idea of what to expect.”
A hopeful smile started to spread across my face. “I told you that it was all about practice.”
He rolled his eyes.
My stomach growled, and he laughed. “Breakfast time for the human?” he asked.
“Please,” I said, hopping out of bed. I moved too quickly, though, and had to stagger drunkenly to regain my balance. He caught me before I could stumble into the dresser.
“Are you all right?”
“If I don’t have a better sense of equilibrium in my next life, I’m demanding a refund.”
I cooked this morning, frying up some eggs—too hungry to do anything more elaborate. Impatient, I flipped them onto a plate after just a few minutes.
“Since when do you eat eggs sunny-side up?” he asked. “Since now.”
“Do you know how many eggs you’ve gone through in the last week?” He pulled the trash bin out from under the sink—it was full of empty blue cartons.
“Weird,” I said after swallowing a scorching bite. “This place is messing with my appetite.” And my dreams, and my already dubious balance. “But I like it here.
We’ll probably have to leave soon, though, won’t we, to make it to Dartmouth in time? Wow, I guess we need to find a place to live and stuff, too.”
He sat down next to me. “You can give up the college pretense now—you’ve gotten what you wanted. And we didn’t agree to a deal, so there are no strings attached.”
I snorted. “It wasn’t a pretense, Edward. I don’t spend my free time plotting like some people do. What can we do to wear Bella out today?” I said in a poor impression of his voice. He laughed, unashamed. “I really do want a little more time being human.” I leaned over to run my hand across his bare chest. “I have not had enough.”
He gave me a dubious look. “For this?” he asked, catching my hand as it moved down his stomach. “Sex was the key all along?” He rolled his eyes. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he muttered sarcastically. “I could have saved myself a lot of arguments.”
I laughed. “Yeah, probably.”
“You are so human,” he said again. “I know.”
A hint of a smile pulled at his lips. “We’re going to Dartmouth? Really?” “I’ll probably fail out in one semester.”
“I’ll tutor you.” The smile was wide now. “You’re going to love college.” “Do you think we can find an apartment this late?”
He grimaced, looking guilty. “Well, we sort of already have a house there. You know, just in case.”
“You bought a house?”
“Real estate is a good investment.”
I raised one eyebrow and then let it go. “So we’re ready, then.”
“I’ll have to see if we can keep your ‘before’ car for a little longer ”
“Yes, heaven forbid I not be protected from tanks.” He grinned.
“How much longer can we stay?” I asked.
“We’re fine on time. A few more weeks, if you want. And then we can visit Charlie before we go to New Hampshire. We could spend Christmas with Renée ”
His words painted a very happy immediate future, one free of pain for everyone involved. The Jacob-drawer, all but forgotten, rattled, and I amended the thought—for almost everyone.
This wasn’t getting any easier. Now that I’d discovered exactly how good being human could be, it was tempting to let my plans drift. Eighteen or nineteen, nineteen or twenty… Did it really matter? I wouldn’t change so much in a year. And being human with Edward… The choice got trickier every day.
“A few weeks,” I agreed. And then, because there never seemed to be enough time, I added, “So I was thinking—you know what I was saying about practice before?”
He laughed. “Can you hold on to that thought? I hear a boat. The cleaning crew must be here.”
He wanted me to hold on to that thought. So did that mean he was not going to give me any more trouble about practicing? I smiled.
“Let me explain the mess in the white room to Gustavo, and then we can go out. There’s a place in the jungle on the south—”
“I don’t want to go out. I am not hiking all over the island today. I want to stay here and watch a movie.”
He pursed his lips, trying not to laugh at my disgruntled tone. “All right, whatever you’d like. Why don’t you pick one out while I get the door?”
“I didn’t hear a knock.”
He cocked his head to the side, listening. A half second later, a faint, timid rap on the door sounded. He grinned and turned for the hallway.
I wandered over to the shelves under the big TV and started scanning through the titles. It was hard to decide where to begin. They had more DVDs than a rental store.
I could hear Edward’s low, velvet voice as he came back down the hall, conversing fluidly in what I assumed was perfect Portuguese. Another, harsher, human voice answered in the same tongue.
Edward led them into the room, pointing toward the kitchen on his way. The two Brazilians looked incredibly short and dark next to him. One was a round man, the other a slight female, both their faces creased with lines. Edward gestured to me with a proud smile, and I heard my name mixed in with a flurry of unfamiliar words. I flushed a little as I thought of the downy mess in the white room, which they would soon encounter. The little man smiled at me politely.
But the tiny coffee-skinned woman didn’t smile. She stared at me with a mixture of shock, worry, and most of all, wide-eyed fear. Before I could react, Edward motioned for them to follow him toward the chicken coop, and they were gone.
When he reappeared, he was alone. He walked swiftly to my side and wrapped his arms around me.
“What’s with her?” I whispered urgently, remembering her panicked expression.
He shrugged, unperturbed. “Kaure’s part Ticuna Indian. She was raised to be more superstitious—or you could call it more aware—than those who live in the modern world. She suspects what I am, or close enough.” He still didn’t sound worried. “They have their own legends here. The Libishomen—a blood-drinking demon who preys exclusively on beautiful women.” He leered at me.
Beautiful women only? Well, that was kind of flattering. “She looked terrified,” I said.
“She is—but mostly she’s worried about you.” “Me?”
“She’s afraid of why I have you here, all alone.” He chuckled darkly and then looked toward the wall of movies. “Oh well, why don’t you choose something for us to watch? That’s an acceptably human thing to do.”
“Yes, I’m sure a movie will convince her that you’re human.” I laughed and clasped my arms securely around his neck, stretching up on my tiptoes. He leaned down so that I could kiss him, and then his arms tightened around me, lifting me off the floor so he didn’t have to bend.
“Movie, schmovie,” I muttered as his lips moved down my throat, twisting my fingers in his bronze hair.
Then I heard a gasp, and he put me down abruptly. Kaure stood frozen in the hallway, feathers in her black hair, a large sack of more feathers in her arms, an expression of horror on her face. She stared at me, her eyes bugging out, as I blushed and looked down. Then she recovered herself and murmured something that, even in an unfamiliar language, was clearly an apology. Edward smiled and
answered in a friendly tone. She turned her dark eyes away and continued down the hall.
“She was thinking what I think she was thinking, wasn’t she?” I muttered. He laughed at my convoluted sentence. “Yes.”
“Here,” I said, reaching out at random and grabbing a movie. “Put this on and we can pretend to watch it.”
It was an old musical with smiling faces and fluffy dresses on the front. “Very honeymoonish,” Edward approved.
While actors on the screen danced their way through a perky introduction song, I lolled on the sofa, snuggled into Edward’s arms.
“Will we move back into the white room now?” I wondered idly.
“I don’t know.… I’ve already mangled the headboard in the other room beyond repair—maybe if we limit the destruction to one area of the house, Esme might invite us back someday.”
I smiled widely. “So there will be more destruction?”
He laughed at my expression. “I think it might be safer if it’s premeditated, rather than if I wait for you to assault me again.”
“It would only be a matter of time,” I agreed casually, but my pulse was racing in my veins.
“Is there something the matter with your heart?”
“Nope. Healthy as a horse.” I paused. “Did you want to go survey the demolition zone now?”
“Maybe it would be more polite to wait until we’re alone. You may not notice me tearing the furniture apart, but it would probably scare them.”
In truth, I’d already forgotten the people in the other room. “Right. Drat.”
Gustavo and Kaure moved quietly through the house while I waited impatiently for them to finish and tried to pay attention to the happily-ever-after on the screen. I was starting to get sleepy—though, according to Edward, I’d slept half the day—when a rough voice startled me. Edward sat up, keeping me cradled against him, and answered Gustavo in flowing Portuguese. Gustavo nodded and walked quietly toward the front door.
“They’re finished,” Edward told me.
“So that would mean that we’re alone now?” “How about lunch first?” he suggested.
I bit my lip, torn by the dilemma. I was pretty hungry.
With a smile, he took my hand and led me to the kitchen. He knew my face so well, it didn’t matter that he couldn’t read my mind.
“This is getting out of hand,” I complained when I finally felt full.
“Do you want to swim with the dolphins this afternoon—burn off the calories?” he asked.
“Maybe later. I had another idea for burning calories.” “And what was that?”
“Well, there’s an awful lot of headboard left—”
But I didn’t finish. He’d already swept me up into his arms, and his lips silenced mine as he carried me with inhuman speed to the blue room.
7. UNEXPECTED
The line of black advanced on me through the shroud-like mist. I could see their dark ruby eyes glinting with desire, lusting for the kill. Their lips pulled back over their sharp, wet teeth—some to snarl, some to smile.
I heard the child behind me whimper, but I couldn’t turn to look at him. Though I was desperate to be sure that he was safe, I could not afford any lapse in focus now.
They ghosted closer, their black robes billowing slightly with the movement. I saw their hands curl into bone-colored claws. They started to drift apart, angling to come at us from all sides. We were surrounded. We were going to die.
And then, like a burst of light from a flash, the whole scene was different. Yet nothing changed—the Volturi still stalked toward us, poised to kill. All that really changed was how the picture looked to me. Suddenly, I was hungry for it. I wanted them to charge. The panic changed to bloodlust as I crouched forward, a smile on my face, and a growl ripped through my bared teeth.
I jolted upright, shocked out of the dream.
The room was black. It was also steamy hot. Sweat matted my hair at the temples and rolled down my throat.
I groped the warm sheets and found them empty. “Edward?”
Just then, my fingers encountered something smooth and flat and stiff. One sheet of paper, folded in half. I took the note with me and felt my way across the room to the light switch.
The outside of the note was addressed to Mrs. Cullen.
I’m hoping you won’t wake and notice my absence, but, if you should, I’ll be back very soon. I’ve just gone to the mainland to hunt. Go back to sleep and I’ll be here when you wake again. I love you.
I sighed. We’d been here about two weeks now, so I should have been expecting that he would have to leave, but I hadn’t been thinking about time. We seemed to exist outside of time here, just drifting along in a perfect state.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead. I felt absolutely wide awake, though the clock on the dresser said it was after one. I knew I would never be able to sleep as hot
and sticky as I felt. Not to mention the fact that if I shut off the light and closed my eyes, I was sure to see those prowling black figures in my head.
I got up and wandered aimlessly through the dark house, flipping on lights. It felt so big and empty without Edward there. Different.
I ended up in the kitchen and decided that maybe comfort food was what I needed.
I poked around in the fridge until I found all the ingredients for fried chicken. The popping and sizzling of the chicken in the pan was a nice, homey sound; I felt less nervous while it filled the silence.
It smelled so good that I started eating it right out of the pan, burning my tongue in the process. By the fifth or sixth bite, though, it had cooled enough for me to taste it. My chewing slowed. Was there something off about the flavor? I checked the meat, and it was white all the way through, but I wondered if it was completely done. I took another experimental bite; I chewed twice. Ugh— definitely bad. I jumped up to spit it into the sink. Suddenly, the chicken-and-oil smell was revolting. I took the whole plate and shook it into the garbage, then opened the windows to chase away the scent. A coolish breeze had picked up outside. It felt good on my skin.
I was abruptly exhausted, but I didn’t want to go back to the hot room. So I opened more windows in the TV room and lay on the couch right beneath them. I turned on the same movie we’d watched the other day and quickly fell asleep to the bright opening song.
When I opened my eyes again, the sun was halfway up the sky, but it was not the light that woke me. Cool arms were around me, pulling me against him. At the same time, a sudden pain twisted in my stomach, almost like the aftershock of catching a punch in the gut.
“I’m sorry,” Edward was murmuring as he wiped a wintry hand across my clammy forehead. “So much for thoroughness. I didn’t think about how hot you would be with me gone. I’ll have an air conditioner installed before I leave again.”
I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. “Excuse me!” I gasped, struggling to get free of his arms.
He dropped his hold automatically. “Bella?”
I streaked for the bathroom with my hand clamped over my mouth. I felt so horrible that I didn’t even care—at first—that he was with me while I crouched over the toilet and was violently sick.
“Bella? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t answer yet. He held me anxiously, keeping my hair out of my face, waiting till I could breathe again.
“Damn rancid chicken,” I moaned.
“Are you all right?” His voice was strained.
“Fine,” I panted. “It’s just food poisoning. You don’t need to see this. Go away.” “Not likely, Bella.”
“Go away,” I moaned again, struggling to get up so I could rinse my mouth out. He helped me gently, ignoring the weak shoves I aimed at him.
After my mouth was clean, he carried me to the bed and sat me down carefully, supporting me with his arms.
“Food poisoning?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. “I made some chicken last night. It tasted off, so I threw it out. But I ate a few bites first.”
He put a cold hand on my forehead. It felt nice. “How do you feel now?”
I thought about that for a moment. The nausea had passed as suddenly as it had come, and I felt like I did any other morning. “Pretty normal. A little hungry, actually.”
He made me wait an hour and keep down a big glass of water before he fried me some eggs. I felt perfectly normal, just a little tired from being up in the middle of the night. He put on CNN—we’d been so out of touch, world war three could have broken out and we wouldn’t have known—and I lounged drowsily across his lap.
I got bored with the news and twisted around to kiss him. Just like this morning, a sharp pain hit my stomach when I moved. I lurched away from him, my hand tight over my mouth. I knew I’d never make it to the bathroom this time, so I ran to the kitchen sink.
He held my hair again.
“Maybe we should go back to Rio, see a doctor,” he suggested anxiously when I was rinsing my mouth afterward.
I shook my head and edged toward the hallway. Doctors meant needles. “I’ll be fine right after I brush my teeth.”
When my mouth tasted better, I searched through my suitcase for the little first- aid kit Alice had packed for me, full of human things like bandages and painkillers and—my object now—Pepto-Bismol. Maybe I could settle my stomach and calm Edward down.
But before I found the Pepto, I happened across something else that Alice had packed for me. I picked up the small blue box and stared at it in my hand for a long moment, forgetting everything else.
Then I started counting in my head. Once. Twice. Again.
The knock startled me; the little box fell back into the suitcase.
“Are you well?” Edward asked through the door. “Did you get sick again?” “Yes and no,” I said, but my voice sounded strangled.
“Bella? Can I please come in?” Worriedly now. “O… kay?”
He came in and appraised my position, sitting cross-legged on the floor by the suitcase, and my expression, blank and staring. He sat next to me, his hand going to my forehead at once.
“What’s wrong?”
“How many days has it been since the wedding?” I whispered. “Seventeen,” he answered automatically. “Bella, what is it?”
I was counting again. I held up a finger, cautioning him to wait, and mouthed the numbers to myself. I’d been wrong about the days before. We’d been here longer than I’d thought. I started over again.
“Bella!” he whispered urgently. “I’m losing my mind over here.”
I tried to swallow. It didn’t work. So I reached into the suitcase and fumbled around until I found the little blue box of tampons again. I held them up silently.
He stared at me in confusion. “What? Are you trying to pass this illness off as PMS?”
“No,” I managed to choke out. “No, Edward. I’m trying to tell you that my period is five days late.”
His facial expression didn’t change. It was like I hadn’t spoken.
“I don’t think I have food poisoning,” I added.
He didn’t respond. He had turned into a sculpture.
“The dreams,” I mumbled to myself in a flat voice. “Sleeping so much. The crying. All that food. Oh. Oh. Oh.”
Edward’s stare seemed glassy, as if he couldn’t see me anymore. Reflexively, almost involuntarily, my hand dropped to my stomach. “Oh!” I squeaked again.
I lurched to my feet, slipping out of Edward’s unmoving hands. I’d never changed out of the little silk shorts and camisole I’d worn to bed. I yanked the blue fabric out of the way and stared at my stomach.
“Impossible,” I whispered.
I had absolutely no experience with pregnancy or babies or any part of that world, but I wasn’t an idiot. I’d seen enough movies and TV shows to know that this wasn’t how it worked. I was only five days late. If I was pregnant, my body wouldn’t even have registered that fact. I would not have morning sickness. I would not have changed my eating or sleeping habits.
And I most definitely would not have a small but defined bump sticking out between my hips.
I twisted my torso back and forth, examining it from every angle, as if it would disappear in exactly the right light. I ran my fingers over the subtle bulge, surprised by how rock hard it felt under my skin.
“Impossible,” I said again, because, bulge or no bulge, period or no period (and there was definitely no period, though I’d never been late a day in my life), there was no way I could be pregnant. The only person I’d ever had sex with was a vampire, for crying out loud.
A vampire who was still frozen on the floor with no sign of ever moving again.
So there had to be some other explanation, then. Something wrong with me. A strange South American disease with all the signs of pregnancy, only accelerated…
And then I remembered something—a morning of internet research that seemed a lifetime ago now. Sitting at the old desk in my room at Charlie’s house with gray light glowing dully through the window, staring at my ancient, wheezing computer, reading avidly through a web-site called “Vampires A–Z.” It had been
less than twenty-four hours since Jacob Black, trying to entertain me with the Quileute legends he didn’t believe in yet, had told me that Edward was a vampire. I’d scanned anxiously through the first entries on the site, which was dedicated to vampire myths around the world. The Filipino Danag, the Hebrew Estrie, the Romanian Varacolaci, the Italian Stregoni benefici (a legend actually based on my new father-in-law’s early exploits with the Volturi, not that I’d known anything about that at the time)… I’d paid less and less attention as the stories had grown more and more implausible. I only remembered vague bits of the later entries. They mostly seemed like excuses dreamed up to explain things like infant mortality rates—and infidelity. No, honey, I’m not having an affair! That sexy woman you saw sneaking out of the house was an evil succubus. I’m lucky I escaped with my life! (Of course, with what I knew now about Tanya and her sisters, I suspected that some of those excuses had been nothing but fact.) There had been one for the ladies, too. How can you accuse me of cheating on you— just because you’ve come home from a two-year sea voyage and I’m pregnant? It was the incubus. He hypnotized me with his mystical vampire powers.…
That had been part of the definition of the incubus—the ability to father children with his hapless prey.
I shook my head, dazed. But…
I thought of Esme and especially Rosalie. Vampires couldn’t have children. If it were possible, Rosalie would have found a way by now. The incubus myth was nothing but a fable.
Except that… well, there was a difference. Of course Rosalie could not conceive a child, because she was frozen in the state in which she passed from human to inhuman. Totally unchanging. And human women’s bodies had to change to bear children. The constant change of a monthly cycle for one thing, and then the bigger changes needed to accommodate a growing child. Rosalie’s body couldn’t change.
But mine could. Mine did. I touched the bump on my stomach that had not been there yesterday.
And human men—well, they pretty much stayed the same from puberty to death. I remembered a random bit of trivia, gleaned from who knows where: Charlie Chaplin was in his seventies when he fathered his youngest child. Men had no such thing as child-bearing years or cycles of fertility.
Of course, how would anyone know if vampire men could father children, when their partners were not able? What vampire on earth would have the restraint necessary to test the theory with a human woman? Or the inclination?
I could think of only one.
Part of my head was sorting through fact and memory and speculation, while the other half—the part that controlled the ability to move even the smallest muscles—was stunned beyond the capacity for normal operations. I couldn’t move my lips to speak, though I wanted to ask Edward to please explain to me what was going on. I needed to go back to where he sat, to touch him, but my body wouldn’t follow instructions. I could only stare at my shocked eyes in the mirror, my fingers gingerly pressed against the swelling on my torso.
And then, like in my vivid nightmare last night, the scene abruptly transformed. Everything I saw in the mirror looked completely different, though nothing actually was different.
What happened to change everything was that a soft little nudge bumped my hand—from inside my body.
In the same moment, Edward’s phone rang, shrill and demanding. Neither of us moved. It rang again and again. I tried to tune it out while I pressed my fingers to my stomach, waiting. In the mirror my expression was no longer bewildered—it was wondering now. I barely noticed when the strange, silent tears started streaming down my cheeks.
The phone kept ringing. I wished Edward would answer it—I was having a moment. Possibly the biggest of my life.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
Finally, the annoyance broke through everything else. I got down on my knees next to Edward—I found myself moving more carefully, a thousand times more aware of the way each motion felt—and patted his pockets until I found the phone. I half-expected him to thaw out and answer it himself, but he was perfectly still.
I recognized the number, and I could easily guess why she was calling.
“Hi, Alice,” I said. My voice wasn’t much better than before. I cleared my throat. “Bella? Bella, are you okay?”
“Yeah. Um. Is Carlisle there?” “He is. What’s the problem?”
“I’m not… one hundred percent… sure ”
“Is Edward all right?” she asked warily. She called Carlisle’s name away from the phone and then demanded, “Why didn’t he pick up the phone?” before I could answer her first question.
“I’m not sure.”
“Bella, what’s going on? I just saw—” “What did you see?”
There was a silence. “Here’s Carlisle,” she finally said.
It felt like ice water had been injected in my veins. If Alice had seen a vision of me with a green-eyed, angel-faced child in my arms, she would have answered me, wouldn’t she?
While I waited through the split second it took for Carlisle to speak, the vision I’d imagined for Alice danced behind my lids. A tiny, beautiful little baby, even more beautiful than the boy in my dream—a tiny Edward in my arms. Warmth shot through my veins, chasing the ice away.
“Bella, it’s Carlisle. What’s going on?”
“I—” I wasn’t sure how to answer. Would he laugh at my conclusions, tell me I was crazy? Was I just having another colorful dream? “I’m a little worried about Edward.… Can vampires go into shock?”
“Has he been harmed?” Carlisle’s voice was suddenly urgent. “No, no,” I assured him. “Just… taken by surprise.”
“I don’t understand, Bella.”
“I think… well, I think that… maybe… I might be . . .” I took a deep breath. “Pregnant.”
As if to back me up, there was another tiny nudge in my abdomen. My hand flew to my stomach.
After a long pause, Carlisle’s medical training kicked in. “When was the first day of your last menstrual cycle?”
“Sixteen days before the wedding.” I’d done the mental math thoroughly enough just before to be able to answer with certainty.
“How do you feel?”
“Weird,” I told him, and my voice broke. Another trickle of tears dribbled down my cheeks. “This is going to sound crazy—look, I know it’s way too early for any of this. Maybe I am crazy. But I’m having bizarre dreams and eating all the time
and crying and throwing up and… and… I swear something moved inside me just now.”
Edward’s head snapped up. I sighed in relief.
Edward held his hand out for the phone, his face white and hard. “Um, I think Edward wants to talk to you.”
“Put him on,” Carlisle said in a strained voice.
Not entirely sure that Edward could talk, I put the phone in his outstretched hand.
He pressed it to his ear. “Is it possible?” he whispered. He listened for a long time, staring blankly at nothing.
“And Bella?” he asked. His arm wrapped around me as he spoke, pulling me close into his side.
He listened for what seemed like a long time and then said, “Yes. Yes, I will.”
He pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed the “end” button. Right away, he dialed a new number.
“What did Carlisle say?” I asked impatiently.
Edward answered in a lifeless voice. “He thinks you’re pregnant.”
The words sent a warm shiver down my spine. The little nudger fluttered inside me.
“Who are you calling now?” I asked as he put the phone back to his ear. “The airport. We’re going home.”
Edward was on the phone for more than an hour without a break. I guessed that he was arranging our flight home, but I couldn’t be sure because he wasn’t speaking English. It sounded like he was arguing; he spoke through his teeth a lot.
While he argued, he packed. He whirled around the room like an angry tornado, leaving order rather than destruction in his path. He threw a set of my clothes on the bed without looking at them, so I assumed it was time for me to get dressed.
He continued with his argument while I changed, gesturing with sudden, agitated movements.
When I could no longer bear the violent energy radiating out of him, I quietly left the room. His manic concentration made me sick to my stomach—not like the morning sickness, just uncomfortable. I would wait somewhere else for his mood to pass. I couldn’t talk to this icy, focused Edward who honestly frightened me a little.
Once again, I ended up in the kitchen. There was a bag of pretzels in the cupboard. I started chewing on them absently, staring out the window at the sand and rocks and trees and ocean, everything glittering in the sun.
Someone nudged me.
“I know,” I said. “I don’t want to go, either.”
I stared out the window for a moment, but the nudger didn’t respond. “I don’t understand,” I whispered. “What is wrong here?”
Surprising, absolutely. Astonishing, even. But wrong? No.
So why was Edward so furious? He was the one who had actually wished out loud for a shotgun wedding.
I tried to reason through it.
Maybe it wasn’t so confusing that Edward wanted us to go home right away. He’d want Carlisle to check me out, make sure my assumption was right—though there was absolutely no doubt in my head at this point. Probably they’d want to figure out why I was already so pregnant, with the bump and the nudging and all of that. That wasn’t normal.
Once I thought of this, I was sure I had it. He must be so worried about the baby. I hadn’t gotten around to freaking out yet. My brain worked slower than his—it was still stuck marveling over the picture it had conjured up before: the tiny child with Edward’s eyes—green, as his had been when he was human—lying fair and beautiful in my arms. I hoped he would have Edward’s face exactly, with no interference from mine.
It was funny how abruptly and entirely necessary this vision had become. From that first little touch, the whole world had shifted. Where before there was just one thing I could not live without, now there were two. There was no division— my love was not split between them now; it wasn’t like that. It was more like my
heart had grown, swollen up to twice its size in that moment. All that extra space, already filled. The increase was almost dizzying.
I’d never really understood Rosalie’s pain and resentment before. I’d never imagined myself a mother, never wanted that. It had been a piece of cake to promise Edward that I didn’t care about giving up children for him, because I truly didn’t. Children, in the abstract, had never appealed to me. They seemed to be loud creatures, often dripping some form of goo. I’d never had much to do with them. When I’d dreamed of Renée providing me with a brother, I’d always imagined an older brother. Someone to take care of me, rather than the other way around.
This child, Edward’s child, was a whole different story.
I wanted him like I wanted air to breathe. Not a choice—a necessity.
Maybe I just had a really bad imagination. Maybe that was why I’d been unable to imagine that I would like being married until after I already was—unable to see that I would want a baby until after one was already coming.…
As I put my hand on my stomach, waiting for the next nudge, tears streaked down my cheeks again.
“Bella?”
I turned, made wary by the tone of his voice. It was too cold, too careful. His face matched his voice, empty and hard.
And then he saw that I was crying.
“Bella!” He crossed the room in a flash and put his hands on my face. “Are you in pain?”
“No, no—”
He pulled me against his chest. “Don’t be afraid. We’ll be home in sixteen hours. You’ll be fine. Carlisle will be ready when we get there. We’ll take care of this, and you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.”
“Take care of this? What do you mean?”
He leaned away and looked me in the eye. “We’re going to get that thing out before it can hurt any part of you. Don’t be scared. I won’t let it hurt you.”
“That thing?” I gasped.
He looked sharply away from me, toward the front door. “Dammit! I forgot Gustavo was due today. I’ll get rid of him and be right back.” He darted out of the room.
I clutched the counter for support. My knees were wobbly.
Edward had just called my little nudger a thing. He said Carlisle would get it out. “No,” I whispered.
I’d gotten it wrong before. He didn’t care about the baby at all. He wanted to hurt him. The beautiful picture in my head shifted abruptly, changed into something dark. My pretty baby crying, my weak arms not enough to protect him.…
What could I do? Would I be able to reason with them? What if I couldn’t? Did this explain Alice’s strange silence on the phone? Is that what she’d seen? Edward and Carlisle killing that pale, perfect child before he could live?
“No,” I whispered again, my voice stronger. That could not be. I would not allow it.
I heard Edward speaking Portuguese again. Arguing again. His voice got closer, and I heard him grunt in exasperation. Then I heard another voice, low and timid. A woman’s voice.
He came into the kitchen ahead of her and went straight to me. He wiped the tears from my cheeks and murmured in my ear through the thin, hard line of his lips.
“She’s insisting on leaving the food she brought—she made us dinner.” If he had been less tense, less furious, I knew he would have rolled his eyes. “It’s an excuse—she wants to make sure I haven’t killed you yet.” His voice went ice cold at the end.
Kaure edged nervously around the corner with a covered dish in her hands. I wished I could speak Portuguese, or that my Spanish was less rudimentary, so that I could try to thank this woman who had dared to anger a vampire just to check on me.
Her eyes flickered between the two of us. I saw her measuring the color in my face, the moisture in my eyes. Mumbling something I didn’t understand, she put the dish on the counter.
Edward snapped something at her; I’d never heard him be so impolite before. She turned to go, and the whirling motion of her long skirt wafted the smell of the food into my face. It was strong—onions and fish. I gagged and whirled for the sink. I felt Edward’s hands on my forehead and heard his soothing murmur
through the roaring in my ears. His hands disappeared for a second, and I heard the refrigerator slam shut. Mercifully, the smell disappeared with the sound, and Edward’s hands were cooling my clammy face again. It was over quickly.
I rinsed my mouth in the tap while he caressed the side of my face. There was a tentative little nudge in my womb.
It’s okay. We’re okay, I thought toward the bump.
Edward turned me around, pulling me into his arms. I rested my head on his shoulder. My hands, instinctively, folded over my stomach.
I heard a little gasp and I looked up.
The woman was still there, hesitating in the doorway with her hands half- outstretched as if she had been looking for some way to help. Her eyes were locked on my hands, popping wide with shock. Her mouth hung open.
Then Edward gasped, too, and he suddenly turned to face the woman, pushing me slightly behind his body. His arm wrapped across my torso, like he was holding me back.
Suddenly, Kaure was shouting at him—loudly, furiously, her unintelligible words flying across the room like knives. She raised her tiny fist in the air and took two steps forward, shaking it at him. Despite her ferocity, it was easy to see the terror in her eyes.
Edward stepped toward her, too, and I clutched at his arm, frightened for the woman. But when he interrupted her tirade, his voice took me by surprise, especially considering how sharp he’d been with her when she wasn’t screeching at him. It was low now; it was pleading. Not only that, but the sound was different, more guttural, the cadence off. I didn’t think he was speaking Portuguese anymore.
For a moment, the woman stared at him in wonder, and then her eyes narrowed as she barked out a long question in the same alien tongue.
I watched as his face grew sad and serious, and he nodded once. She took a quick step back and crossed herself.
He reached out to her, gesturing toward me and then resting his hand against my cheek. She replied angrily again, waving her hands accusingly toward him, and then gestured to him. When she finished, he pleaded again with the same low, urgent voice.
Her expression changed—she stared at him with doubt plain on her face as he spoke, her eyes repeatedly flashing to my confused face. He stopped speaking, and she seemed to be deliberating something. She looked back and forth between the two of us, and then, unconsciously it seemed, took a step forward.
She made a motion with her hands, miming a shape like a balloon jutting out from her stomach. I started—did her legends of the predatory blood-drinker include this? Could she possibly know something about what was growing inside me?
She walked a few steps forward deliberately this time and asked a few brief questions, which he responded to tensely. Then he became the questioner—one quick query. She hesitated and then slowly shook her head. When he spoke again, his voice was so agonized that I looked up at him in shock. His face was drawn with pain.
In answer, she walked slowly forward until she was close enough to lay her small hand on top of mine, over my stomach. She spoke one word in Portuguese.
“Morte,” she sighed quietly. Then she turned, her shoulders bent as if the conversation had aged her, and left the room.
I knew enough Spanish for that one.
Edward was frozen again, staring after her with the tortured expression fixed on his face. A few moments later, I heard a boat’s engine putter to life and then fade into the distance.
Edward did not move until I started for the bathroom. Then his hand caught my shoulder.
“Where are you going?” His voice was a whisper of pain. “To brush my teeth again.”
“Don’t worry about what she said. It’s nothing but legends, old lies for the sake of entertainment.”
“I didn’t understand anything,” I told him, though it wasn’t entirely true. As if I could discount something because it was a legend. My life was circled by legend on every side. They were all true.
“I packed your toothbrush. I’ll get it for you.” He walked ahead of me to the bedroom.
“Are we leaving soon?” I called after him.
“As soon as you’re done.”
He waited for my toothbrush to repack it, pacing silently around the bedroom. I handed it to him when I was finished.
“I’ll get the bags into the boat.” “Edward—”
He turned back. “Yes?”
I hesitated, trying to think of some way to get a few seconds alone. “Could you… pack some of the food? You know, in case I get hungry again.”
“Of course,” he said, his eyes suddenly soft. “Don’t worry about anything. We’ll get to Carlisle in just a few hours, really. This will all be over soon.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He turned and left the room, one big suitcase in each hand.
I whirled and scooped up the phone he’d left on the counter. It was very unlike him to forget things—to forget that Gustavo was coming, to leave his phone lying here. He was so stressed he was barely himself.
I flipped it open and scrolled through the preprogrammed numbers. I was glad he had the sound turned off, afraid that he would catch me. Would he be at the boat now? Or back already? Would he hear me from the kitchen if I whispered?
I found the number I wanted, one I had never called before in my life. I pressed the “send” button and crossed my fingers.
“Hello?” the voice like golden wind chimes answered. “Rosalie?” I whispered. “It’s Bella. Please. You have to help me.”
BOOK TWO
Jacob CONTENTS
Preface
8. Waiting For The Damn Fight To Start Already
9. Sure As Hell Didn’t See That One Coming
10. Why Didn’t I Just Walk Away? Oh Right, Because I’m An Idiot.
11. The Two Things At The Very Top Of My Things-I-Never-Want-To-Do List
12. Some People Just Don’t Grasp The Concept Of “Unwelcome”
13. Good Thing I’ve Got A Strong Stomach
14. You Know Things Are Bad When You Feel Guilty For Being Rude To Vampires
15. Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock
16. Too-Much-Information Alert
17. What Do I Look Like? The Wizard Of Oz? You Need A Brain? You Need A Heart? Go Ahead. Take Mine. Take Everything I Have.
18. There Are No Words For This.
And yet, to say the truth,
reason and love keep little company together nowadays.
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Act III, Scene i
PREFACE
Life sucks, and then you die.
Yeah, I should be so lucky.
8. WAITING FOR THE DAMN FIGHT TO START ALREADY
“Jeez, Paul, don’t you freaking have a home of your own?”
Paul, lounging across my whole couch, watching some stupid baseball game on my crappy TV, just grinned at me and then—real slow—he lifted one Dorito from the bag in his lap and wedged it into his mouth in one piece.
“You better’ve brought those with you.”
Crunch. “Nope,” he said while chewing. “Your sister said to go ahead and help myself to anything I wanted.”
I tried to make my voice sound like I wasn’t about to punch him. “Is Rachel here now?”
It didn’t work. He heard where I was going and shoved the bag behind his back. The bag crackled as he smashed it into the cushion. The chips crunched into pieces. Paul’s hands came up in fists, close to his face like a boxer.
“Bring it, kid. I don’t need Rachel to protect me.”
I snorted. “Right. Like you wouldn’t go crying to her first chance.”
He laughed and relaxed into the sofa, dropping his hands. “I’m not going to go tattle to a girl. If you got in a lucky hit, that would be just between the two of us. And vice versa, right?”
Nice of him to give me an invitation. I made my body slump like I’d given up. “Right.”
His eyes shifted to the TV. I lunged.
His nose made a very satisfying crunching sound of its own when my fist connected. He tried to grab me, but I danced out of the way before he could find a hold, the ruined bag of Doritos in my left hand.
“You broke my nose, idiot.” “Just between us, right, Paul?”
I went to put the chips away. When I turned around, Paul was repositioning his nose before it could set crooked. The blood had already stopped; it looked like it
had no source as it trickled down his lips and off his chin. He cussed, wincing as he pulled at the cartilage.
“You are such a pain, Jacob. I swear, I’d rather hang out with Leah.”
“Ouch. Wow, I bet Leah’s really going to love to hear that you want to spend some quality time with her. It’ll just warm the cockles of her heart.”
“You’re going to forget I said that.” “Of course. I’m sure it won’t slip out.”
“Ugh,” he grunted, and then settled back into the couch, wiping the leftover blood on the collar of his t-shirt. “You’re fast, kid. I’ll give you that.” He turned his attention back to the fuzzy game.
I stood there for a second, and then I stalked off to my room, muttering about alien abductions.
Back in the day, you could count on Paul for a fight pretty much whenever. You didn’t have to hit him then—any mild insult would do. It didn’t take a lot to flip him out of control. Now, of course, when I really wanted a good snarling, ripping, break-the-trees-down match, he had to be all mellow.
Wasn’t it bad enough that yet another member of the pack had imprinted— because, really, that made four of ten now! When would it stop? Stupid myth was supposed to be rare, for crying out loud! All this mandatory love-at-first-sight was completely sickening!
Did it have to be my sister? Did it have to be Paul?
When Rachel’d come home from Washington State at the end of the summer semester—graduated early, the nerd—my biggest worry’d been that it would be hard keeping the secret around her. I wasn’t used to covering things up in my own home. It made me real sympathetic to kids like Embry and Collin, whose parents didn’t know they were werewolves. Embry’s mom thought he was going through some kind of rebellious stage. He was permanently grounded for constantly sneaking out, but, of course, there wasn’t much he could do about that. She’d check his room every night, and every night it would be empty again. She’d yell and he’d take it in silence, and then go through it all again the next day. We’d tried to talk Sam into giving Embry a break and letting his mom in on the gig, but Embry’d said he didn’t mind. The secret was too important.
So I’d been all geared up to be keeping that secret. And then, two days after Rachel got home, Paul ran into her on the beach. Bada bing, bada boom—true love! No secrets necessary when you found your other half, and all that imprinting werewolf garbage.
Rachel got the whole story. And I got Paul as a brother-in-law someday. I knew Billy wasn’t much thrilled about it, either. But he handled it better than I did. ’Course, he did escape to the Clearwaters’ more often than usual these days. I didn’t see where that was so much better. No Paul, but plenty of Leah.
I wondered—would a bullet through my temple actually kill me or just leave a really big mess for me to clean up?
I threw myself down on the bed. I was tired—hadn’t slept since my last patrol— but I knew I wasn’t going to sleep. My head was too crazy. The thoughts bounced around inside my skull like a disoriented swarm of bees. Noisy. Now and then they stung. Must be hornets, not bees. Bees died after one sting. And the same thoughts were stinging me again and again.
This waiting was driving me insane. It had been almost four weeks. I’d expected, one way or another, the news would have come by now. I’d sat up nights imagining what form it would take.
Charlie sobbing on the phone—Bella and her husband lost in an accident. A plane crash? That would be hard to fake. Unless the leeches didn’t mind killing a bunch of bystanders to authenticate it, and why would they? Maybe a small plane instead. They probably had one of those to spare.
Or would the murderer come home alone, unsuccessful in his attempt to make her one of them? Or not even getting that far. Maybe he’d smashed her like a bag of chips in his drive to get some? Because her life was less important to him than his own pleasure…
The story would be so tragic—Bella lost in a horrible accident. Victim of a mugging gone wrong. Choking to death at dinner. A car accident, like my mom. So common. Happened all the time.
Would he bring her home? Bury her here for Charlie? Closed-casket ceremony, of course. My mom’s coffin had been nailed shut.…
I could only hope that he’d come back here, within my reach.
Maybe there would be no story at all. Maybe Charlie would call to ask my dad if he’d heard anything from Dr. Cullen, who just didn’t show up to work one day. The house abandoned. No answer on any of the Cullens’ phones. The mystery picked up by some second-rate news program, foul play suspected…
Maybe the big white house would burn to the ground, everyone trapped inside. Of course, they’d need bodies for that one. Eight humans of roughly the right size.
Burned beyond recognition—beyond the help of dental records.
Either of those would be tricky—for me, that is. It would be hard to find them if they didn’t want to be found. Of course, I had forever to look. If you had forever, you could check out every single piece of straw in the haystack, one by one, to see if it was the needle.
Right now, I wouldn’t mind dismantling a haystack. At least that would be something to do. I hated knowing that I could be losing my chance. Giving the bloodsuckers the time to escape, if that was their plan.
We could go tonight. We could kill every one of them that we could find.
I liked that plan because I knew Edward well enough to know that, if I killed any one of his coven, I would get my chance at him, too. He’d come for revenge. And I’d give it to him—I wouldn’t let my brothers take him down as a pack. It would be just him and me. May the better man win.
But Sam wouldn’t hear of it. We’re not going to break the treaty. Let them make the breach. Just because we had no proof that the Cullens had done anything wrong. Yet. You had to add the yet, because we all knew it was inevitable. Bella was either coming back one of them, or not coming back. Either way, a human life had been lost. And that meant game on.
In the other room, Paul brayed like a mule. Maybe he’d switched to a comedy. Maybe the commercial was funny. Whatever. It grated on my nerves.
I thought about breaking his nose again. But it wasn’t Paul I wanted to fight with. Not really.
I tried to listen to other sounds, the wind in the trees. It wasn’t the same, not through human ears. There were a million voices in the wind that I couldn’t hear in this body.
But these ears were sensitive enough. I could hear past the trees, to the road, the sounds of the cars coming around that last bend where you could finally see the beach—the vista of the islands and the rocks and the big blue ocean stretching to the horizon. The La Push cops liked to hang out right around there. Tourists never noticed the reduced speed limit sign on the other side of the road.
I could hear the voices outside the souvenir shop on the beach. I could hear the cowbell clanging as the door opened and closed. I could hear Embry’s mom at the cash register, printing out a receipt.
I could hear the tide raking across the beach rocks. I could hear the kids squeal as the icy water rushed in too fast for them to get out of the way. I could hear the moms complain about the wet clothes. And I could hear a familiar voice.…
I was listening so hard that the sudden burst of Paul’s donkey laugh made me jump half off the bed.
“Get out of my house,” I grumbled. Knowing he wouldn’t pay any attention, I followed my own advice. I wrenched open my window and climbed out the back way so that I wouldn’t see Paul again. It would be too tempting. I knew I would hit him again, and Rachel was going to be pissed enough already. She’d see the blood on his shirt, and she’d blame me right away without waiting for proof. Of course, she’d be right, but still.
I paced down to the shore, my fists in my pockets. Nobody looked at me twice when I went through the dirt lot by First Beach. That was one nice thing about summer—no one cared if you wore nothing but shorts.
I followed the familiar voice I’d heard and found Quil easy enough. He was on the south end of the crescent, avoiding the bigger part of the tourist crowd. He kept up a constant stream of warnings.
“Keep out of the water, Claire. C’mon. No, don’t. Oh! Nice, kid. Seriously, do you want Emily to yell at me? I’m not bringing you back to the beach again if you don’t—Oh yeah? Don’t—ugh. You think that’s funny, do you? Hah! Who’s laughing now, huh?”
He had the giggling toddler by the ankle when I reached them. She had a bucket in one hand, and her jeans were drenched. He had a huge wet mark down the front of his t-shirt.
“Five bucks on the baby girl,” I said. “Hey, Jake.”
Claire squealed and threw her bucket at Quil’s knees. “Down, down!”
He set her carefully on her feet and she ran to me. She wrapped her arms around my leg.
“Unca Jay!”
“How’s it going, Claire?”
She giggled. “Qwil aaaaawl wet now.” “I can see that. Where’s your mama?”
“Gone, gone, gone,” Claire sang, “Cwaire pway wid Qwil aaaawl day. Cwaire nebber gowin home.” She let go of me and ran to Quil. He scooped her up and slung her onto his shoulders.
“Sounds like somebody’s hit the terrible twos.”
“Threes actually,” Quil corrected. “You missed the party. Princess theme. She made me wear a crown, and then Emily suggested they all try out her new play makeup on me.”
“Wow, I’m really sorry I wasn’t around to see that.”
“Don’t worry, Emily has pictures. Actually, I look pretty hot.” “You’re such a patsy.”
Quil shrugged. “Claire had a great time. That was the point.”
I rolled my eyes. It was hard being around imprinted people. No matter what stage they were in—about to tie the knot like Sam or just a much-abused nanny like Quil—the peace and certainty they always radiated was downright puke- inducing.
Claire squealed on his shoulders and pointed at the ground. “Pity wock, Qwil! For me, for me!”
“Which one, kiddo? The red one?” “No wed!”
Quil dropped to his knees—Claire screamed and pulled his hair like a horse’s reigns.
“This blue one?”
“No, no, no…,” the little girl sang, thrilled with her new game.
The weird part was, Quil was having just as much fun as she was. He didn’t have that face on that so many of the tourist dads and moms were wearing—the when- is-nap-time? face. You never saw a real parent so jazzed to play whatever stupid kiddie sport their rugrat could think up. I’d seen Quil play peekaboo for an hour straight without getting bored.
And I couldn’t even make fun of him for it—I envied him too much.
Though I did think it sucked that he had a good fourteen years of monkitude ahead of him until Claire was his age—for Quil, at least, it was a good thing werewolves didn’t get older. But even all that time didn’t seem to bother him much.
“Quil, you ever think about dating?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“No, no yewwo!” Claire crowed.
“You know. A real girl. I mean, just for now, right? On your nights off babysitting duty.”
Quil stared at me, his mouth hanging open.
“Pity wock! Pity wock!” Claire screamed when he didn’t offer her another choice. She smacked him on the head with her little fist.
“Sorry, Claire-bear. How about this pretty purple one?” “No,” she giggled. “No poopoh.”
“Give me a clue. I’m begging, kid.”
Claire thought it over. “Gween,” she finally said.
Quil stared at the rocks, studying them. He picked four rocks in different shades of green, and offered them to her.
“Did I get it?” “Yay!” “Which one?”
“Aaaaawl ob dem!!”
She cupped her hands and he poured the small rocks into them. She laughed and immediately clunked him on the head with them. He winced theatrically and then got to his feet and started walking back up toward the parking lot. Probably worried about her getting cold in her wet clothes. He was worse than any paranoid, overprotective mother.
“Sorry if I was being pushy before, man, about the girl thing,” I said.
“Naw, that’s cool,” Quil said. “It kind of took me by surprise is all. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“I bet she’d understand. You know, when she’s grown up. She wouldn’t get mad that you had a life while she was in diapers.”
“No, I know. I’m sure she’d understand that.”
He didn’t say anything else.
“But you won’t do that, will you?” I guessed.
“I can’t see it,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t imagine. I just don’t… see anyone that way. I don’t notice girls anymore, you know. I don’t see their faces.”
“Put that together with the tiara and makeup, and maybe Claire will have a different kind of competition to worry about.”
Quil laughed and made kissing noises at me. “You available this Friday, Jacob?” “You wish,” I said, and then I made a face. “Yeah, guess I am, though.”
He hesitated a second and then said, “You ever think about dating?” I sighed. Guess I’d opened myself up for that one.
“You know, Jake, maybe you should think about getting a life.”
He didn’t say it like a joke. His voice was sympathetic. That made it worse. “I don’t see them, either, Quil. I don’t see their faces.”
Quil sighed, too.
Far away, too low for anyone but just us two to hear it over the waves, a howl rose out of the forest.
“Dang, that’s Sam,” Quil said. His hands flew up to touch Claire, as if making sure she was still there. “I don’t know where her mom’s at!”
“I’ll see what it is. If we need you, I’ll let you know.” I raced through the words. They came out all slurred together. “Hey, why don’t you take her up to the Clearwaters’? Sue and Billy can keep an eye on her if they need to. They might know what’s going on, anyway.”
“Okay—get outta here, Jake!”
I took off running, not for the dirt path through the weedy hedge, but in the shortest line toward the forest. I hurdled the first line of driftwood and then ripped my way through the briars, still running. I felt the little tears as the thorns cut into my skin, but I ignored them. Their sting would be healed before I made the trees.
I cut behind the store and darted across the highway. Somebody honked at me. Once in the safety of the trees, I ran faster, taking longer strides. People would
stare if I was out in the open. Normal people couldn’t run like this. Sometimes I thought it might be fun to enter a race—you know, like the Olympic trials or something. It would be cool to watch the expressions on those star athletes’ faces when I blew by them. Only I was pretty sure the testing they did to make sure you weren’t on steroids would probably turn up some really freaky crap in my blood.
As soon as I was in the true forest, unbound by roads or houses, I skidded to a stop and kicked my shorts off. With quick, practiced moves, I rolled them up and tied them to the leather cord around my ankle. As I was still pulling the ends tight, I started shifting. The fire trembled down my spine, throwing tight spasms out along my arms and legs. It only took a second. The heat flooded through me, and I felt the silent shimmer that made me something else. I threw my heavy paws against the matted earth and stretched my back in one long, rolling extension.
Phasing was very easy when I was centered like this. I didn’t have issues with my temper anymore. Except when it got in the way.
For one half second, I remembered the awful moment at that unspeakable joke of a wedding. I’d been so insane with fury that I couldn’t make my body work right. I’d been trapped, shaking and burning, unable to make the change and kill the monster just a few feet away from me. It had been so confusing. Dying to kill him. Afraid to hurt her. My friends in the way. And then, when I was finally able to take the form I wanted, the order from my leader. The edict from the Alpha. If it had been just Embry and Quil there that night without Sam… would I have been able to kill the murderer, then?
I hated it when Sam laid down the law like that. I hated the feeling of having no choice. Of having to obey.
And then I was conscious of an audience. I was not alone in my thoughts.
So self-absorbed all the time, Leah thought. Yeah, no hypocrisy there, Leah, I thought back. Can it, guys, Sam told us.
We fell silent, and I felt Leah’s wince at the word guys. Touchy, like always. Sam pretended not to notice. Where’s Quil and Jared?
Quil’s got Claire. He’s taking her to the Clearwaters’. Good. Sue will take her.
Jared was going to Kim’s, Embry thought. Good chance he didn’t hear you.
There was a low grumble through the pack. I moaned along with them. When Jared finally showed up, no doubt he’d still be thinking about Kim. And nobody wanted a replay of what they were up to right now.
Sam sat back on his haunches and let another howl rip into the air. It was a signal and an order in one.
The pack was gathered a few miles east of where I was. I loped through the thick forest toward them. Leah, Embry, and Paul all were working in toward them, too. Leah was close—soon I could hear her footfalls not far into the woods. We continued in a parallel line, choosing not to run together.
Well, we’re not waiting all day for him. He’ll just have to catch up later. ’Sup, boss? Paul wanted to know.
We need to talk. Something’s happened.
I felt Sam’s thoughts flicker to me—and not just Sam’s, but Seth’s and Collin’s and Brady’s as well. Collin and Brady—the new kids—had been running patrol with Sam today, so they would know whatever he knew. I didn’t know why Seth was already out here, and in the know. It wasn’t his turn.
Seth, tell them what you heard.
I sped up, wanting to be there. I heard Leah move faster, too. She hated being outrun. Being the fastest was the only edge she claimed.
Claim this, moron, she hissed, and then she really kicked it into gear. I dug my nails into the loam and shot myself forward.
Sam didn’t seem in the mood to put up with our usual crap. Jake, Leah, give it a rest.
Neither of us slowed.
Sam growled, but let it go. Seth?
Charlie called around till he found Billy at my house. Yeah, I talked to him, Paul added.
I felt a jolt go through me as Seth thought Charlie’s name. This was it. The waiting was over. I ran faster, forcing myself to breathe, though my lungs felt kinda stiff all of a sudden.
Which story would it be?
So he’s all flipped out. Guess Edward and Bella got home last week, and…
My chest eased up.
She was alive. Or she wasn’t dead dead, at least.
I hadn’t realized how much difference it would make to me. I’d been thinking of her as dead this whole time, and I only saw that now. I saw that I’d never believed that he would bring her back alive. It shouldn’t matter, because I knew what was coming next.
Yeah, bro, and here’s the bad news. Charlie talked to her, said she sounded bad. She told him she’s sick. Carlisle got on and told Charlie that Bella picked up some rare disease in South America. Said she’s quarantined. Charlie’s going crazy, ’cause even he’s not allowed to see her. He says he doesn’t care if he gets sick, but Carlisle wouldn’t bend. No visitors. Told Charlie it was pretty serious, but that he’s doing everything he can. Charlie’s been stewing about it for days, but he only called Billy now. He said she sounded worse today.
The mental silence when Seth finished was profound. We all understood.
So she would die of this disease, as far as Charlie knew. Would they let him view the corpse? The pale, perfectly still, unbreathing white body? They couldn’t let him touch the cold skin—he might notice how hard it was. They’d have to wait until she could hold still, could keep from killing Charlie and the other mourners. How long would that take?
Would they bury her? Would she dig herself out, or would the bloodsuckers come for her?
The others listened to my speculating in silence. I’d put a lot more thought into this than any of them.
Leah and I entered the clearing at nearly the same time. She was sure her nose led the way, though. She dropped onto her haunches beside her brother while I trotted forward to stand at Sam’s right hand. Paul circled and made room for me in my place.
Beatcha again, Leah thought, but I barely heard her.
I wondered why I was the only one on my feet. My fur stood up on my shoulders, bristling with impatience.
Well, what are we waiting for? I asked.
No one said anything, but I heard their feelings of hesitation.
Oh, come on! The treaty’s broken!
We have no proof—maybe she is sick.… OH, PLEASE!
Okay, so the circumstantial evidence is pretty strong. Still… Jacob. Sam’s thought came slow, hesitant. Are you sure this is what you want? Is it really the right thing? We all know what she wanted.
The treaty doesn’t mention anything about victim preferences, Sam! Is she really a victim? Would you label her that way?
Yes!
Jake, Seth thought, they aren’t our enemies.
Shut up, kid! Just ’cause you’ve got some kind of sick hero worship thing going on with that bloodsucker, it doesn’t change the law. They are our enemies. They are in our territory. We take them out. I don’t care if you had fun fighting alongside Edward Cullen once upon a time.
So what are you going to do when Bella fights with them, Jacob? Huh? Seth demanded.
She’s not Bella anymore.
You gonna be the one to take her down?
I couldn’t stop myself from wincing.
No, you’re not. So, what? You gonna make one of us do it? And then hold a grudge against whoever it is forever?
I wouldn’t.…
Sure you won’t. You’re not ready for this fight, Jacob.
Instinct took over and I crouched forward, snarling at the gangly sand-colored wolf across the circle.
Jacob! Sam cautioned. Seth, shut up for a second.
Seth nodded his big head.
Dang, what’d I miss? Quil thought. He was running for the gathering place full- out. Heard about Charlie’s call.…
We’re getting ready to go, I told him. Why don’t you swing by Kim’s and drag Jared out with your teeth? We’re going to need everyone.
Come straight here, Quil, Sam ordered. We’ve decided nothing yet.
I growled.
Jacob, I have to think about what’s best for this pack. I have to choose the course that protects you all best. Times have changed since our ancestors made that treaty. I… well, I don’t honestly believe that the Cullens are a danger to us. And we know that they will not be here much longer. Surely once they’ve told their story, they will disappear. Our lives can return to normal.
Normal?
If we challenge them, Jacob, they will defend themselves well. Are you afraid?
Are you so ready to lose a brother? He paused. Or a sister? he tacked on as an afterthought.
I’m not afraid to die.
I know that, Jacob. It’s one reason I question your judgment on this.
I stared into his black eyes. Do you intend to honor our fathers’ treaty or not? I honor my pack. I do what’s best for them.
Coward.
His muzzle tensed, pulling back over his teeth.
Enough, Jacob. You’re overruled. Sam’s mental voice changed, took on that strange double timbre that we could not disobey. The voice of the Alpha. He met the gaze of every wolf in the circle.
The pack is not attacking the Cullens without provocation. The spirit of the treaty remains. They are not a danger to our people, nor are they a danger to the people of Forks. Bella Swan made an informed choice, and we are not going to punish our former allies for her choice.
Hear, hear, Seth thought enthusiastically.
I thought I told you to shut it, Seth. Oops. Sorry, Sam.
Jacob, where do you think you’re going?
I left the circle, moving toward the west so that I could turn my back on him. I’m going to tell my father goodbye. Apparently there was no purpose in me sticking around this long.
Aw, Jake—don’t do that again!
Shut up, Seth, several voices thought together.
We don’t want you to leave, Sam told me, his thought softer than before.
So force me to stay, Sam. Take away my will. Make me a slave. You know I won’t do that.
Then there’s nothing more to say.
I ran away from them, trying very hard not to think about what was next. Instead, I concentrated on my memories of the long wolf months, of letting the humanity bleed out of me until I was more animal than man. Living in the moment, eating when hungry, sleeping when tired, drinking when thirsty, and running—running just to run. Simple desires, simple answers to those desires. Pain came in easily managed forms. The pain of hunger. The pain of cold ice under your paws. The pain of cutting claws when dinner got feisty. Each pain had a simple answer, a clear action to end that pain.
Not like being human.
Yet, as soon as I was in jogging distance of my house, I shifted back into my human body. I needed to be able to think in privacy.
I untied my shorts and yanked them on, already running for the house.
I’d done it. I’d hidden what I was thinking and now it was too late for Sam to stop me. He couldn’t hear me now.
Sam had made a very clear ruling. The pack would not attack the Cullens. Okay. He hadn’t mentioned an individual acting alone.
Nope, the pack wasn’t attacking anyone today.
But I was.
9. SURE AS HELL DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING
I didn’t really plan to say goodbye to my father.
After all, one quick call to Sam and the game would be up. They’d cut me off and push me back. Probably try to make me angry, or even hurt me—somehow force me to phase so that Sam could lay down a new law.
But Billy was expecting me, knowing I’d be in some kind of state. He was in the yard, just sitting there in his wheelchair with his eyes right on the spot where I came through the trees. I saw him judge my direction—headed straight past the house to my homemade garage.
“Got a minute, Jake?”
I skidded to a stop. I looked at him and then toward the garage. “C’mon kid. At least help me inside.”
I gritted my teeth but decided that he’d be more likely to cause trouble with Sam if I didn’t lie to him for a few minutes.
“Since when do you need help, old man?”
He laughed his rumbling laugh. “My arms are tired. I pushed myself all the way here from Sue’s.”
“It’s downhill. You coasted the whole way.”
I rolled his chair up the little ramp I’d made for him and into the living room.
“Caught me. Think I got up to about thirty miles per hour. It was great.”
“You’re gonna wreck that chair, you know. And then you’ll be dragging yourself around by your elbows.”
“Not a chance. It’ll be your job to carry me.” “You won’t be going many places.”
Billy put his hands on the wheels and steered himself to the fridge. “Any food left?”
“You got me. Paul was here all day, though, so probably not.”
Billy sighed. “Have to start hiding the groceries if we’re gonna avoid starvation.”
“Tell Rachel to go stay at his place.”
Billy’s joking tone vanished, and his eyes got soft. “We’ve only had her home a few weeks. First time she’s been here in a long time. It’s hard—the girls were older than you when your mom passed. They have more trouble being in this house.”
“I know.”
Rebecca hadn’t been home once since she got married, though she did have a good excuse. Plane tickets from Hawaii were pretty pricey. Washington State was close enough that Rachel didn’t have the same defense. She’d taken classes straight through the summer semesters, working double shifts over the holidays at some café on campus. If it hadn’t been for Paul, she probably would have taken off again real quick. Maybe that was why Billy wouldn’t kick him out.
“Well, I’m going to go work on some stuff ” I started for the back door.
“Wait up, Jake. Aren’t you going to tell me what happened? Do I have to call Sam for an update?”
I stood with my back to him, hiding my face.
“Nothing happened. Sam’s giving them a bye. Guess we’re all just a bunch of leech lovers now.”
“Jake ”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” “Are you leaving, son?”
The room was quiet for a long time while I decided how to say it. “Rachel can have her room back. I know she hates that air mattress.” “She’d rather sleep on the floor than lose you. So would I.”
I snorted.
“Jacob, please. If you need… a break. Well, take it. But not so long again. Come back.”
“Maybe. Maybe my gig will be weddings. Make a cameo at Sam’s, then Rachel’s. Jared and Kim might come first, though. Probably ought to have a suit or something.”
“Jake, look at me.”
I turned around slowly. “What?”
He stared into my eyes for a long minute. “Where are you going?” “I don’t really have a specific place in mind.”
He cocked his head to the side, and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t you?” We stared each other down. The seconds ticked by.
“Jacob,” he said. His voice was strained. “Jacob, don’t. It’s not worth it.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Leave Bella and the Cullens be. Sam is right.”
I stared at him for a second, and then I crossed the room in two long strides. I grabbed the phone and disconnected the cable from the box and the jack. I wadded the gray cord up in the palm of my hand.
“Bye, Dad.”
“Jake, wait—,” he called after me, but I was out the door, running.
The motorcycle wasn’t as fast as running, but it was more discreet. I wondered how long it would take Billy to wheel himself down to the store and then get someone on the phone who could get a message to Sam. I’d bet Sam was still in his wolf form. The problem would be if Paul came back to our place anytime soon. He could phase in a second and let Sam know what I was doing.…
I wasn’t going to worry about it. I would go as fast as I could, and if they caught me, I’d deal with that when I had to.
I kicked the bike to life and then I was racing down the muddy lane. I didn’t look behind me as I passed the house.
The highway was busy with tourist traffic; I wove in and out of the cars, earning a bunch of honks and a few fingers. I took the turn onto the 101 at seventy, not bothering to look. I had to ride the line for a minute to avoid getting smeared by a minivan. Not that it would have killed me, but it would have slowed me down.
Broken bones—the big ones, at least—took days to heal completely, as I had good cause to know.
The freeway cleared up a little, and I pushed the bike to eighty. I didn’t touch the brake until I was close to the narrow drive; I figured I was in the clear then. Sam wouldn’t come this far to stop me. It was too late.
It wasn’t until that moment—when I was sure that I’d made it—that I started to think about what exactly I was going to do now. I slowed down to twenty, taking the twists through the trees more carefully than I needed to.
I knew they would hear me coming, bike or no bike, so surprise was out. There was no way to disguise my intentions. Edward would hear my plan as soon as I was close enough. Maybe he already could. But I thought this would still work out, because I had his ego on my side. He’d want to fight me alone.
So I’d just walk in, see Sam’s precious evidence for myself, and then challenge Edward to a duel.
I snorted. The parasite’d probably get a kick out of the theatrics of it.
When I finished with him, I’d take as many of the rest of them as I could before they got me. Huh—I wondered if Sam would consider my death provocation.
Probably say I got what I deserved. Wouldn’t want to offend his bloodsucker BFFs.
The drive opened up into the meadow, and the smell hit me like a rotten tomato to the face. Ugh. Reeking vampires. My stomach started churning. The stench would be hard to take this way—undiluted by the scent of humans as it had been the other time I’d come here—though not as bad as smelling it through my wolf nose.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but there was no sign of life around the big white crypt. Of course they knew I was here.
I cut the engine and listened to the quiet. Now I could hear tense, angry murmurs from just the other side of the wide double doors. Someone was home. I heard my name and I smiled, happy to think I was causing them a little stress.
I took one big gulp of air—it would only be worse inside—and leaped up the porch stairs in one bound.
The door opened before my fist touched it, and the doctor stood in the frame, his eyes grave.
“Hello, Jacob,” he said, calmer than I would have expected. “How are you?”
I took a deep breath through my mouth. The reek pouring through the door was overpowering.
I was disappointed that it was Carlisle who answered. I’d rather Edward had come through the door, fangs out. Carlisle was so… just human or something. Maybe it was the house calls he made last spring when I got busted up. But it made me uncomfortable to look into his face and know that I was planning to kill him if I could.
“I heard Bella made it back alive,” I said.
“Er, Jacob, it’s not really the best time.” The doctor seemed uncomfortable, too, but not in the way I expected. “Could we do this later?”
I stared at him, dumbfounded. Was he asking to post-pone the death match for a more convenient time?
And then I heard Bella’s voice, cracked and rough, and I couldn’t think about anything else.
“Why not?” she asked someone. “Are we keeping secrets from Jacob, too? What’s the point?”
Her voice was not what I was expecting. I tried to remember the voices of the young vampires we’d fought in the spring, but all I’d registered was snarling. Maybe those newborns hadn’t had the piercing, ringing sound of the older ones, either. Maybe all new vampires sounded hoarse.
“Come in, please, Jacob,” Bella croaked more loudly. Carlisle’s eyes tightened.
I wondered if Bella was thirsty. My eyes narrowed, too.
“Excuse me,” I said to the doctor as I stepped around him. It was hard—it went against all my instincts to turn my back to one of them. Not impossible, though. If there was such a thing as a safe vampire, it was the strangely gentle leader.
I would stay away from Carlisle when the fight started. There were enough of them to kill without including him.
I sidestepped into the house, keeping my back to the wall. My eyes swept the room—it was unfamiliar. The last time I’d been in here it had been all done up for a party. Everything was bright and pale now. Including the six vampires standing in a group by the white sofa.
They were all here, all together, but that was not what froze me where I stood and had my jaw dropping to the floor.
It was Edward. It was the expression on his face.
I’d seen him angry, and I’d seen him arrogant, and once I’d seen him in pain. But this—this was beyond agony. His eyes were half-crazed. He didn’t look up to glare at me. He stared down at the couch beside him with an expression like someone had lit him on fire. His hands were rigid claws at his side.
I couldn’t even enjoy his anguish. I could only think of one thing that would make him look like that, and my eyes followed his.
I saw her at the same moment that I caught her scent. Her warm, clean, human scent.
Bella was half-hidden behind the arm of the sofa, curled up in a loose fetal position, her arms wrapped around her knees. For a long second I could see nothing except that she was still the Bella that I loved, her skin still a soft, pale peach, her eyes still the same chocolate brown. My heart thudded a strange, broken meter, and I wondered if this was just some lying dream that I was about to wake up from.
Then I really saw her.
There were deep circles under her eyes, dark circles that jumped out because her face was all haggard. Was she thinner? Her skin seemed tight—like her cheekbones might break right through it. Most of her dark hair was pulled away from her face into a messy knot, but a few strands stuck limply to her forehead and neck, to the sheen of sweat that covered her skin. There was something about her fingers and wrists that looked so fragile it was scary.
She was sick. Very sick.
Not a lie. The story Charlie’d told Billy was not a story. While I stared, eyes bugging, her skin turned light green.
The blond bloodsucker—the showy one, Rosalie—bent over her, cutting into my view, hovering in a strange, protective way.
This was wrong. I knew how Bella felt about almost everything—her thoughts were so obvious; sometimes it was like they were printed on her forehead. So she didn’t have to tell me every detail of a situation for me to get it. I knew that Bella didn’t like Rosalie. I’d seen it in the set of her lips when she talked about her. Not just that she didn’t like her. She was afraid of Rosalie. Or she had been.
There was no fear as Bella glanced up at her now. Her expression was… apologetic or something. Then Rosalie snatched a basin from the floor and held it under Bella’s chin just in time for Bella to throw up noisily into it.
Edward fell to his knees by Bella’s side—his eyes all tortured-looking—and Rosalie held out her hand, warning him to keep back.
None of it made sense.
When she could raise her head, Bella smiled weakly at me, sort of embarrassed. “Sorry about that,” she whispered to me.
Edward moaned real quiet. His head slumped against Bella’s knees. She put one of her hands against his cheek. Like she was comforting him.
I didn’t realize my legs had carried me forward until Rosalie hissed at me, suddenly appearing between me and the couch. She was like a person on a TV screen. I didn’t care she was there. She didn’t seem real.
“Rose, don’t,” Bella whispered. “It’s fine.”
Blondie moved out of my way, though I could tell she hated to do it. Scowling at me, she crouched by Bella’s head, tensed to spring. She was easier to ignore than I ever would have dreamed.
“Bella, what’s wrong?” I whispered. Without thinking about it, I found myself on my knees, too, leaning over the back of the couch across from her… husband. He didn’t seem to notice me, and I barely glanced at him. I reached out for her free hand, taking it in both of mine. Her skin was icy. “Are you all right?”
It was a stupid question. She didn’t answer it.
“I’m so glad you came to see me today, Jacob,” she said.
Even though I knew Edward couldn’t hear her thoughts, he seemed to hear some meaning I didn’t. He moaned again, into the blanket that covered her, and she stroked his cheek.
“What is it, Bella?” I insisted, wrapping my hands tight around her cold, fragile fingers.
Instead of answering, she glanced around the room like she was searching for something, both a plea and a warning in her look. Six pairs of anxious yellow eyes stared back at her. Finally, she turned to Rosalie.
“Help me up, Rose?” she asked.
Rosalie’s lips pulled back over her teeth, and she glared up at me like she wanted to rip my throat out. I was sure that was exactly the case.
“Please, Rose.”
The blonde made a face, but leaned over her again, next to Edward, who didn’t move an inch. She put her arm carefully behind Bella’s shoulders.
“No,” I whispered. “Don’t get up. ” She looked so weak.
“I’m answering your question,” she snapped, sounding a little bit more like the way she usually talked to me.
Rosalie pulled Bella off the couch. Edward stayed where he was, sagging forward till his face was buried in the cushions. The blanket fell to the ground at Bella’s feet.
Bella’s body was swollen, her torso ballooning out in a strange, sick way. It strained against the faded gray sweatshirt that was way too big for her shoulders and arms. The rest of her seemed thinner, like the big bulge had grown out of what it had sucked from her. It took me a second to realize what the deformed part was—I didn’t understand until she folded her hands tenderly around her bloated stomach, one above and one below. Like she was cradling it.
I saw it then, but I still couldn’t believe it. I’d seen her just a month ago. There was no way she could be pregnant. Not that pregnant.
Except that she was.
I didn’t want to see this, didn’t want to think about this. I didn’t want to imagine him inside her. I didn’t want to know that something I hated so much had taken root in the body I loved. My stomach heaved, and I had to swallow back vomit.
But it was worse than that, so much worse. Her distorted body, the bones jabbing against the skin of her face. I could only guess that she looked like this—so pregnant, so sick—because whatever was inside her was taking her life to feed its own.…
Because it was a monster. Just like its father. I always knew he would kill her.
His head snapped up as he heard the words inside mine. One second we were both on our knees, and then he was on his feet, towering over me. His eyes were flat black, the circles under them dark purple.
“Outside, Jacob,” he snarled.
I was on my feet, too. Looking down on him now. This was why I was here. “Let’s do this,” I agreed.
The big one, Emmett, pushed forward on Edward’s other side, with the hungry- looking one, Jasper, right behind him. I really didn’t care. Maybe my pack would clean up the scraps when they finished me off. Maybe not. It didn’t matter.
For the tiniest part of a second my eyes touched on the two standing in the back. Esme. Alice. Small and distractingly feminine. Well, I was sure the others would kill me before I had to do anything about them. I didn’t want to kill girls… even vampire girls.
Though I might make an exception for that blonde.
“No,” Bella gasped, and she stumbled forward, out of balance, to clutch at Edward’s arm. Rosalie moved with her, like there was a chain locking them to each other.
“I just need to talk to him, Bella,” Edward said in a low voice, talking only to her. He reached up to touch her face, to stroke it. This made the room turn red, made me see fire—that, after all he’d done to her, he was still allowed to touch her that way. “Don’t strain yourself,” he went on, pleading. “Please rest. We’ll both be back in just a few minutes.”
She stared at his face, reading it carefully. Then she nodded and drooped toward the couch. Rosalie helped lower her back onto the cushions. Bella stared at me, trying to hold my eyes.
“Behave,” she insisted. “And then come back.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t making any promises today. I looked away and then followed Edward out the front door.
A random, disjointed voice in my head noted that separating him from the coven hadn’t been so difficult, had it?
He kept walking, never checking to see if I was about to spring at his unprotected back. I supposed he didn’t need to check. He would know when I decided to attack. Which meant I’d have to make that decision very quickly.
“I’m not ready for you to kill me yet, Jacob Black,” he whispered as he paced quickly away from the house. “You’ll have to have a little patience.”
Like I cared about his schedule. I growled under my breath. “Patience isn’t my specialty.”
He kept walking, maybe a couple hundred yards down the drive away from the house, with me right on his heels. I was all hot, my fingers trembling. On the edge, ready and waiting.
He stopped without warning and pivoted to face me. His expression froze me again.
For a second I was just a kid—a kid who had lived all of his life in the same tiny town. Just a child. Because I knew I would have to live a lot more, suffer a lot more, to ever understand the searing agony in Edward’s eyes.
He raised a hand as if to wipe sweat from his forehead, but his fingers scraped against his face like they were going to rip his granite skin right off. His black eyes burned in their sockets, out of focus, or seeing things that weren’t there. His mouth opened like he was going to scream, but nothing came out.
This was the face a man would have if he were burning at the stake.
For a moment I couldn’t speak. It was too real, this face—I’d seen a shadow of it in the house, seen it in her eyes and his, but this made it final. The last nail in her coffin.
“It’s killing her, right? She’s dying.” And I knew when I said it that my face was a watered-down echo of his. Weaker, different, because I was still in shock. I hadn’t wrapped my head around it yet—it was happening too fast. He’d had time to get to this point. And it was different because I’d already lost her so many times, so many ways, in my head. And different because she was never really mine to lose.
And different because this wasn’t my fault.
“My fault,” Edward whispered, and his knees gave out. He crumpled in front of me, vulnerable, the easiest target you could imagine.
But I felt cold as snow—there was no fire in me.
“Yes,” he groaned into the dirt, like he was confessing to the ground. “Yes, it’s killing her.”
His broken helplessness irritated me. I wanted a fight, not an execution. Where was his smug superiority now?
“So why hasn’t Carlisle done anything?” I growled. “He’s a doctor, right? Get it out of her.”
He looked up then and answered me in a tired voice. Like he was explaining this to a kindergartener for the tenth time. “She won’t let us.”
It took a minute for the words to sink in. Jeez, she was running true to form. Of course, die for the monster spawn. It was so Bella.
“You know her well,” he whispered. “How quickly you see.… I didn’t see. Not in time. She wouldn’t talk to me on the way home, not really. I thought she was frightened—that would be natural. I thought she was angry with me for putting her through this, for endangering her life. Again. I never imagined what she was really thinking, what she was resolving. Not until my family met us at the airport and she ran right into Rosalie’s arms. Rosalie’s! And then I heard what Rosalie was thinking. I didn’t understand until I heard that. Yet you understand after one second ” He half-sighed, half-groaned.
“Just back up a second. She won’t let you.” The sarcasm was acid on my tongue. “Did you ever notice that she’s exactly as strong as a normal hundred-and-ten- pound human girl? How stupid are you vamps? Hold her down and knock her out with drugs.”
“I wanted to,” he whispered. “Carlisle would have ”
What, too noble were they?
“No. Not noble. Her bodyguard complicated things.”
Oh. His story hadn’t made much sense before, but it fit together now. So that’s what Blondie was up to. What was in it for her, though? Did the beauty queen want Bella to die so bad?
“Maybe,” he said. “Rosalie doesn’t look at it quite that way.”
“So take the blonde out first. Your kind can be put back together, right? Turn her into a jigsaw and take care of Bella.”
“Emmett and Esme are backing her up. Emmett would never let us… and Carlisle won’t help me with Esme against it ” He trailed off, his voice disappearing.
“You should have left Bella with me.” “Yes.”
It was a bit late for that, though. Maybe he should have thought about all this
before he knocked her up with the life-sucking monster.
He stared up at me from inside his own personal hell, and I could see that he agreed with me.
“We didn’t know,” he said, the words as quiet as a breath. “I never dreamed. There’s never been anything like Bella and I before. How could we know that a human was able conceive a child with one of us—”
“When the human should get ripped to shreds in the process?”
“Yes,” he agreed in a tense whisper. “They’re out there, the sadistic ones, the incubus, the succubus. They exist. But the seduction is merely a prelude to the feast. No one survives.” He shook his head like the idea revolted him. Like he was any different.
“I didn’t realize they had a special name for what you are,” I spit. He stared up at me with a face that looked a thousand years old. “Even you, Jacob Black, cannot hate me as much as I hate myself.” Wrong, I thought, too enraged to speak.
“Killing me now doesn’t save her,” he said quietly. “So what does?”
“Jacob, you have to do something for me.” “The hell I do, parasite!”
He kept staring at me with those half-tired, half-crazy eyes. “For her?”
I clenched my teeth together hard. “I did everything I could to keep her away from you. Every single thing. It’s too late.”
“You know her, Jacob. You connect to her on a level that I don’t even understand. You are part of her, and she is part of you. She won’t listen to me, because she thinks I’m underestimating her. She thinks she’s strong enough for this ” He
choked and then swallowed. “She might listen to you.” “Why would she?”
He lurched to his feet, his eyes burning brighter than before, wilder. I wondered if he was really going crazy. Could vampires lose their minds?
“Maybe,” he answered my thought. “I don’t know. It feels like it.” He shook his head. “I have to try to hide this in front of her, because stress makes her more ill. She can’t keep anything down as it is. I have to be composed; I can’t make it harder. But that doesn’t matter now. She has to listen to you!”
“I can’t tell her anything you haven’t. What do you want me to do? Tell her she’s stupid? She probably already knows that. Tell her she’s going to die? I bet she knows that, too.”
“You can offer her what she wants.”
He wasn’t making any sense. Part of the crazy?
“I don’t care about anything but keeping her alive,” he said, suddenly focused now. “If it’s a child she wants, she can have it. She can have half a dozen babies. Anything she wants.” He paused for one beat. “She can have puppies, if that’s what it takes.”
He met my stare for a moment and his face was frenzied under the thin layer of control. My hard scowl crumbled as I processed his words, and I felt my mouth pop open in shock.
“But not this way!” he hissed before I could recover. “Not this thing that’s sucking the life from her while I stand there helpless! Watching her sicken and waste away. Seeing it hurting her.” He sucked in a fast breath like someone had punched him in the gut. “You have to make her see reason, Jacob. She won’t listen to me anymore. Rosalie’s always there, feeding her insanity—encouraging her. Protecting her. No, protecting it. Bella’s life means nothing to her.”
The noise coming from my throat sounded like I was choking.
What was he saying? That Bella should, what? Have a baby? With me? What? How? Was he giving her up? Or did he think she wouldn’t mind being shared?
“Whichever. Whatever keeps her alive.”
“That’s the craziest thing you’ve said yet,” I mumbled. “She loves you.”
“Not enough.”
“She’s ready to die to have a child. Maybe she’d accept something less extreme.” “Don’t you know her at all?”
“I know, I know. It’s going to take a lot of convincing. That’s why I need you. You know how she thinks. Make her see sense.”
I couldn’t think about what he was suggesting. It was too much. Impossible. Wrong. Sick. Borrowing Bella for the weekends and then returning her Monday morning like a rental movie? So messed up.
So tempting.
I didn’t want to consider, didn’t want to imagine, but the images came anyway. I’d fantasized about Bella that way too many times, back when there was still a possibility of us, and then long after it was clear that the fantasies would only
leave festering sores because there was no possibility, none at all. I hadn’t been able to help myself then. I couldn’t stop myself now. Bella in my arms, Bella sighing my name…
Worse still, this new image I’d never had before, one that by all rights shouldn’t have existed for me. Not yet. An image I knew I wouldn’t’ve suffered over for years if he hadn’t shoved it in my head now. But it stuck there, winding threads through my brain like a weed—poisonous and unkillable. Bella, healthy and glowing, so different than now, but something the same: her body, not distorted, changed in a more natural way. Round with my child.
I tried to escape the venomous weed in my mind. “Make Bella see sense? What universe do you live in?”
“At least try.”
I shook my head fast. He waited, ignoring the negative answer because he could hear the conflict in my thoughts.
“Where is this psycho crap coming from? Are you making this up as you go?”
“I’ve been thinking of nothing but ways to save her since I realized what she was planning to do. What she would die to do. But I didn’t know how to contact you. I knew you wouldn’t listen if I called. I would have come to find you soon, if you hadn’t come today. But it’s hard to leave her, even for a few minutes. Her condition… it changes so fast. The thing is… growing. Swiftly. I can’t be away from her now.”
“What is it?”
“None of us have any idea. But it is stronger than she is. Already.”
I could suddenly see it then—see the swelling monster in my head, breaking her from the inside out.
“Help me stop it,” he whispered. “Help me stop this from happening.”
“How? By offering my stud services?” He didn’t even flinch when I said that, but I did. “You’re really sick. She’ll never listen to this.”
“Try. There’s nothing to lose now. How will it hurt?”
It would hurt me. Hadn’t I taken enough rejection from Bella without this? “A little pain to save her? Is it such a high cost?”
“But it won’t work.”
“Maybe not. Maybe it will confuse her, though. Maybe she’ll falter in her resolve. One moment of doubt is all I need.”
“And then you pull the rug out from under the offer? ‘Just kidding, Bella’?” “If she wants a child, that’s what she gets. I won’t rescind.”
I couldn’t believe I was even thinking about this. Bella would punch me—not that I cared about that, but it would probably break her hand again. I shouldn’t let him talk to me, mess with my head. I should just kill him now.
“Not now,” he whispered. “Not yet. Right or wrong, it would destroy her, and you know it. No need to be hasty. If she won’t listen to you, you’ll get your chance.
The moment Bella’s heart stops beating, I will be begging for you to kill me.” “You won’t have to beg long.”
The hint of a worn smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I’m very much counting on that.”
“Then we have a deal.”
He nodded and held out his cold stone hand.
Swallowing my disgust, I reached out to take his hand. My fingers closed around the rock, and I shook it once.
“We have a deal,” he agreed.
10. WHY DIDN’T I JUST WALK AWAY? OH RIGHT, BECAUSE I’M AN IDIOT.
I felt like—like I don’t know what. Like this wasn’t real. Like I was in some Goth version of a bad sitcom. Instead of being the A/V dweeb about to ask the head cheerleader to the prom, I was the finished-second-place werewolf about to ask the vampire’s wife to shack up and procreate. Nice.
No, I wouldn’t do it. It was twisted and wrong. I was going to forget all about what he’d said.
But I would talk to her. I’d try to make her listen to me. And she wouldn’t. Just like always.
Edward didn’t answer or comment on my thoughts as he led the way back to the house. I wondered about the place that he’d chosen to stop. Was it far enough from the house that the others couldn’t hear his whispers? Was that the point?
Maybe. When we walked through the door, the other Cullens’ eyes were suspicious and confused. No one looked disgusted or outraged. So they must not have heard either favor Edward had asked me for.
I hesitated in the open doorway, not sure what to do now. It was better right there, with a little bit of breathable air blowing in from outside.
Edward walked into the middle of the huddle, shoulders stiff. Bella watched him anxiously, and then her eyes flickered to me for a second. Then she was watching him again.
Her face turned a grayish pale, and I could see what he meant about the stress making her feel worse.
“We’re going to let Jacob and Bella speak privately,” Edward said. There was no inflection at all in his voice. Robotic.
“Over my pile of ashes,” Rosalie hissed at him. She was still hovering by Bella’s head, one of her cold hands placed possessively on Bella’s sallow cheek.
Edward didn’t look at her. “Bella,” he said in that same empty tone. “Jacob wants to talk to you. Are you afraid to be alone with him?”
Bella looked at me, confused. Then she looked at Rosalie. “Rose, it’s fine. Jake’s not going to hurt us. Go with Edward.”
“It might be a trick,” the blonde warned. “I don’t see how,” Bella said.
“Carlisle and I will always be in your sight, Rosalie,” Edward said. The emotionless voice was cracking, showing the anger through it. “We’re the ones she’s afraid of.”
“No,” Bella whispered. Her eyes were glistening, her lashes wet. “No, Edward. I’m not ”
He shook his head, smiling a little. The smile was painful to look at. “I didn’t mean it that way, Bella. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
Sickening. He was right—she was beating herself up about hurting his feelings. The girl was a classic martyr. She’d totally been born in the wrong century. She should have lived back when she could have gotten herself fed to some lions for a good cause.
“Everyone,” Edward said, his hand stiffly motioning toward the door. “Please.”
The composure he was trying to keep up for Bella was shaky. I could see how close he was to that burning man he’d been outside. The others saw it, too.
Silently, they moved out the door while I shifted out of the way. They moved fast; my heart beat twice, and the room was cleared except for Rosalie, hesitating in the middle of the floor, and Edward, still waiting by the door.
“Rose,” Bella said quietly. “I want you to go.”
The blonde glared at Edward and then gestured for him to go first. He disappeared out the door. She gave me a long warning glower, and then she disappeared, too.
Once we were alone, I crossed the room and sat on the floor next to Bella. I took both her cold hands in mine, rubbing them carefully.
“Thanks, Jake. That feels good.”
“I’m not going to lie, Bells. You’re hideous.” “I know,” she sighed. “I’m scary-looking.” “Thing-from-the-swamp scary,” I agreed.
She laughed. “It’s so good having you here. It feels nice to smile. I don’t know how much more drama I can stand.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Okay, okay,” she agreed. “I bring it on myself.”
“Yeah, you do. What’re you thinking, Bells? Seriously!” “Did he ask you to yell at me?”
“Sort of. Though I can’t figure why he thinks you’d listen to me. You never have before.”
She sighed.
“I told you—,” I started to say.
“Did you know that ‘I told you so’ has a brother, Jacob?” she asked, cutting me off. “His name is ‘Shut the hell up.’”
“Good one.”
She grinned at me. Her skin stretched tight over the bones. “I can’t take credit—I got it off a rerun of The Simpsons.”
“Missed that one.” “It was funny.”
We didn’t talk for a minute. Her hands were starting to warm up a little. “Did he really ask you to talk to me?”
I nodded. “To talk some sense into you. There’s a battle that’s lost before it starts.”
“So why did you agree?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I knew.
I did know this—every second I spent with her was only going to add to the pain I would have to suffer later. Like a junkie with a limited supply, the day of reckoning was coming for me. The more hits I took now, the harder it would be when my supply ran out.
“It’ll work out, you know,” she said after a quiet minute. “I believe that.”
That made me see red again. “Is dementia one of your symptoms?” I snapped.
She laughed, though my anger was so real that my hands were shaking around hers.
“Maybe,” she said. “I’m not saying things will work out easily, Jake. But how could I have lived through all that I’ve lived through and not believe in magic by this point?”
“Magic?”
“Especially for you,” she said. She was smiling. She pulled one of her hands away from mine and pressed it against my cheek. Warmer than before, but it felt cool against my skin, like most things did. “More than anyone else, you’ve got some magic waiting to make things right for you.”
“What are you babbling about?”
Still smiling. “Edward told me once what it was like—your imprinting thing. He said it was like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, like magic. You’ll find who you’re really looking for, Jacob, and maybe then all of this will make sense.”
If she hadn’t looked so fragile I would’ve been screaming. As it was, I did growl at her.
“If you think that imprinting could ever make sense of this insanity . . .” I struggled for words. “Do you really think that just because I might someday imprint on some stranger it would make this right?” I jabbed a finger toward her swollen body. “Tell me what the point was then, Bella! What was the point of me loving you? What was the point of you loving him? When you die”—the words were a snarl—“how is that ever right again? What’s the point to all the pain?
Mine, yours, his! You’ll kill him, too, not that I care about that.” She flinched, but I kept going. “So what was the point of your twisted love story, in the end? If there is any sense, please show me, Bella, because I don’t see it.”
She sighed. “I don’t know yet, Jake. But I just… feel… that this is all going somewhere good, hard to see as it is now. I guess you could call it faith.”
“You’re dying for nothing, Bella! Nothing!”
Her hand dropped from my face to her bloated stomach, caressed it. She didn’t have to say the words for me to know what she was thinking. She was dying for it.
“I’m not going to die,” she said through her teeth, and I could tell she was repeating things she’d said before. “I will keep my heart beating. I’m strong enough for that.”
“That’s a load of crap, Bella. You’ve been trying to keep up with the supernatural for too long. No normal person can do it. You’re not strong enough.” I took her face in my hand. I didn’t have to remind myself to be gentle. Everything about her screamed breakable.
“I can do this. I can do this,” she muttered, sounding a lot like that kids’ book about the little engine that could.
“Doesn’t look like it to me. So what’s your plan? I hope you have one.”
She nodded, not meeting my eyes. “Did you know Esme jumped off a cliff? When she was human, I mean.”
“So?”
“So she was close enough to dead that they didn’t even bother taking her to the emergency room—they took her right around to the morgue. Her heart was still beating, though, when Carlisle found her ”
That’s what she’d meant before, about keeping her heart beating. “You’re not planning on surviving this human,” I stated dully.
“No. I’m not stupid.” She met my stare then. “I guess you probably have your own opinion on that point, though.”
“Emergency vampirization,” I mumbled.
“It worked for Esme. And Emmett, and Rosalie, and even Edward. None of them were in such great shape. Carlisle only changed them because it was that or death. He doesn’t end lives, he saves them.”
I felt a sudden twinge of guilt about the good vampire doctor, like before. I shoved the thought away and started in on the begging.
“Listen to me, Bells. Don’t do it that way.” Like before, when the call from Charlie had come, I could see how much difference it really made to me. I realized I needed her to stay alive, in some form. In any form. I took a deep breath. “Don’t wait until it’s too late, Bella. Not that way. Live. Okay? Just live. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do it to him.” My voice got harder, louder. “You know what he’s going to do when you die. You’ve seen it before. You want him to go back to those Italian killers?” She cringed into the sofa.
I left out the part about how that wouldn’t be necessary this time.
Struggling to make my voice softer, I asked, “Remember when I got mangled up by those newborns? What did you tell me?”
I waited, but she wouldn’t answer. She pressed her lips together.
“You told me to be good and listen to Carlisle,” I reminded her. “And what did I do? I listened to the vampire. For you.”
“You listened because it was the right thing to do.” “Okay—pick either reason.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s not the right thing now.” Her gaze touched her big round stomach and she whispered under her breath, “I won’t kill him.”
My hands shook again. “Oh, I hadn’t heard the great news. A bouncing baby boy, huh? Shoulda brought some blue balloons.”
Her face turned pink. The color was so beautiful—it twisted in my stomach like a knife. A serrated knife, rusty and ragged.
I was going to lose this. Again.
“I don’t know he’s a boy,” she admitted, a little sheepish. “The ultrasound wouldn’t work. The membrane around the baby is too hard—like their skin. So he’s a little mystery. But I always see a boy in my head.”
“It’s not some pretty baby in there, Bella.” “We’ll see,” she said. Almost smug.
“You won’t,” I snarled.
“You’re very pessimistic, Jacob. There is definitely a chance that I might walk away from this.”
I couldn’t answer. I looked down and breathed deep and slow, trying to get a grip on my fury.
“Jake,” she said, and she patted my hair, stroked my cheek. “It’s going to be okay. Shh. It’s okay.”
I didn’t look up. “No. It will not be okay.”
She wiped something wet from my cheek. “Shh.”
“What’s the deal, Bella?” I stared at the pale carpet. My bare feet were dirty, leaving smudges. Good. “I thought the whole point was that you wanted your vampire more than anything. And now you’re just giving him up? That doesn’t
make any sense. Since when are you desperate to be a mom? If you wanted that so much, why did you marry a vampire?”
I was dangerously close to that offer he wanted me to make. I could see the words taking me that way, but I couldn’t change their direction.
She sighed. “It’s not like that. I didn’t really care about having a baby. I didn’t even think about it. It’s not just having a baby. It’s… well… this baby.”
“It’s a killer, Bella. Look at yourself.”
“He’s not. It’s me. I’m just weak and human. But I can tough this out, Jake, I can—”
“Aw, come on! Shut up, Bella. You can spout this crap to your bloodsucker, but you’re not fooling me. You know you’re not going to make it.”
She glared at me. “I do not know that. I’m worried about it, sure.” “Worried about it,” I repeated through my teeth.
She gasped then and clutched at her stomach. My fury vanished like a light switch being turned off.
“I’m fine,” she panted. “It’s nothing.”
But I didn’t hear; her hands had pulled her sweatshirt to the side, and I stared, horrified, at the skin it exposed. Her stomach looked like it was stained with big splotches of purple-black ink.
She saw my stare, and she yanked the fabric back in place. “He’s strong, that’s all,” she said defensively.
The ink spots were bruises.
I almost gagged, and I understood what he’d said, about watching it hurt her. Suddenly, I felt a little crazy myself.
“Bella,” I said.
She heard the change in my voice. She looked up, still breathing heavy, her eyes confused.
“Bella, don’t do this.” “Jake—”
“Listen to me. Don’t get your back up yet. Okay? Just listen. What if… ?” “What if what?”
“What if this wasn’t a one-shot deal? What if it wasn’t all or nothing? What if you just listened to Carlisle like a good girl, and kept yourself alive?”
“I won’t—”
“I’m not done yet. So you stay alive. Then you can start over. This didn’t work out. Try again.”
She frowned. She raised one hand and touched the place where my eyebrows were mashing together. Her fingers smoothed my forehead for a moment while she tried to make sense of it.
“I don’t understand.… What do you mean, try again? You can’t think Edward would let me… ? And what difference would it make? I’m sure any baby—”
“Yes,” I snapped. “Any kid of his would be the same.” Her tired face just got more confused. “What?”
But I couldn’t say any more. There was no point. I would never be able to save her from herself. I’d never been able to do that.
Then she blinked, and I could see she got it.
“Oh. Ugh. Please, Jacob. You think I should kill my baby and replace it with some generic substitute? Artificial insemination?” She was mad now. “Why would I want to have some stranger’s baby? I suppose it just doesn’t make a difference?
Any baby will do?”
“I didn’t mean that,” I muttered. “Not a stranger.” She leaned forward. “Then what are you saying?” “Nothing. I’m saying nothing. Same as ever.” “Where did that come from?”
“Forget it, Bella.”
She frowned, suspicious. “Did he tell you to say that?”
I hesitated, surprised that she’d made that leap so quick. “No.”
“He did, didn’t he?”
“No, really. He didn’t say anything about artificial whatever.”
Her face softened then, and she sank back against the pillows, looking exhausted. She stared off to the side when she spoke, not talking to me at all. “He would do anything for me. And I’m hurting him so much.… But what is he thinking? That I would trade this”—her hand traced across her belly—“for some stranger’s . . .” She mumbled the last part, and then her voice trailed off. Her eyes were wet.
“You don’t have to hurt him,” I whispered. It burned like poison in my mouth to beg for him, but I knew this angle was probably my best bet for keeping her alive. Still a thousand-to-one odds. “You could make him happy again, Bella. And I really think he’s losing it. Honestly, I do.”
She didn’t seem to be listening; her hand made small circles on her battered stomach while she chewed on her lip. It was quiet for a long time. I wondered if the Cullens were very far away. Were they listening to my pathetic attempts to reason with her?
“Not a stranger?” she murmured to herself. I flinched. “What exactly did Edward say to you?” she asked in a low voice.
“Nothing. He just thought you might listen to me.” “Not that. About trying again.”
Her eyes locked on mine, and I could see that I’d already given too much away. “Nothing.”
Her mouth fell open a little. “Wow.”
It was silent for a few heartbeats. I looked down at my feet again, unable to meet her stare.
“He really would do anything, wouldn’t he?” she whispered. “I told you he was going crazy. Literally, Bells.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t tell on him right away. Get him in trouble.” When I looked up, she was grinning.
“Thought about it.” I tried to grin back, but I could feel the smile mangle on my face.
She knew what I was offering, and she wasn’t going to think twice about it. I’d known that she wouldn’t. But it still stung.
“There isn’t much you wouldn’t do for me, either, is there?” she whispered. “I really don’t know why you bother. I don’t deserve either of you.”
“It makes no difference, though, does it?”
“Not this time.” She sighed. “I wish I could explain it to you right so that you would understand. I can’t hurt him”—she pointed to her stomach—“any more than I could pick up a gun and shoot you. I love him.”
“Why do you always have to love the wrong things, Bella?” “I don’t think I do.”
I cleared the lump out of my throat so that I could make my voice hard like I wanted it. “Trust me.”
I started to get to my feet. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not doing any good here.”
She held out her thin hand, pleading. “Don’t go.”
I could feel the addiction sucking at me, trying to keep me near her. “I don’t belong here. I’ve got to get back.”
“Why did you come today?” she asked, still reaching limply.
“Just to see if you were really alive. I didn’t believe you were sick like Charlie said.”
I couldn’t tell from her face whether she bought that or not. “Will you come back again? Before . . .”
“I’m not going to hang around and watch you die, Bella.” She flinched. “You’re right, you’re right. You should go.” I headed for the door.
“Bye,” she whispered behind me. “Love you, Jake.”
I almost went back. I almost turned around and fell down on my knees and started begging again. But I knew that I had to quit Bella, quit her cold turkey, before she killed me, like she was going to kill him.
“Sure, sure,” I mumbled on my way out.
I didn’t see any of the vampires. I ignored my bike, standing all alone in the middle of the meadow. It wasn’t fast enough for me now. My dad would be freaked out—Sam, too. What would the pack make of the fact that they hadn’t heard me phase? Would they think the Cullens got me before I’d had the chance? I stripped down, not caring who might be watching, and started running. I blurred into wolf mid-stride.
They were waiting. Of course they were.
Jacob, Jake, eight voices chorused in relief.
Come home now, the Alpha voice ordered. Sam was furious.
I felt Paul fade out, and I knew Billy and Rachel were waiting to hear what had happened to me. Paul was too anxious to give them the good news that I wasn’t vampire chow to listen to the whole story.
I didn’t have to tell the pack I was on my way—they could see the forest blurring past me as I sprinted for home. I didn’t have to tell them that I was half-past crazy, either. The sickness in my head was obvious.
They saw all the horror—Bella’s mottled stomach; her raspy voice: he’s strong, that’s all; the burning man in Edward’s face: watching her sicken and waste away… seeing it hurting her; Rosalie crouched over Bella’s limp body: Bella’s life means nothing to her—and for once, no one had anything to say.
Their shock was just a silent shout in my head. Wordless.
!!!!
I was halfway home before anyone recovered. Then they all started running to meet me.
It was almost dark—the clouds covered the sunset completely. I risked darting across the freeway and made it without being seen.
We met up about ten miles out of La Push, in a clearing left by the loggers. It was out of the way, wedged between two spurs of the mountain, where no one would see us. Paul found them when I did, so the pack was complete.
The babble in my head was total chaos. Everyone shouting at once.
Sam’s hackles were sticking straight up, and he was growling in an unbroken stream as he paced back and forth around the top of the ring. Paul and Jared moved like shadows behind him, their ears flat against the sides of their head. The whole circle was agitated, on their feet and snarling in low bursts.
At first their anger was undefined, and I thought I was in for it. I was too messed up to care about that. They could do whatever they wanted to me for circumventing orders.
And then the unfocused confusion of thoughts began to move together.
How can this be? What does it mean? What will it be? Not safe. Not right. Dangerous.
Unnatural. Monstrous. An abomination. We can’t allow it.
The pack was pacing in synchronization now, thinking in synchronization, all but myself and one other. I sat beside whichever brother it was, too dazed to look over with either my eyes or my mind and see who was next to me, while the pack circled around us.
The treaty does not cover this. This puts everyone in danger.
I tried to understand the spiraling voices, tried to follow the curling pathway the thoughts made to see where they were leading, but it wasn’t making sense. The pictures in the center of their thoughts were my pictures—the very worst of them. Bella’s bruises, Edward’s face as he burned.
They fear it, too.
But they won’t do anything about it. Protecting Bella Swan.
We can’t let that influence us.
The safety of our families, of everyone here, is more important than one human. If they won’t kill it, we have to.
Protect the tribe. Protect our families.
We have to kill it before it’s too late.
Another of my memories, Edward’s words this time: The thing is growing. Swiftly.
I struggled to focus, to pick out individual voices.
No time to waste, Jared thought.
It will mean a fight, Embry cautioned. A bad one. We’re ready, Paul insisted.
We’ll need surprise on our side, Sam thought.
If we catch them divided, we can take them down separately. It will increase our chances of victory, Jared thought, starting to strategize now.
I shook my head, rising slowly to my feet. I felt unsteady there—like the circling wolves were making me dizzy. The wolf beside me got up, too. His shoulder pushed against mine, propping me up.
Wait, I thought.
The circling paused for one beat, and then they were pacing again.
There’s little time, Sam said.
But—what are you thinking? You wouldn’t attack them for breaking the treaty this afternoon. Now you’re planning an ambush, when the treaty is still intact?
This is not something our treaty anticipated, Sam said. This is a danger to every human in the area. We don’t know what kind of creature the Cullens have bred, but we know that it is strong and fast-growing. And it will be too young to follow any treaty. Remember the newborn vampires we fought? Wild, violent, beyond the reach of reason or restraint. Imagine one like that, but protected by the Cullens.
We don’t know— I tried to interrupt.
We don’t know, he agreed. And we can’t take chances with the unknown in this case. We can only allow the Cullens to exist while we’re absolutely sure that they can be trusted not to cause harm. This… thing cannot be trusted.
They don’t like it any more than we do.
Sam pulled Rosalie’s face, her protective crouch, from my mind and put it on display for everyone.
Some are ready to fight for it, no matter what it is. It’s just a baby, for crying out loud.
Not for long, Leah whispered.
Jake, buddy, this is a big problem, Quil said. We can’t just ignore it.
You’re making it into something bigger than it is, I argued. The only one who’s in danger here is Bella.
Again by her own choice, Sam said. But this time her choice affects us all. I don’t think so.
We can’t take that chance. We won’t allow a blood drinker to hunt on our lands.
Then tell them to leave, the wolf who was still supporting me said. It was Seth. Of course.
And inflict the menace on others? When blood drinkers cross our land, we destroy them, no matter where they plan to hunt. We protect everyone we can.
This is crazy, I said. This afternoon you were afraid to put the pack in danger. This afternoon I didn’t know our families were at risk.
I can’t believe this! How’re you going to kill this creature without killing Bella?
There were no words, but the silence was full of meaning.
I howled. She’s human, too! Doesn’t our protection apply to her? She’s dying anyway, Leah thought. We’ll just shorten the process.
That did it. I leaped away from Seth, toward his sister, with my teeth bared. I was about to catch her left hind leg when I felt Sam’s teeth cut into my flank, dragging me back.
I howled in pain and fury and turned on him.
Stop! he ordered in the double timbre of the Alpha.
My legs seemed to buckle under me. I jerked to a halt, only managing to keep on my feet by sheer willpower.
He turned his gaze away from me. You will not be cruel to him, Leah, he commanded her. Bella’s sacrifice is a heavy price, and we will all recognize that. It is against everything we stand for to take a human life. Making an exception to that code is a bleak thing. We will all mourn for what we do tonight.
Tonight? Seth repeated, shocked. Sam—I think we should talk about this some more. Consult with the Elders, at least. You can’t seriously mean for us to—
We can’t afford your tolerance for the Cullens now. There is no time for debate. You will do as you are told, Seth.
Seth’s front knees folded, and his head fell forward under the weight of the Alpha’s command.
Sam paced in a tight circle around the two of us.
We need the whole pack for this. Jacob, you are our strongest fighter. You will fight with us tonight. I understand that this is hard for you, so you will concentrate on their fighters—Emmett and Jasper Cullen. You don’t have to be involved with the… other part. Quil and Embry will fight with you.
My knees trembled; I struggled to hold myself upright while the voice of the Alpha lashed at my will.
Paul, Jared, and I will take on Edward and Rosalie. I think, from the information Jacob has brought us, they will be the ones guarding Bella. Carlisle and Alice will also be close, possibly Esme. Brady, Collin, Seth, and Leah will concentrate on them. Whoever has a clear line on—we all heard him mentally stutter over Bella’s name—the creature will take it. Destroying the creature is our first priority.
The pack rumbled in nervous agreement. The tension had everyone’s fur standing on end. The pacing was quicker, and the sound of the paws against the brackish floor was sharper, toenails tearing into the soil.
Only Seth and I were still, the eye in the center of a storm of bared teeth and flattened ears. Seth’s nose was almost touching the ground, bowed under Sam’s commands. I felt his pain at the coming disloyalty. For him this was a betrayal— during that one day of alliance, fighting beside Edward Cullen, Seth had truly become the vampire’s friend.
There was no resistance in him, however. He would obey no matter how much it hurt him. He had no other choice.
And what choice did I have? When the Alpha spoke, the pack followed.
Sam had never pushed his authority this far before; I knew he honestly hated to see Seth kneeling before him like a slave at the foot of his master. He wouldn’t force this if he didn’t believe that he had no other choice. He couldn’t lie to us when we were linked mind to mind like this. He really believed it was our duty to destroy Bella and the monster she carried. He really believed we had no time to waste. He believed it enough to die for it.
I saw that he would face Edward himself; Edward’s ability to read our thoughts made him the greatest threat in Sam’s mind. Sam would not let someone else take on that danger.
He saw Jasper as the second-greatest opponent, which is why he’d given him to me. He knew that I had the best chance of any of the pack to win that fight. He’d left the easiest targets for the younger wolves and Leah. Little Alice was no danger without her future vision to guide her, and we knew from our time of alliance that Esme was not a fighter. Carlisle would be more of a challenge, but his hatred of violence would hinder him.
I felt sicker than Seth as I watched Sam plan it out, trying to work the angles to give each member of the pack the best chance of survival.
Everything was inside out. This afternoon, I’d been chomping at the bit to attack them. But Seth had been right—it wasn’t a fight I’d been ready for. I’d blinded myself with that hate. I hadn’t let myself look at it carefully, because I must have known what I would see if I did.
Carlisle Cullen. Looking at him without that hate clouding my eyes, I couldn’t deny that killing him was murder. He was good. Good as any human we protected. Maybe better. The others, too, I supposed, but I didn’t feel as strongly about them. I didn’t know them as well. It was Carlisle who would hate fighting back, even to save his own life. That’s why we would be able to kill him—because he wouldn’t want us, his enemies, to die.
This was wrong.
And it wasn’t just because killing Bella felt like killing me, like suicide.
Pull it together, Jacob, Sam ordered. The tribe comes first. I was wrong today, Sam.
Your reasons were wrong then. But now we have a duty to fulfill.
I braced myself. No.
Sam snarled and stopped pacing in front of me. He stared into my eyes and a deep growl slid between his teeth.
Yes, the Alpha decreed, his double voice blistering with the heat of his authority. There are no loopholes tonight. You, Jacob, are going to fight the Cullens with us. You, with Quil and Embry, will take care of Jasper and Emmett. You are obligated to protect the tribe. That is why you exist. You will perform this obligation.
My shoulders hunched as the edict crushed me. My legs collapsed, and I was on my belly under him.
No member of the pack could refuse the Alpha.
11. THE TWO THINGS AT THE VERY TOP OF MY THINGS-I-NEVER-WANT-TO-DO LIST
Sam started moving the others into formation while I was still on the ground. Embry and Quil were at my sides, waiting for me to recover and take the point.
I could feel the drive, the need, to get on my feet and lead them. The compulsion grew, and I fought it uselessly, cringing on the ground where I was.
Embry whined quietly in my ear. He didn’t want to think the words, afraid that he would bring me to Sam’s attention again. I felt his wordless plea for me to get up, for me to get this over with and be done with it.
There was fear in the pack, not so much for self but for the whole. We couldn’t imagine that we would all make it out alive tonight. Which brothers would we lose? Which minds would leave us forever? Which grieving families would we be consoling in the morning?
My mind began to work with theirs, to think in unison, as we dealt with these fears. Automatically, I pushed up from the ground and shook out my coat.
Embry and Quil huffed in relief. Quil touched his nose to my side once.
Their minds were filled with our challenge, our assignment. We remembered together the nights we’d watched the Cullens practicing for the fight with the newborns. Emmett Cullen was strongest, but Jasper would be the bigger problem. He moved like a lightning strike—power and speed and death rolled into one. How many centuries’ experience did he have? Enough that all the other Cullens looked to him for guidance.
I’ll take point, if you want flank, Quil offered. There was more excitement in his mind than most of the others. When Quil had watched Jasper’s instruction those nights, he’d been dying to test his skill against the vampire’s. For him, this would be a contest. Even knowing it was his life on the line, he saw it that way. Paul was like that, too, and the kids who had never been in battle, Collin and Brady. Seth probably would’ve been the same—if the opponents were not his friends.
Jake? Quil nudged me. How do you want to roll?
I just shook my head. I couldn’t concentrate—the compulsion to follow orders felt like puppet strings hooked into all of my muscles. One foot forward, now another.
Seth was dragging behind Collin and Brady—Leah had assumed point there. She ignored Seth while planning with the others, and I could see that she’d rather leave him out of the fight. There was a maternal edge to her feelings for her
younger brother. She wished Sam would send him home. Seth didn’t register Leah’s doubts. He was adjusting to the puppet strings, too.
Maybe if you stopped resisting…, Embry whispered.
Just focus on our part. The big ones. We can take them down. We own them!
Quil was working himself up—like a pep talk before a big game.
I could see how easy it would be—to think about nothing more than my part. It wasn’t hard to imaging attacking Jasper and Emmett. We’d been close to that before. I’d thought of them as enemies for a very long time. I could do that now again.
I just had to forget that they were protecting the same thing I would protect. I had to forget the reason why I might want them to win.…
Jake, Embry warned. Keep your head in the game.
My feet moved sluggishly, pulling against the drag of the strings.
There’s no point fighting it, Embry whispered again.
He was right. I would end up doing what Sam wanted, if he was willing to push it. And he was. Obviously.
There was a good reason for the Alpha’s authority. Even a pack as strong as ours wasn’t much of a force without a leader. We had to move together, to think together, in order to be effective. And that required the body to have a head.
So what if Sam was wrong now? There was nothing anyone could do. No one could dispute his decision.
Except.
And there it was—a thought I’d never, never wanted to have. But now, with my legs all tied up in strings, I recognized the exception with relief—more than relief, with a fierce joy.
No one could dispute the Alpha’s decision—except for me.
I hadn’t earned anything. But there were things that had been born in me, things that I’d left unclaimed.
I’d never wanted to lead the pack. I didn’t want to do it now. I didn’t want the responsibility for all our fates resting on my shoulders. Sam was better at that than I would ever be.
But he was wrong tonight.
And I had not been born to kneel to him.
The bonds fell off my body the second that I embraced my birthright.
I could feel it gathering in me, both a freedom and also a strange, hollow power. Hollow because an Alpha’s power came from his pack, and I had no pack. For a second, loneliness overwhelmed me.
I had no pack now.
But I was straight and strong as I walked to where Sam stood, planning with Paul and Jared. He turned at the sound of my advance, and his black eyes narrowed.
No, I told him again.
He heard it right away, heard the choice that I’d made in the sound of the Alpha voice in my thoughts.
He jumped back a half step with a shocked yelp.
Jacob? What have you done?
I won’t follow you, Sam. Not for something so wrong.
He stared at me, stunned. You would… you would choose your enemies over your family?
They aren’t—I shook my head, clearing it—they aren’t our enemies. They never have been. Until I really thought about destroying them, thought it through, I didn’t see that.
This isn’t about them, he snarled at me. This is about Bella. She has never been the one for you, she has never chosen you, but you continue to destroy your life for her!
They were hard words, but true words. I sucked in a big gulp of air, breathing them in.
Maybe you’re right. But you’re going to destroy the pack over her, Sam. No matter how many of them survive tonight, they will always have murder on their hands.
We have to protect our families!
I know what you’ve decided, Sam. But you don’t decide for me, not anymore.
Jacob—you can’t turn your back on the tribe.
I heard the double echo of his Alpha command, but it was weightless this time. It no longer applied to me. He clenched his jaw, trying to force me to respond to his words.
I stared into his furious eyes. Ephraim Black’s son was not born to follow Levi Uley’s.
Is this it, then, Jacob Black? His hackles rose and his muzzle pulled back from his teeth. Paul and Jared snarled and bristled at his sides. Even if you can defeat me, the pack will never follow you!
Now I jerked back, a surprised whine escaping my throat.
Defeat you? I’m not going to fight you, Sam.
Then what’s your plan? I’m not stepping aside so that you can protect the vampire spawn at the tribe’s expense.
I’m not telling you to step aside. If you order them to follow you—
I’ll never take anyone’s will away from him.
His tail whipped back and forth as he recoiled from the judgment in my words. Then he took a step forward so that we were toe to toe, his exposed teeth inches from mine. I hadn’t noticed till this moment that I’d grown taller than him.
There cannot be more than one Alpha. The pack has chosen me. Will you rip us apart tonight? Will you turn on your brothers? Or will you end this insanity and join us again? Every word was layered with command, but it couldn’t touch me. Alpha blood ran undiluted in my veins.
I could see why there was never more than one Alpha male in a pack. My body was responding to the challenge. I could feel the instinct to defend my claim rising in me. The primitive core of my wolf-self tensed for the battle of supremacy.
I focused all my energy to control that reaction. I would not fall into a pointless, destructive fight with Sam. He was my brother still, even though I was rejecting him.
There is only one Alpha for this pack. I’m not contesting that. I’m just choosing to go my own way.
Do you belong to a coven now, Jacob?
I flinched.
I don’t know, Sam. But I do know this—
He shrunk back as he felt the weight of the Alpha in my tone. It affected him more than his touched me. Because I had been born to lead him.
I will stand between you and the Cullens. I won’t just watch while the pack kills innocent—it was hard to apply that word to vampires, but it was true—people.
The pack is better than that. Lead them in the right direction, Sam.
I turned my back on him, and a chorus of howls tore into the air around me.
Digging my nails into the earth, I raced away from the uproar I’d caused. I didn’t have much time. At least Leah was the only one with a prayer of outrunning me, and I had a head start.
The howling faded with the distance, and I took comfort as the sound continued to rip apart the quiet night. They weren’t after me yet.
I had to warn the Cullens before the pack could get it together and stop me. If the Cullens were prepared, it might give Sam a reason to rethink this before it was too late. I sprinted toward the white house I still hated, leaving my home behind me. Home didn’t belong to me anymore. I’d turned my back on it.
Today had begun like any other day. Made it home from patrol with the rainy sunrise, breakfast with Billy and Rachel, bad TV, bickering with Paul… How did it change so completely, turn all surreal? How did everything get messed up and twisted so that I was here now, all alone, an unwilling Alpha, cut off from my brothers, choosing vampires over them?
The sound I’d been fearing interrupted my dazed thoughts—it was the soft impact of big paws against the ground, chasing after me. I threw myself forward, rocketing through the black forest. I just had to get close enough so that Edward could hear the warning in my head. Leah wouldn’t be able to stop me alone.
And then I caught the mood of the thoughts behind me. Not anger, but enthusiasm. Not chasing… but following.
My stride broke. I staggered two steps before it evened out again.
Wait up. My legs aren’t as long as yours.
SETH! What do you think you’re DOING? GO HOME!
He didn’t answer, but I could feel his excitement as he kept right on after me. I could see through his eyes as he could see through mine. The night scene was bleak for me—full of despair. For him, it was hopeful.
I hadn’t realized I was slowing down, but suddenly he was on my flank, running in position beside me.
I am not joking, Seth! This is no place for you. Get out of here.
The gangly tan wolf snorted. I’ve got your back, Jacob. I think you’re right. And I’m not going to stand behind Sam when—
Oh yes you are the hell going to stand behind Sam! Get your furry butt back to La Push and do what Sam tells you to do.
No.
Go, Seth!
Is that an order, Jacob?
His question brought me up short. I skidded to a halt, my nails gouging furrows in the mud.
I’m not ordering anyone to do anything. I’m just telling you what you already know.
He plopped down on his haunches beside me. I’ll tell you what I know—I know that it’s awful quiet. Haven’t you noticed?
I blinked. My tail swished nervously as I realized what he was thinking underneath the words. It wasn’t quiet in one sense. Howls still filled the air, far away in the west.
They haven’t phased back, Seth said.
I knew that. The pack would be on red alert now. They would be using the mind link to see all sides clearly. But I couldn’t hear what they were thinking. I could only hear Seth. No one else.
Looks to me like separate packs aren’t linked. Huh. Guess there was no reason for our fathers to know that before. ’Cause there was no reason for separate packs before. Never enough wolves for two. Wow. It’s really quiet. Sort of eerie. But also kinda nice, don’t you think? I bet it was easier, like this, for Ephraim and Quil and Levi. Not such a babble with just three. Or just two.
Shut up, Seth.
Yes, sir.
Stop that! There are not two packs. There is THE pack, and then there is me. That’s all. So you can go home now.
If there aren’t two packs, then why can we hear each other and not the rest? I think that when you turned your back on Sam, that was a pretty significant move. A change. And when I followed you away, I think that was significant, too.
You’ve got a point, I conceded. But what can change can change right back.
He got up and started trotting toward the east. No time to argue about it now. We should be moving right along before Sam…
He was right about that part. There was no time for this argument. I fell into a run again, not pushing myself quite as hard. Seth stayed on my heels, holding the Second’s traditional place on my right flank.
I can run somewhere else, he thought, his nose dipping a little. I didn’t follow you because I was after a promotion.
Run wherever you want. Makes no difference to me.
There was no sound of pursuit, but we both stepped it up a little at the same time. I was worried now. If I couldn’t tap into the pack’s mind, it was going to make this more difficult. I’d have no more advance warning of attack than the Cullens.
We’ll run patrols, Seth suggested.
And what do we do if the pack challenges us? My eyes tightened. Attack our brothers? Your sister?
No—we sound the alarm and fall back. Good answer. But then what? I don’t think…
I know, he agreed. Less confident now. I don’t think I can fight them, either. But they won’t be any happier with the idea of attacking us than we are with attacking them. That might be enough to stop them right there. Plus, there’re only eight of them now.
Stop being so… Took me a minute to decide on the right word. Optimistic. It’s getting on my nerves.
No problem. You want me to be all doom and gloom, or just shut up?
Just shut up. Can do.
Really? Doesn’t seem like it.
He was finally quiet.
And then we were across the road and moving through the forest that ringed the Cullens’ house. Could Edward hear us yet?
Maybe we should be thinking something like, “We come in peace.” Go for it.
Edward? He called the name tentatively. Edward, you there? Okay, now I feel kinda stupid.
You sound stupid, too. Think he can hear us?
We were less than a mile out now. I think so. Hey, Edward. If you can hear me— circle the wagons, bloodsucker. You’ve got a problem.
We’ve got a problem, Seth corrected.
Then we broke through the trees into the big lawn. The house was dark, but not empty. Edward stood on the porch between Emmett and Jasper. They were snow white in the pale light.
“Jacob? Seth? What’s going on?”
I slowed and then paced back a few steps. The smell was so sharp through this nose that it felt like it was honestly burning me. Seth whined quietly, hesitating, and then he fell back behind me.
To answer Edward’s question, I let my mind run over the confrontation with Sam, moving through it backward. Seth thought with me, filling in the gaps, showing the scene from another angle. We stopped when we got to the part about the “abomination,” because Edward hissed furiously and leaped off the porch.
“They want to kill Bella?” he snarled flatly.
Emmett and Jasper, not having heard the first part of the conversation, took his inflectionless question for a statement. They were right next to him in a flash, teeth exposed as they moved on us.
Hey, now, Seth thought, backing away.
“Em, Jazz—not them! The others. The pack is coming.”
Emmett and Jasper rocked back on their heels; Emmett turned to Edward while Jasper kept his eyes locked on us.
“What’s their problem?” Emmett demanded.
“The same one as mine,” Edward hissed. “But they have their own plan to handle it. Get the others. Call Carlisle! He and Esme have to get back here now.”
I whined uneasily. They were separated.
“They aren’t far,” Edward said in the same dead voice as before. I’m going to go take a look, Seth said. Run the western perimeter. “Will you be in danger, Seth?” Edward asked.
Seth and I exchanged a glance.
Don’t think so, we thought together. And then I added, But maybe I should go. Just in case…
They’ll be less likely to challenge me, Seth pointed out. I’m just a kid to them. You’re just a kid to me, kid.
I’m outta here. You need to coordinate with the Cullens.
He wheeled and darted into the darkness. I wasn’t going to order Seth around, so I let him go.
Edward and I stood facing each other in the dark meadow. I could hear Emmett muttering into his phone. Jasper was watching the place where Seth had vanished into the woods. Alice appeared on the porch and then, after staring at me with anxious eyes for a long moment, she flitted to Jasper’s side. I guessed that Rosalie was inside with Bella. Still guarding her—from the wrong dangers.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve owed you my gratitude, Jacob,” Edward whispered. “I would never have asked for this from you.”
I thought of what he’d asked me for earlier today. When it came to Bella, there were no lines he wouldn’t cross. Yeah, you would.
He thought about it and then nodded. “I suppose you’re right about that.”
I sighed heavily. Well, this isn’t the first time that I didn’t do it for you.
“Right,” he murmured.
Sorry I didn’t do any good today. Told you she wouldn’t listen to me.
“I know. I never really believed she would. But . . .”
You had to try. I get it. She any better?
His voice and eyes went hollow. “Worse,” he breathed.
I didn’t want to let that word sink in. I was grateful when Alice spoke.
“Jacob, would you mind switching forms?” Alice asked. “I want to know what’s going on.”
I shook my head at the same time Edward answered. “He needs to stay linked to Seth.”
“Well, then would you be so kind as to tell me what’s happening?”
He explained in clipped, emotionless sentences. “The pack thinks Bella’s become a problem. They foresee potential danger from the… from what she’s carrying.
They feel it’s their duty to remove that danger. Jacob and Seth disbanded from the pack to warn us. The rest are planning to attack tonight.”
Alice hissed, leaning away from me. Emmett and Jasper exchanged a glance, and then their eyes ranged across the trees.
Nobody out here, Seth reported. All’s quiet on the western front. They may go around.
I’ll make a loop.
“Carlisle and Esme are on their way,” Emmett said. “Twenty minutes, tops.” “We should take up a defensive position,” Jasper said.
Edward nodded. “Let’s get inside.”
I’ll run perimeter with Seth. If I get too far for you to hear my head, listen for my howl.
“I will.”
They backed into the house, eyes flickering everywhere. Before they were inside, I turned and ran toward the west.
I’m still not finding much, Seth told me.
I’ll take half the circle. Move fast—we don’t want them to have a chance to sneak past us.
Seth lurched forward in a sudden burst of speed.
We ran in silence, and the minutes passed. I listened to the noises around him, double-checking his judgment.
Hey—something coming up fast! he warned me after fifteen minutes of silence.
On my way!
Hold your position—I don’t think it’s the pack. It sounds different. Seth—
But he caught the approaching scent on the breeze, and I read it in his mind.
Vampire. Bet it’s Carlisle.
Seth, fall back. It might be someone else.
No, it’s them. I recognize the scent. Hold up, I’m going to phase to explain it to them.
Seth, I don’t think—
But he was gone.
Anxiously, I raced along the western border. Wouldn’t it be just peachy if I couldn’t take care of Seth for one freaking night? What if something happened to him on my watch? Leah would shred me into kibble.
At least the kid kept it short. It wasn’t two minutes later when I felt him in my head again.
Yep, Carlisle and Esme. Boy, were they surprised to see me! They’re probably inside by now. Carlisle said thanks.
He’s a good guy.
Yeah. That’s one of the reasons why we’re right about this. Hope so.
Why’re you so down, Jake? I’ll bet Sam won’t bring the pack tonight. He’s not going to launch a suicide mission.
I sighed. It didn’t seem to matter, either way.
Oh. This isn’t about Sam so much, is it?
I made the turn at the end of my patrol. I caught Seth’s scent where he’d turned last. We weren’t leaving any gaps.
You think Bella’s going to die anyway, Seth whispered.
Yeah, she is.
Poor Edward. He must be crazy. Literally.
Edward’s name brought other memories boiling to the surface. Seth read them in astonishment.
And then he was howling. Oh, man! No way! You did not! That just plain ol’ sucks rocks, Jacob! And you know it, too! I can’t believe you said you’d kill him. What is that? You have to tell him no.
Shut up, shut up, you idiot! They’re going to think the pack is coming! Oops! He cut off mid-howl.
I wheeled and started loping in toward the house. Just keep out of this, Seth. Take the whole circle for now.
Seth seethed and I ignored him.
False alarm, false alarm, I thought as I ran closer in. Sorry. Seth is young. He forgets things. No one’s attacking. False alarm.
When I got to the meadow, I could see Edward staring out of a dark window. I ran in, wanting to be sure he got the message.
There’s nothing out there—you got that?
He nodded once.
This would be a lot easier if the communication wasn’t one way. Then again, I was kinda glad I wasn’t in his head.
He looked over his shoulder, back into the house, and I saw a shudder run through his whole frame. He waved me away without looking in my direction again and then moved out of my view.
What’s going on?
Like I was going to get an answer.
I sat very still in the meadow and listened. With these ears, I could almost hear Seth’s soft footfalls, miles out into the forest. It was easy to hear every sound inside the dark house.
“It was a false alarm,” Edward was explaining in that dead voice, just repeating what I’d told him. “Seth was upset about something else, and he forgot we were listening for a signal. He’s very young.”
“Nice to have toddlers guarding the fort,” a deeper voice grumbled. Emmett, I thought.
“They’ve done us a great service tonight, Emmett,” Carlisle said. “At great personal sacrifice.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just jealous. Wish I was out there.”
“Seth doesn’t think Sam will attack now,” Edward said mechanically. “Not with us forewarned, and lacking two members of the pack.”
“What does Jacob think?” Carlisle asked. “He’s not as optimistic.”
No one spoke. There was a quiet dripping sound that I couldn’t place. I heard their low breathing—and I could separate Bella’s from the rest. It was harsher, labored. It hitched and broke in strange rhythms. I could hear her heart. It seemed… too fast. I paced it against my own heartbeat, but I wasn’t sure if that was any measure. It wasn’t like I was normal.
“Don’t touch her! You’ll wake her up,” Rosalie whispered. Someone sighed.
“Rosalie,” Carlisle murmured.
“Don’t start with me, Carlisle. We let you have your way earlier, but that’s all we’re allowing.”
It seemed like Rosalie and Bella were both talking in plurals now. Like they’d formed a pack of their own.
I paced quietly in front of the house. Each pass brought me a little closer. The dark windows were like a TV set running in some dull waiting room—it was impossible to keep my eyes off them for long.
A few more minutes, a few more passes, and my fur was brushing the side of the porch as I paced.
I could see up through the windows—see the top of the walls and the ceiling, the unlit chandelier that hung there. I was tall enough that all I would have to do was stretch my neck a little… and maybe one paw up on the edge of the porch.…
I peeked into the big, open front room, expecting to see something very similar to the scene this afternoon. But it had changed so much that I was confused at first. For a second I thought I’d gotten the wrong room.
The glass wall was gone—it looked like metal now. And the furniture was all dragged out of the way, with Bella curled up awkwardly on a narrow bed in the center of the open space. Not a normal bed—one with rails like in a hospital. Also like a hospital were the monitors strapped to her body, the tubes stuck into her skin. The lights on the monitors flashed, but there was no sound. The dripping noise was from the IV plugged into her arm—some fluid that was thick and white, not clear.
She choked a little in her uneasy sleep, and both Edward and Rosalie moved in to hover over her. Her body jerked, and she whimpered. Rosalie smoothed her hand across Bella’s forehead. Edward’s body stiffened—his back was to me, but his expression must have been something to see, because Emmett wrenched himself between them before there was time to blink. He held his hands up to Edward.
“Not tonight, Edward. We’ve got other things to worry about.”
Edward turned away from them, and he was the burning man again. His eyes met mine for one moment, and then I dropped back to all fours.
I ran back into the dark forest, running to join Seth, running away from what was behind me.
Worse. Yes, she was worse.
12. SOME PEOPLE JUST DON’T GRASP THE CONCEPT OF “UNWELCOME”
I was right on the edge of sleep.
The sun had risen behind the clouds an hour ago—the forest was gray now instead of black. Seth’d curled up and passed out around one, and I’d woken him at dawn to trade off. Even after running all night, I was having a hard time making my brain shut up long enough to fall asleep, but Seth’s rhythmic run was helping. One, two-three, four, one, two-three, four—dum dum-dum dum—dull paw thuds against the damp earth, over and over as he made the wide circuit surrounding the Cullens’ land. We were already wearing a trail into the ground. Seth’s thoughts were empty, just a blur of green and gray as the woods flew past him. It was restful. It helped to fill my head with what he saw rather than letting my own images take center stage.
And then Seth’s piercing howl broke the early morning quiet.
I lurched up from the ground, my front legs pulling toward a sprint before my hind legs were off the ground. I raced toward the place where Seth had frozen, listening with him to the tread of paws running in our direction.
Morning, boys.
A shocked whine broke through Seth’s teeth. And then we both snarled as we read deeper into the new thoughts.
Oh, man! Go away, Leah! Seth groaned.
I stopped when I got to Seth, head thrown back, ready to howl again—this time to complain.
Cut the noise, Seth.
Right. Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! He whimpered and pawed at the ground, scratching deep furrows in the dirt.
Leah trotted into view, her small gray body weaving through the underbrush.
Stop whining, Seth. You’re such a baby.
I growled at her, my ears flattening against my skull. She skipped back a step automatically.
What do you think you’re doing, Leah?
She huffed a heavy sigh. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I’m joining your crappy little renegade pack. The vampires’ guard dogs. She barked out a low, sarcastic laugh.
No, you’re not. Turn around before I rip out one of your hamstrings.
Like you could catch me. She grinned and coiled her body for launch. Wanna race, O fearless leader?
I took a deep breath, filling my lungs until my sides bulged. Then, when I was sure I wasn’t going to scream, I exhaled in a gust.
Seth, go let the Cullens know that it’s just your stupid sister—I thought the words as harshly as possible. I’ll deal with this.
On it! Seth was only too happy to leave. He vanished toward the house.
Leah whined, and she leaned after him, the fur on her shoulders rising. You’re just going to let him run off to the vampires alone?
I’m pretty sure he’d rather they took him out than spend another minute with you.
Shut up, Jacob. Oops, I’m sorry—I meant, shut up, most high Alpha. Why the hell are you here?
You think I’m just going to sit home while my little brother volunteers as a vampire chew toy?
Seth doesn’t want or need your protection. In fact, no one wants you here. Oooh, ouch, that’s gonna leave a huge mark. Ha, she barked. Tell me who does
want me around, and I’m outta here. So this isn’t about Seth at all, is it?
Of course it is. I’m just pointing out that being unwanted is not a first for me. Not really a motivating factor, if you know what I mean.
I gritted my teeth and tried to get my head straight.
Did Sam send you?
If I was here on Sam’s errand, you wouldn’t be able to hear me. My allegiance is no longer with him.
I listened carefully to the thoughts mixed in with the words. If this was a diversion or a ploy, I had to be alert enough to see through it. But there was nothing. Her declaration was nothing but the truth. Unwilling, almost despairing truth.
You’re loyal to me now? I asked with deep sarcasm. Uh-huh. Right.
My choices are limited. I’m working with the options I’ve got. Trust me, I’m not enjoying this any more than you are.
That wasn’t true. There was an edgy kind of excitement in her mind. She was unhappy about this, but she was also riding some weird high. I searched her mind, trying to understand.
She bristled, resenting the intrusion. I usually tried to tune Leah out—I’d never tried to make sense of her before.
We were interrupted by Seth, thinking his explanation at Edward. Leah whined anxiously. Edward’s face, framed in the same window as last night, showed no reaction to the news. It was a blank face, dead.
Wow, he looks bad, Seth muttered to himself. The vampire showed no reaction to that thought, either. He disappeared into the house. Seth pivoted and headed back out to us. Leah relaxed a little.
What’s going on? Leah asked. Catch me up to speed. There’s no point. You’re not staying.
Actually, Mr. Alpha, I am. Because since apparently I have to belong to someone—and don’t think I haven’t tried breaking off on my own, you know yourself how well that doesn’t work—I choose you.
Leah, you don’t like me. I don’t like you.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. That doesn’t matter to me. I’m staying with Seth.
You don’t like vampires. Don’t you think that’s a little conflict of interest right there?
You don’t like vampires either.
But I am committed to this alliance. You aren’t.
I’ll keep my distance from them. I can run patrols out here, just like Seth. And I’m supposed to trust you with that?
She stretched her neck, leaning up on her toes, trying to be as tall as me as she stared into my eyes. I will not betray my pack.
I wanted to throw my head back and howl, like Seth had before. This isn’t your pack! This isn’t even a pack. This is just me, going off on my own! What is it with you Clearwaters? Why can’t you leave me alone?
Seth, just coming up behind us now, whined; I’d offended him. Great.
I’ve been helpful, haven’t I, Jake?
You haven’t made too much a nuisance of yourself, kid, but if you and Leah are a package deal—if the only way to get rid of her is for you to go home.… Well, can you blame me for wanting you gone?
Ugh, Leah, you ruin everything!
Yeah, I know, she told him, and the thought was loaded with the heaviness of her despair.
I felt the pain in the three little words, and it was more than I would’ve guessed. I didn’t want to feel that. I didn’t want to feel bad for her. Sure, the pack was rough on her, but she brought it all on herself with the bitterness that tainted her every thought and made being in her head a nightmare.
Seth was feeling guilty, too. Jake… You’re not really gonna send me away, are you? Leah’s not so bad. Really. I mean, with her here, we can push the perimeter out farther. And this puts Sam down to seven. There’s no way he’s going to mount an attack that outnumbered. It’s probably a good thing.…
You know I don’t want to lead a pack, Seth. So don’t lead us, Leah offered.
I snorted. Sounds perfect to me. Run along home now.
Jake, Seth thought. I belong here. I do like vampires. Cullens, anyway. They’re people to me, and I’m going to protect them, ’cause that’s what we’re supposed to do.
Maybe you belong, kid, but your sister doesn’t. And she’s going to go wherever you are—
I stopped short, because I saw something when I said that. Something Leah had been trying not to think.
Leah wasn’t going anywhere.
Thought this was about Seth, I thought sourly. She flinched. Of course I’m here for Seth.
And to get away from Sam.
Her jaw clenched. I don’t have to explain myself to you. I just have to do what I’m told. I belong to your pack, Jacob. The end.
I paced away from her, growling.
Crap. I was never going to get rid of her. As much as she disliked me, as much as she loathed the Cullens, as happy as she’d be to go kill all the vampires right now, as much as it pissed her off to have to protect them instead—none of that was anything compared to what she felt being free of Sam.
Leah didn’t like me, so it wasn’t such a chore having me wish she would disappear.
She loved Sam. Still. And having him wish she would disappear was more pain than she was willing to live with, now that she had a choice. She would have taken any other option. Even if it meant moving in with the Cullens as their lapdog.
I don’t know if I’d go that far, she thought. She tried to make the words tough, aggressive, but there were big cracks in her show. I’m sure I’d give killing myself a few good tries first.
Look, Leah…
No, you look, Jacob. Stop arguing with me, because it’s not going to do any good. I’ll stay out of your way, okay? I’ll do anything you want. Except go back to Sam’s pack and be the pathetic ex-girlfriend he can’t get away from. If you want me to leave—she sat back on her haunches and stared straight into my eyes—you’re going to have to make me.
I snarled for a long, angry minute. I was beginning to feel some sympathy for Sam, despite what he had done to me, to Seth. No wonder he was always ordering the pack around. How else would you ever get anything done?
Seth, are you gonna get mad at me if I kill your sister?
He pretended to think about it for a minute. Well… yeah, probably.
I sighed.
Okay, then, Ms. Do-Anything-I-Want. Why don’t you make yourself useful by telling us what you know? What happened after we left last night?
Lots of howling. But you probably heard that part. It was so loud that it took us a while to figure out that we couldn’t hear either of you anymore. Sam was… Words failed her, but we could see it in our head. Both Seth and I cringed. After that, it was clear pretty quick that we were going to have to rethink things. Sam was planning to talk to the other Elders first thing this morning. We were supposed to meet up and figure out a game plan. I could tell he wasn’t going to mount another attack right away, though. Suicide at this point, with you and Seth AWOL and the bloodsuckers forewarned. I’m not sure what they’ll do, but I wouldn’t be wandering the forest alone if I was a leech. It’s open season on vamps now.
You decided to skip the meeting this morning? I asked.
When we split up for patrols last night, I asked permission to go home, to tell my mother what had happened—
Crap! You told Mom? Seth growled.
Seth, hold off on the sibling stuff for a sec. Go on, Leah.
So once I was human, I took a minute to think things through. Well, actually, I took all night. I bet the others think I fell asleep. But the whole two-separate- packs, two-separate-pack-minds thing gave me a lot to sift through. In the end, I weighed Seth’s safety and the, er, other benefits against the idea of turning traitor and sniffing vampire stink for who knows how long. You know what I decided. I left a note for my mom. I expect we’ll hear it when Sam finds out.…
Leah cocked an ear to the west.
Yeah, I expect we will, I agreed.
So that’s everything. What do we do now? she asked. She and Seth both looked at me expectantly.
This was exactly the kind of thing I didn’t want to have to do.
I guess we just keep an eye out for now. That’s all we can do. You should probably take a nap, Leah.
You’ve had as much sleep as I have.
Thought you were going to do what you were told?
Right. That’s going to get old, she grumbled, and then she yawned. Well, whatever. I don’t care.
I’ll run the border, Jake. I’m not tired at all. Seth was so glad I hadn’t forced them home, he was all but prancing with excitement.
Sure, sure. I’m going to go check in with the Cullens.
Seth took off along the new path worn into the damp earth. Leah looked after him thoughtfully.
Maybe a round or two before I crash.… Hey Seth, wanna see how many times I can lap you?
NO!
Barking out a low chuckle, Leah lunged into the woods after him. I growled uselessly. So much for peace and quiet.
Leah was trying—for Leah. She kept her jibes to a minimum as she raced around the circuit, but it was impossible not to be aware of her smug mood. I thought of the whole “two’s company” saying. It didn’t really apply, because one was plenty to my mind. But if there had to be three of us, it was hard to think of anyone that I wouldn’t trade her for.
Paul? she suggested.
Maybe, I allowed.
She laughed to herself, too jittery and hyper to get offended. I wondered how long the buzz from dodging Sam’s pity would last.
That will be my goal, then—to be less annoying than Paul. Yeah, work on that.
I changed into my other form when I was a few yards from the lawn. I hadn’t been planning to spend much time human here. But I hadn’t been planning to have Leah in my head, either. I pulled on my ragged shorts and started across the lawn.
The door opened before I got to the steps, and I was surprised to see Carlisle rather than Edward step outside to meet me—his face looked exhausted and defeated. For a second, my heart froze. I faltered to a stop, unable to speak.
“Are you all right, Jacob?” Carlisle asked. “Is Bella?” I choked out.
“She’s… much the same as last night. Did I startle you? I’m sorry. Edward said you were coming in your human form, and I came out to greet you, as he didn’t want to leave her. She’s awake.”
And Edward didn’t want to lose any time with her, because he didn’t have much time left. Carlisle didn’t say the words out loud, but he might as well have.
It had been a while since I’d slept—since before my last patrol. I could really feel that now. I took a step forward, sat down on the porch steps, and slumped against the railing.
Moving whisper-quiet as only a vampire could, Carlisle took a seat on the same step, against the other railing.
“I didn’t get a chance to thank you last night, Jacob. You don’t know how much I appreciate your… compassion. I know your goal was to protect Bella, but I owe you the safety of the rest of my family as well. Edward told me what you had to do ”
“Don’t mention it,” I muttered. “If you prefer.”
We sat in silence. I could hear the others in the house. Emmett, Alice, and Jasper, speaking in low, serious voices upstairs. Esme humming tunelessly in another room. Rosalie and Edward breathing close by—I couldn’t tell which was which, but I could hear the difference in Bella’s labored panting. I could hear her heart, too. It seemed… uneven.
It was like fate was out to make me do everything I’d ever sworn I wouldn’t in the course of twenty-four hours. Here I was, hanging around, waiting for her to die.
I didn’t want to listen anymore. Talking was better than listening.
“She’s family to you?” I asked Carlisle. It had caught my notice before, when he’d said I’d helped the rest of his family, too.
“Yes. Bella is already a daughter to me. A beloved daughter.” “But you’re going to let her die.”
He was quiet long enough that I looked up. His face was very, very tired. I knew how he felt.
“I can imagine what you think of me for that,” he finally said. “But I can’t ignore her will. It wouldn’t be right to make such a choice for her, to force her.”
I wanted to be angry with him, but he was making it hard. It was like he was throwing my own words back at me, just scrambled up. They’d sounded right before, but they couldn’t be right now. Not with Bella dying. Still… I remembered how it felt to be broken on the ground under Sam—to have no choice but be involved in the murder of someone I loved. It wasn’t the same, though. Sam was wrong. And Bella loved things she shouldn’t.
“Do you think there’s any chance she’ll make it? I mean, as a vampire and all that. She told me about… about Esme.”
“I’d say there’s an even chance at this point,” he answered quietly. “I’ve seen vampire venom work miracles, but there are conditions that even venom cannot overcome. Her heart is working too hard now; if it should fail… there won’t be anything for me to do.”
Bella’s heartbeat throbbed and faltered, giving an agonizing emphasis to his words.
Maybe the planet had started turning backward. Maybe that would explain how everything was the opposite of what it had been yesterday—how I could be hoping for what had once seemed like the very worst thing in the world.
“What is that thing doing to her?” I whispered. “She was so much worse last night. I saw… the tubes and all that. Through the window.”
“The fetus isn’t compatible with her body. Too strong, for one thing, but she could probably endure that for a while. The bigger problem is that it won’t allow her to get the sustenance she needs. Her body is rejecting every form of nutrition. I’m trying to feed her intravenously, but she’s just not absorbing it. Everything about her condition is accelerated. I’m watching her—and not just her, but the fetus as well—starve to death by the hour. I can’t stop it and I can’t slow it down. I can’t figure out what it wants.” His weary voice broke at the end.
I felt the same way I had yesterday, when I’d seen the black stains across her stomach—furious, and a little crazy.
I clenched my hands into fists to control the shaking. I hated the thing that was hurting her. It wasn’t enough for the monster to beat her from the inside out. No, it was starving her, too. Probably just looking for something to sink its teeth into—a throat to suck dry. Since it wasn’t big enough to kill anyone else yet, it settled for sucking Bella’s life from her.
I could tell them exactly what it wanted: death and blood, blood and death.
My skin was all hot and prickly. I breathed slowly in and out, focusing on that to calm myself.
“I wish I could get a better idea of what exactly it is,” Carlisle murmured. “The fetus is well protected. I haven’t been able to produce an ultrasonic image. I doubt there is any way to get a needle through the amniotic sac, but Rosalie won’t agree to let me try, in any case.”
“A needle?” I mumbled. “What good would that do?”
“The more I know about the fetus, the better I can estimate what it will be capable of. What I wouldn’t give for even a little amniotic fluid. If I knew even the chromosomal count . . .”
“You’re losing me, Doc. Can you dumb it down?”
He chuckled once—even his laugh sounded exhausted. “Okay. How much biology have you taken? Did you study chromosomal pairs?”
“Think so. We have twenty-three, right?” “Humans do.”
I blinked. “How many do you have?” “Twenty-five.”
I frowned at my fists for a second. “What does that mean?”
“I thought it meant that our species were almost completely different. Less related than a lion and a house cat. But this new life—well, it suggests that we’re more genetically compatible than I’d thought.” He sighed sadly. “I didn’t know to warn them.”
I sighed, too. It had been easy to hate Edward for the same ignorance. I still hated him for it. It was just hard to feel the same way about Carlisle. Maybe because I wasn’t ten shades of jealous in Carlisle’s case.
“It might help to know what the count was—whether the fetus was closer to us or to her. To know what to expect.” Then he shrugged. “And maybe it wouldn’t help anything. I guess I just wish I had something to study, anything to do.”
“Wonder what my chromosomes are like,” I muttered randomly. I thought of those Olympic steroids tests again. Did they run DNA scans?
Carlisle coughed self-consciously. “You have twenty-four pairs, Jacob.” I turned slowly to stare at him, raising my eyebrows.
He looked embarrassed. “I was… curious. I took the liberty when I was treating you last June.”
I thought about it for a second. “I guess that should piss me off. But I don’t really care.”
“I’m sorry. I should have asked.”
“S’okay, Doc. You didn’t mean any harm.”
“No, I promise you that I did not mean you any harm. It’s just that… I find your species fascinating. I suppose that the elements of vampiric nature have come to seem commonplace to me over the centuries. Your family’s divergence from humanity is much more interesting. Magical, almost.”
“Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” I mumbled. He was just like Bella with all the magic garbage.
Carlisle laughed another weary laugh.
Then we heard Edward’s voice inside the house, and we both paused to listen.
“I’ll be right back, Bella. I want to speak with Carlisle for a moment. Actually, Rosalie, would you mind accompanying me?” Edward sounded different. There was a little life in his dead voice. A spark of something. Not hope exactly, but maybe the desire to hope.
“What is it, Edward?” Bella asked hoarsely.
“Nothing you need to worry about, love. It will just take a second. Please, Rose?” “Esme?” Rosalie called. “Can you mind Bella for me?”
I heard the whisper of wind as Esme flitted down the stairs. “Of course,” she said.
Carlisle shifted, twisting to look expectantly at the door. Edward was through the door first, with Rosalie right on his heels. His face was, like his voice, no longer dead. He seemed intensely focused. Rosalie looked suspicious.
Edward shut the door behind her. “Carlisle,” he murmured.
“What is it, Edward?”
“Perhaps we’ve been going about this the wrong way. I was listening to you and Jacob just now, and when you were speaking of what the… fetus wants, Jacob had an interesting thought.”
Me? What had I thought? Besides my obvious hatred for the thing? At least I wasn’t alone in that. I could tell that Edward had a difficult time using a term as mild as fetus.
“We haven’t actually addressed that angle,” Edward went on. “We’ve been trying to get Bella what she needs. And her body is accepting it about as well as one of ours would. Perhaps we should address the needs of the… fetus first. Maybe if we can satisfy it, we’ll be able to help her more effectively.”
“I’m not following you, Edward,” Carlisle said.
“Think about it, Carlisle. If that creature is more vampire than human, can’t you guess what it craves—what it’s not getting? Jacob did.”
I did? I ran through the conversation, trying to remember what thoughts I’d kept to myself. I remembered at the same time that Carlisle understood.
“Oh,” he said in a surprised tone. “You think it is… thirsty?”
Rosalie hissed under her breath. She wasn’t suspicious anymore. Her revoltingly perfect face was all lit up, her eyes wide with excitement. “Of course,” she muttered. “Carlisle, we have all that type O negative laid aside for Bella. It’s a good idea,” she added, not looking at me.
“Hmm.” Carlisle put his hand to his chin, lost in thought. “I wonder… And then, what would be the best way to administer ”
Rosalie shook her head. “We don’t have time to be creative. I’d say we should start with the traditional way.”
“Wait a minute,” I whispered. “Just hold on. Are you—are you talking about making Bella drink blood?”
“It was your idea, dog,” Rosalie said, scowling at me without ever quite looking at me.
I ignored her and watched Carlisle. That same ghost of hope that had been in Edward’s face was now in the doctor’s eyes. He pursed his lips, speculating.
“That’s just ” I couldn’t find the right word.
“Monstrous?” Edward suggested. “Repulsive?”
“Pretty much.”
“But what if it helps her?” he whispered.
I shook my head angrily. “What are you gonna do, shove a tube down her throat?” “I plan to ask her what she thinks. I just wanted to run it past Carlisle first.”
Rosalie nodded. “If you tell her it might help the baby, she’ll be willing to do anything. Even if we do have to feed them through a tube.”
I realized then—when I heard how her voice got all loveydovey as she said the word baby—that Blondie would be in line with anything that helped the little life-sucking monster. Was that what was going on, the mystery factor that was bonding the two of them? Was Rosalie after the kid?
From the corner of my eye, I saw Edward nod once, absently, not looking in my direction. But I knew he was answering my questions.
Huh. I wouldn’t have thought the ice-cold Barbie would have a maternal side. So much for protecting Bella—Rosalie’d probably jam the tube down Bella’s throat herself.
Edward’s mouth mashed into a hard line, and I knew I was right again.
“Well, we don’t have time to sit around discussing this,” Rosalie said impatiently. “What do you think, Carlisle? Can we try?”
Carlisle took a deep breath, and then he was on his feet. “We’ll ask Bella.” Blondie smiled smugly—sure that, if it was up to Bella, she would get her way.
I dragged myself up from the stairs and followed after them as they disappeared into the house. I wasn’t sure why. Just morbid curiosity, maybe. It was like a horror movie. Monsters and blood all over the place.
Maybe I just couldn’t resist another hit of my dwindling drug supply.
Bella lay flat on the hospital bed, her belly a mountain under the sheet. She looked like wax—colorless and sort of see-through. You’d think she was already dead, except for the tiny movement of her chest, her shallow breathing. And then her eyes, following the four of us with exhausted suspicion.
The others were at her side already, flitting across the room with sudden darting motions. It was creepy to watch. I ambled along at a slow walk.
“What’s going on?” Bella demanded in a scratchy whisper. Her waxy hand twitched up—like she was trying to protect her balloon-shaped stomach.
“Jacob had an idea that might help you,” Carlisle said. I wished he would leave me out of it. I hadn’t suggested anything. Give the credit to her bloodsucking husband, where it belonged. “It won’t be… pleasant, but—”
“But it will help the baby,” Rosalie interrupted eagerly. “We’ve thought of a better way to feed him. Maybe.”
Bella’s eyelids fluttered. Then she coughed out a weak chuckle. “Not pleasant?” she whispered. “Gosh, that’ll be such a change.” She eyed the tube stuck into her arm and coughed again.
Blondie laughed with her.
The girl looked like she only had hours left, and she had to be in pain, but she was making jokes. So Bella. Trying to ease the tension, make it better for everyone else.
Edward stepped around Rosalie, no humor touching his intense expression. I was glad for that. It helped, just a little bit, that he was suffering worse than me. He took her hand, not the one that was still protecting her swollen belly.
“Bella, love, we’re going to ask you to do something monstrous,” he said, using the same adjectives he’d offered me. “Repulsive.”
Well, at least he was giving it to her straight. She took a shallow, fluttery breath. “How bad?”
Carlisle answered. “We think the fetus might have an appetite closer to ours than to yours. We think it’s thirsty.”
She blinked. “Oh. Oh.”
“Your condition—both of your conditions—are deteriorating rapidly. We don’t have time to waste, to come up with more palatable ways to do this. The fastest way to test the theory—”
“I’ve got to drink it,” she whispered. She nodded slightly—barely enough energy for a little head bob. “I can do that. Practice for the future, right?” Her colorless lips stretched into a faint grin as she looked at Edward. He didn’t smile back.
Rosalie started tapping her toe impatiently. The sound was really irritating. I wondered what she would do if I threw her through a wall right now.
“So, who’s going to catch me a grizzly bear?” Bella whispered.
Carlisle and Edward exchanged a quick glance. Rosalie stopped tapping. “What?” Bella asked.
“It will be a more effective test if we don’t cut corners, Bella,” Carlisle said.
“If the fetus is craving blood,” Edward explained, “it’s not craving animal blood.”
“It won’t make a difference to you, Bella. Don’t think about it,” Rosalie encouraged.
Bella’s eyes widened. “Who?” she breathed, and her gaze flickered to me.
“I’m not here as a donor, Bells,” I grumbled. “’Sides, it’s human blood that thing’s after, and I don’t think mine applies—”
“We have blood on hand,” Rosalie told her, talking over me before I’d finished, like I wasn’t there. “For you—just in case. Don’t worry about anything at all. It’s going to be fine. I have a good feeling about this, Bella. I think the baby will be so much better.”
Bella’s hand ran across her stomach.
“Well,” she rasped, barely audible. “I’m starving, so I’ll bet he is, too.” Trying to make another joke. “Let’s go for it. My first vampire act.”
13. GOOD THING I’VE GOT A STRONG STOMACH
Carlisle and Rosalie were off in a flash, darting upstairs. I could hear them debating whether they should warm it up for her. Ugh. I wondered what all house-of-horrors stuff they kept around here. Fridge full of blood, check. What else? Torture chamber? Coffin room?
Edward stayed, holding Bella’s hand. His face was dead again. He didn’t seem to have the energy to keep up even that little hint of hope he’d had before. They stared into each other’s eyes, but not in a gooey way. It was like they were having a conversation. Kind of reminded me of Sam and Emily.
No, it wasn’t gooey, but that only made it harder to watch.
I knew what it was like for Leah, having to see that all the time. Having to hear it in Sam’s head. Of course we all felt bad for her, we weren’t monsters—in that sense, anyway. But I guess we’d blamed her for how she handled it. Lashing out at everyone, trying to make us all as miserable as she was.
I would never blame her again. How could anyone help spreading this kind of misery around? How could anyone not try to ease some of the burden by shoving a little piece of it off on someone else?
And if it meant that I had to have a pack, how could I blame her for taking my freedom? I would do the same. If there was a way to escape this pain, I’d take it, too.
Rosalie darted downstairs after a second, flying through the room like a sharp breeze, stirring up the burning smell. She stopped inside the kitchen, and I heard the creak of a cupboard door.
“Not clear, Rosalie,” Edward murmured. He rolled his eyes. Bella looked curious, but Edward just shook his head at her. Rosalie blew back through the room and disappeared again.
“This was your idea?” Bella whispered, her voice rough as she strained to make it loud enough for me to hear. Forgetting that I could hear just fine. I kind of liked how, a lot of the time, she seemed to forget that I wasn’t completely human. I moved closer, so that she wouldn’t have to work so hard.
“Don’t blame me for this one. Your vampire was just picking snide comments out of my head.”
She smiled a little. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“Yeah, me, either,” I said.
It felt weird just standing here, but the vampires had shoved all the furniture out of the way for the medical setup. I imagined that it didn’t bother them—sitting or standing didn’t make much difference when you were stone. Wouldn’t bother me much, either, except that I was so exhausted.
“Edward told me what you had to do. I’m sorry.”
“S’okay. It was probably only a matter of time till I snapped over something Sam wanted me to do,” I lied.
“And Seth,” she whispered. “He’s actually happy to help.” “I hate causing you trouble.”
I laughed once—more a bark than a laugh.
She breathed a faint sigh. “I guess that’s nothing new, is it?” “No, not really.”
“You don’t have to stay and watch this,” she said, barely mouthing the words.
I could leave. It was probably a good idea. But if I did, with the way she looked right now, I could be missing the last fifteen minutes of her life.
“I don’t really have anywhere else to go,” I told her, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice. “The wolf thing is a lot less appealing since Leah joined up.”
“Leah?” she gasped.
“You didn’t tell her?” I asked Edward.
He just shrugged without moving his eyes from her face. I could see it wasn’t very exciting news to him, not something worth sharing with the more important events that were going down.
Bella didn’t take it so lightly. It looked like it was bad news to her. “Why?” she breathed.
I didn’t want to get into the whole novel-length version. “To keep an eye on Seth.” “But Leah hates us,” she whispered.
Us. Nice. I could see that she was afraid, though.
“Leah’s not going to bug anyone.” But me. “She’s in my pack”—I grimaced at the words—“so she follows my lead.” Ugh.
Bella didn’t look convinced.
“You’re scared of Leah, but you’re best buds with the psychopath blonde?” There was a low hiss from the second floor. Cool, she’d heard me.
Bella frowned at me. “Don’t. Rose… understands.”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “She understands that you’re gonna die and she doesn’t care, s’long as she gets her mutant spawn out of the deal.”
“Stop being a jerk, Jacob,” she whispered.
She looked too weak to get mad at. I tried to smile instead. “You say that like it’s possible.”
Bella tried not to smile back for a second, but she couldn’t help it in the end; her chalky lips pulled up at the corners.
And then Carlisle and the psycho in question were there. Carlisle had a white plastic cup in his hand—the kind with a lid and a bendy straw. Oh—not clear; now I got it. Edward didn’t want Bella to have to think about what she was doing any more than necessary. You couldn’t see what was in the cup at all. But I could smell it.
Carlisle hesitated, the hand with the cup half-extended. Bella eyed it, looking scared again.
“We could try another method,” Carlisle said quietly.
“No,” Bella whispered. “No, I’ll try this first. We don’t have time ”
At first I thought she’d finally gotten a clue and was worried about herself, but then her hand fluttered feebly against her stomach.
Bella reached out and took the cup from him. Her hand shook a little, and I could hear the sloshing from inside. She tried to prop herself up on one elbow, but she could barely lift her head. A whisper of heat brushed down my spine as I saw how frail she’d gotten in less than a day.
Rosalie put her arm under Bella’s shoulders, supporting her head, too, like you did with a newborn. Blondie was all about the babies.
“Thanks,” Bella whispered. Her eyes flickered around at us. Still aware enough to feel self-conscious. If she wasn’t so drained, I’d bet she’d’ve blushed.
“Don’t mind them,” Rosalie murmured.
It made me feel awkward. I should’ve left when Bella’d offered the chance. I didn’t belong here, being part of this. I thought about ducking out, but then I realized a move like that would only make this worse for Bella—make it harder for her to go through with it. She’d figure I was too disgusted to stay. Which was almost true.
Still. While I wasn’t going to claim responsibility for this idea, I didn’t want to jinx it, either.
Bella lifted the cup to her face and sniffed at the end of the straw. She flinched, and then made a face.
“Bella, sweetheart, we can find an easier way,” Edward said, holding his hand out for the cup.
“Plug your nose,” Rosalie suggested. She glared at Edward’s hand like she might take a snap at it. I wished she would. I bet Edward wouldn’t take that sitting down, and I’d love to see Blondie lose a limb.
“No, that’s not it. It’s just that it—” Bella sucked in a deep breath. “It smells good,” she admitted in a tiny voice.
I swallowed hard, fighting to keep the disgust off my face.
“That’s a good thing,” Rosalie told Bella eagerly. “That means we’re on the right track. Give it a try.” Given Blondie’s new expression, I was surprised she didn’t break into a touchdown dance.
Bella shoved the straw between her lips, squeezed her eyes shut, and wrinkled her nose. I could hear the blood slopping around in the cup again as her hand shook. She sipped at it for a second, and then moaned quietly with her eyes still closed.
Edward and I stepped forward at the same time. He touched her face. I clenched my hands behind my back.
“Bella, love—”
“I’m okay,” she whispered. She opened her eyes and stared up at him. Her expression was… apologetic. Pleading. Scared. “It tastes good, too.”
Acid churned in my stomach, threatening to overflow. I ground my teeth together.
“That’s good,” Blondie repeated, still jazzed. “A good sign.”
Edward just pressed his hand to her cheek, curling his fingers around the shape of her fragile bones.
Bella sighed and put her lips to the straw again. She took a real pull this time. The action wasn’t as weak as everything else about her. Like some instinct was taking over.
“How’s your stomach? Do you feel nauseated?” Carlisle asked.
Bella shook her head. “No, I don’t feel sick,” she whispered. “There’s a first, eh?” Rosalie beamed. “Excellent.”
“I think it’s a bit early for that, Rose,” Carlisle murmured.
Bella gulped another mouthful of blood. Then she flashed a look at Edward. “Does this screw my total?” she whispered. “Or do we start counting after I’m a vampire?”
“No one is counting, Bella. In any case, no one died for this.” He smiled a lifeless smile. “Your record is still clean.”
They’d lost me.
“I’ll explain later,” Edward said, so low the words were just a breath. “What?” Bella whispered.
“Just talking to myself,” he lied smoothly.
If he succeeded with this, if Bella lived, Edward wasn’t going to be able to get away with so much when her senses were as sharp as his. He’d have to work on the honesty thing.
Edward’s lips twitched, fighting a smile.
Bella chugged a few more ounces, staring past us toward the window. Probably pretending we weren’t here. Or maybe just me. No one else in this group would be disgusted by what she was doing. Just the opposite—they were probably having a tough time not ripping the cup away from her.
Edward rolled his eyes.
Jeez, how did anyone stand living with him? It was really too bad he couldn’t hear Bella’s thoughts. Then he’d annoy the crap out of her, too, and she’d get tired of him.
Edward chuckled once. Bella’s eyes flicked to him immediately, and she half- smiled at the humor in his face. I would guess that wasn’t something she’d seen in a while.
“Something funny?” she breathed. “Jacob,” he answered.
She looked over with another weary smile for me. “Jake’s a crack-up,” she agreed.
Great, now I was the court jester. “Bada bing,” I mumbled in weak rim-shot impression.
She smiled again, and then took another swig from the cup. I flinched when the straw pulled at empty air, making a loud sucking sound.
“I did it,” she said, sounding pleased. Her voice was clearer—rough, but not a whisper for the first time today. “If I keep this down, Carlisle, will you take the needles out of me?”
“As soon as possible,” he promised. “Honestly, they aren’t doing that much good where they are.”
Rosalie patted Bella’s forehead, and they exchanged a hopeful glance.
And anyone could see it—the cup full of human blood had made an immediate difference. Her color was returning—there was a tiny hint of pink in her waxy cheeks. Already she didn’t seem to need Rosalie’s support so much anymore. Her breathing was easier, and I would swear her heartbeat was stronger, more even.
Everything accelerated.
That ghost of hope in Edward’s eyes had turned into the real thing. “Would you like more?” Rosalie pressed.
Bella’s shoulders slumped.
Edward flashed a glare at Rosalie before he spoke to Bella. “You don’t have to drink more right away.”
“Yeah, I know. But… I want to,” she admitted glumly.
Rosalie pulled her thin, sharp fingers through Bella’s lank hair. “You don’t need to be embarrassed about that, Bella. Your body has cravings. We all understand that.” Her tone was soothing at first, but then she added harshly, “Anyone who doesn’t understand shouldn’t be here.”
Meant for me, obviously, but I wasn’t going to let Blondie get to me. I was glad Bella felt better. So what if the means grossed me out? It wasn’t like I’d said anything.
Carlisle took the cup from Bella’s hand. “I’ll be right back.” Bella stared at me while he disappeared.
“Jake, you look awful,” she croaked. “Look who’s talking.”
“Seriously—when’s the last time you slept?”
I thought about that for a second. “Huh. I’m not actually sure.” “Aw, Jake. Now I’m messing with your health, too. Don’t be stupid.”
I gritted my teeth. She was allowed to kill herself for a monster, but I wasn’t allowed to miss a few nights’ sleep to watch her do it?
“Get some rest, please,” she went on. “There’re a few beds upstairs—you’re welcome to any of them.”
The look on Rosalie’s face made it clear that I wasn’t welcome to one of them. It made me wonder what Sleepless Beauty needed a bed for anyway. Was she that possessive of her props?
“Thanks, Bells, but I’d rather sleep on the ground. Away from the stench, you know.”
She grimaced. “Right.”
Carlisle was back then, and Bella reached out for the blood, absentminded, like she was thinking of something else. With the same distracted expression, she started sucking it down.
She really was looking better. She pulled herself forward, being careful of the tubes, and scooted into a sitting position. Rosalie hovered, her hands ready to catch Bella if she sagged. But Bella didn’t need her. Taking deep breaths in between swallows, Bella finished the second cup quickly.
“How do you feel now?” Carlisle asked.
“Not sick. Sort of hungry… only I’m not sure if I’m hungry or thirsty, you know?”
“Carlisle, just look at her,” Rosalie murmured, so smug she should have canary feathers on her lips. “This is obviously what her body wants. She should drink more.”
“She’s still human, Rosalie. She needs food, too. Let’s give her a little while to see how this affects her, and then maybe we can try some food again. Does anything sound particularly good to you, Bella?”
“Eggs,” she said immediately, and then she exchanged a look and a smile with Edward. His smile was brittle, but there was more life on his face than before.
I blinked then, and almost forgot how to open my eyes again.
“Jacob,” Edward murmured. “You really should sleep. As Bella said, you’re certainly welcome to the accommodations here, though you’d probably be more comfortable outside. Don’t worry about anything—I promise I’ll find you if there’s a need.”
“Sure, sure,” I mumbled. Now that it appeared Bella had a few more hours, I could escape. Go curl up under a tree somewhere.… Far enough away that the smell couldn’t reach me. The bloodsucker would wake me up if something went wrong. He owed me.
“I do,” Edward agreed.
I nodded and then put my hand on Bella’s. Hers was icy cold. “Feel better,” I said.
“Thanks, Jacob.” She turned her hand over and squeezed mine. I felt the thin band of her wedding ring riding loose on her skinny finger.
“Get her a blanket or something,” I muttered as I turned for the door.
Before I made it, two howls pierced the still morning air. There was no mistaking the urgency of the tone. No misunderstanding this time.
“Dammit,” I snarled, and I threw myself through the door. I hurled my body off the porch, letting the fire rip me apart midair. There was a sharp tearing sound as my shorts shredded. Crap. Those were the only clothes I had. Didn’t matter now. I landed on paws and took off toward the west.
What is it? I shouted in my head.
Incoming, Seth answered. At least three. Did they split up?
I’m running the line back to Seth at the speed of light, Leah promised. I could feel the air huffing through her lungs as she pushed herself to an incredible velocity. The forest whipped around her. So far, no other point of attack.
Seth, do not challenge them. Wait for me.
They’re slowing. Ugh—it’s so off not being able to hear them. I think… What?
I think they’ve stopped.
Waiting for the rest of the pack? Shh. Feel that?
I absorbed his impressions. The faint, soundless shimmer in the air.
Someone’s phasing? Feels like it, Seth agreed.
Leah flew into the small open space where Seth waited. She raked her claws into the dirt, spinning out like a race car.
Got your back, bro.
They’re coming, Seth said nervously. Slow. Walking.
Almost there, I told them. I tried to fly like Leah. It felt horrible being separated from Seth and Leah with potential danger closer to their end than mine. Wrong. I should be with them, between them and whatever was coming.
Look who’s getting all paternal, Leah thought wryly.
Head in the game, Leah.
Four, Seth decided. Kid had good ears. Three wolves, one man.
I made the little clearing then, moving immediately to the point. Seth sighed with relief and then straightened up, already in place at my right shoulder. Leah fell in on my left with a little less enthusiasm.
So now I rank under Seth, she grumbled to herself.
First come, first served, Seth thought smugly. ’Sides, you were never an Alpha’s Third before. Still an upgrade.
Under my baby brother is not an upgrade.
Shh! I complained. I don’t care where you stand. Shut up and get ready.
They came into view a few seconds later, walking, as Seth had thought. Jared in the front, human, hands up. Paul and Quil and Collin on four legs behind him. There was no aggression in their postures. They hung back behind Jared, ears up, alert but calm.
But… it was weird that Sam would send Collin rather than Embry. That wasn’t what I would do if I were sending a diplomacy party into enemy territory. I wouldn’t send a kid. I’d send the experienced fighter.
A diversion? Leah thought.
Were Sam, Embry, and Brady making a move alone? That didn’t seem likely.
Want me to check? I can run the line and be back in two minutes. Should I warn the Cullens? Seth wondered.
What if the point was to divide us? I asked. The Cullens know something’s up. They’re ready.
Sam wouldn’t be so stupid…, Leah whispered, fear jagged in her mind. She was imagining Sam attacking the Cullens with only the two others beside him.
No, he wouldn’t, I assured her, though I felt a little sick at the image in her head, too.
All the while, Jared and the three wolves stared at us, waiting. It was eerie not to hear what Quil and Paul and Collin were saying to one another. Their expressions were blank—unreadable.
Jared cleared his throat, and then he nodded to me. “White flag of truce, Jake. We’re here to talk.”
Think it’s true? Seth asked.
Makes sense, but… Yeah, Leah agreed. But.
We didn’t relax.
Jared frowned. “It would be easier to talk if I could hear you, too.”
I stared him down. I wasn’t going to phase back until I felt better about this situation. Until it made sense. Why Collin? That was the part that had me most worried.
“Okay. I guess I’ll just talk, then,” Jared said. “Jake, we want you to come back.” Quil let out a soft whine behind him. Seconding the statement.
“You’ve torn our family apart. It’s not meant to be this way.”
I wasn’t exactly in disagreement with that, but it was hardly the point. There were a few unresolved differences of opinion between me and Sam at the moment.
“We know that you feel… strongly about the situation with the Cullens. We know that’s a problem. But this is an overreaction.”
Seth growled. Overreaction? And attacking our allies without warning isn’t? Seth, you ever heard of a poker face? Cool it.
Sorry.
Jared’s eyes flickered to Seth and back to me. “Sam is willing to take this slowly, Jacob. He’s calmed down, talked to the other Elders. They’ve decided that immediate action is in no one’s best interest at this point.”
Translation: They’ve already lost the element of surprise, Leah thought.
It was weird how distinct our joint thinking was. The pack was already Sam’s pack, was already “them” to us. Something outside and other. It was especially weird to have Leah thinking that way—to have her be a solid part of the “us.”
“Billy and Sue agree with you, Jacob, that we can wait for Bella… to be separated from the problem. Killing her is not something any of us feel comfortable with.”
Though I’d just given Seth crap for it, I couldn’t hold back a small snarl of my own. So they didn’t quite feel comfortable with murder, huh?
Jared raised his hands again. “Easy, Jake. You know what I mean. The point is, we’re going to wait and reassess the situation. Decide later if there’s a problem with the… thing.”
Ha, Leah thought. What a load.
You don’t buy it?
I know what they’re thinking, Jake. What Sam’s thinking. They’re betting on Bella dying anyway. And then they figure you’ll be so mad…
That I’ll lead the attack myself. My ears pressed against my skull. What Leah was guessing sounded pretty spot-on. And very possible, too. When… if that thing killed Bella, it was going to be easy to forget how I felt about Carlisle’s family right now. They would probably look like enemies—like no more than bloodsucking leeches—to me all over again.
I’ll remind you, Seth whispered.
I know you will, kid. Question is whether I’ll listen to you.
“Jake?” Jared asked. I huffed a sigh.
Leah, make a circuit—just to be sure. I’m going to have to talk to him, and I want to be positive there isn’t anything else going on while I’m phased.
Give me a break, Jacob. You can phase in front of me. Despite my best efforts, I’ve seen you naked before—doesn’t do much for me, so no worries.
I’m not trying to protect the innocence of your eyes, I’m trying to protect our backs. Get out of here.
Leah snorted once and then launched herself into the forest. I could hear her claws cutting into the soil, pushing her faster.
Nudity was an inconvenient but unavoidable part of pack life. We’d all thought nothing of it before Leah came along. Then it got awkward. Leah had average control when it came to her temper—it took her the usual length of time to stop exploding out of her clothes every time she got pissed. We’d all caught a glimpse. And it wasn’t like she wasn’t worth looking at; it was just that it was so not worth it when she caught you thinking about it later.
Jared and the others were staring at the place where she’d disappeared into the brush with wary expressions.
“Where’s she going?” Jared asked.
I ignored him, closing my eyes and pulling myself together again. It felt like the air was trembling around me, shaking out from me in small waves. I lifted myself up on my hind legs, catching the moment just right so that I was fully upright as I shimmered down into my human self.
“Oh,” Jared said. “Hey, Jake.” “Hey, Jared.”
“Thanks for talking to me.” “Yeah.”
“We want you to come back, man.” Quil whined again.
“I don’t know if it’s that easy, Jared.”
“Come home,” he said, leaning forward. Pleading. “We can sort this out. You don’t belong here. Let Seth and Leah come home, too.”
I laughed. “Right. Like I haven’t been begging them to do that from hour one.” Seth snorted behind me.
Jared assessed that, his eyes cautious again. “So, what now, then?” I thought that over for a minute while he waited.
“I don’t know. But I’m not sure things could just go back to normal anyway, Jared. I don’t know how it works—it doesn’t feel like I can just turn this Alpha thing off and on as the mood strikes. It feels sort of permanent.”
“You still belong with us.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Two Alphas can’t belong in the same place, Jared. Remember how close it got last night? The instinct is too competitive.”
“So are you all just going to hang out with the parasites for the rest of your lives?” he demanded. “You don’t have a home here. You’re already out of clothes,” he pointed out. “You gonna stay wolf all the time? You know Leah doesn’t like eating that way.”
“Leah can do whatever she wants when she gets hungry. She’s here by her own choice. I’m not telling anyone what to do.”
Jared sighed. “Sam is sorry about what he did to you.” I nodded. “I’m not angry anymore.”
“But?”
“But I’m not coming back, not now. We’re going to wait and see how it plays out, too. And we’re going to watch out for the Cullens for as long as that seems necessary. Because, despite what you think, this isn’t just about Bella. We’re protecting those who should be protected. And that applies to the Cullens, too.” At least a fair number of them, anyway.
Seth yelped softly in agreement.
Jared frowned. “I guess there’s nothing I can say to you, then.” “Not now. We’ll see how things go.”
Jared turned to face Seth, concentrating on him now, separate from me. “Sue asked me to tell you—no, to beg you—to come home. She’s brokenhearted, Seth. All alone. I don’t know how you and Leah can do this to her. Abandon her this way, when your dad just barely died—”
Seth whimpered.
“Ease up, Jared,” I warned.
“Just letting him know how it is.”
I snorted. “Right.” Sue was tougher than anyone I knew. Tougher than my dad, tougher than me. Tough enough to play on her kids’ sympathies if that’s what it took to get them home. But it wasn’t fair to work Seth that way. “Sue’s known about this for how many hours now? And most of that time spent with Billy and Old Quil and Sam? Yeah, I’m sure she’s just perishing of loneliness. ’Course you’re free to go if you want, Seth. You know that.”
Seth sniffed.
Then, a second later, he cocked an ear to the north. Leah must be close. Jeez, she was fast. Two beats, and Leah skidded to a stop in the brush a few yards away.
She trotted in, taking the point in front of Seth. She kept her nose in the air, very obviously not looking in my direction.
I appreciated that. “Leah?” Jared asked.
She met his gaze, her muzzle pulling back a little over her teeth.
Jared didn’t seem surprised by her hostility. “Leah, you know you don’t want to be here.”
She snarled at him. I gave her a warning glance she didn’t see. Seth whined and nudged her with his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Jared said. “Guess I shouldn’t assume. But you don’t have any ties to the bloodsuckers.”
Leah very deliberately looked at her brother and then at me.
“So you want to watch out for Seth, I get that,” Jared said. His eyes touched my face and then went back to hers. Probably wondering about that second look— just like I was. “But Jake’s not going to let anything happen to him, and he’s not afraid to be here.” Jared made a face. “Anyway, please, Leah. We want you back. Sam wants you back.”
Leah’s tail twitched.
“Sam told me to beg. He told me to literally get down on my knees if I have to. He wants you home, Lee-lee, where you belong.”
I saw Leah flinch when Jared used Sam’s old nickname for her. And then, when he added those last three words, her hackles rose and she was yowling a long stream of snarls through her teeth. I didn’t have to be in her head to hear the cussing-out she was giving him, and neither did he. You could almost hear the exact words she was using.
I waited till she was done. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Leah belongs wherever she wants to be.”
Leah growled, but, as she was glaring at Jared, I figured it was in agreement.
“Look, Jared, we’re still family, okay? We’ll get past the feud, but, until we do, you probably ought to stick to your land. Just so there aren’t misunderstandings.
Nobody wants a family brawl, right? Sam doesn’t want that, either, does he?”
“Of course, not,” Jared snapped. “We’ll stick to our land. But where is your land, Jacob? Is it vampire land?”
“No, Jared. Homeless at the moment. But don’t worry—this isn’t going to last forever.” I had to take a breath. “There’s not that much time… left. Okay? Then the Cullens will probably go, and Seth and Leah will come home.”
Leah and Seth whined together, their noses turning my direction in synchronization.
“And what about you, Jake?”
“Back to the forest, I think. I can’t really stick around La Push. Two Alphas means too much tension. ’Sides, I was headed that way anyway. Before this mess.”
“What if we need to talk?” Jared asked.
“Howl—but watch the line, ’kay? We’ll come to you. And Sam doesn’t need to send so many. We aren’t looking for a fight.”
Jared scowled, but nodded. He didn’t like me setting conditions for Sam. “See you around, Jake. Or not.” He waved halfheartedly.
“Wait, Jared. Is Embry okay?”
Surprise crossed his face. “Embry? Sure, he’s fine. Why?” “Just wondering why Sam sent Collin.”
I watched his reaction, still suspicious that something was going on. I saw knowledge flash in his eyes, but it didn’t look like the kind I was expecting.
“That’s not really your business anymore, Jake.” “Guess not. Just curious.”
I saw a twitch from the corner of my eye, but I didn’t acknowledge it, because I didn’t want to give Quil away. He was reacting to the subject.
“I’ll let Sam know about your… instructions. Goodbye, Jacob.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Bye, Jared. Hey, tell my dad that I’m okay, will you? And that I’m sorry, and that I love him.”
“I’ll pass that along.” “Thanks.”
“C’mon, guys,” Jared said. He turned away from us, heading out of sight to phase because Leah was here. Paul and Collin were right on his heels, but Quil hesitated. He yelped softly, and I took a step toward him.
“Yeah, I miss you, too, bro.”
Quil jogged over to me, his head hanging down morosely. I patted his shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”
He whined.
“Tell Embry I miss having you two on my flanks.”
He nodded and then pressed his nose to my forehead. Leah snorted. Quil looked up, but not at her. He looked back over his shoulder at where the others had gone.
“Yeah, go home,” I told him.
Quil yelped again and then took off after the others. I’d bet Jared wasn’t waiting super-patiently. As soon as he was gone, I pulled the warmth from the center of my body and let it surge through my limbs. In a flash of heat, I was on four legs again.
Thought you were going to make out with him, Leah snickered. I ignored her.
Was that okay? I asked them. It worried me, speaking for them that way, when I couldn’t hear exactly what they were thinking. I didn’t want to assume anything. I didn’t want to be like Jared that way. Did I say anything you didn’t want me to? Did I not say something I should have?
You did great, Jake! Seth encouraged.
You could have hit Jared, Leah thought. I wouldn’t have minded that. I guess we know why Embry wasn’t allowed to come, Seth thought.
I didn’t understand. Not allowed?
Jake, didya see Quil? He’s pretty torn up, right? I’d put ten to one that Embry’s even more upset. And Embry doesn’t have a Claire. There’s no way Quil can just pick up and walk away from La Push. Embry might. So Sam’s not going to take any chances on him getting convinced to jump ship. He doesn’t want our pack any bigger than it is now.
Really? You think? I doubt Embry would mind shredding some Cullens.
But he’s your best friend, Jake. He and Quil would rather stand behind you than face you in a fight.
Well, I’m glad Sam kept him home, then. This pack is big enough. I sighed. Okay, then. So we’re good, for now. Seth, you mind keeping an eye on things for a while? Leah and I both need to crash. This felt on the level, but who knows?
Maybe it was a distraction.
I wasn’t always so paranoid, but I remembered the feel of Sam’s commitment. The total one-track focus on destroying the danger he saw. Would he take advantage of the fact that he could lie to us now?
No problem! Seth was only too eager to do whatever he could. You want me to explain to the Cullens? They’re probably still kinda tense.
I got it. I want to check things out anyway.
They caught the whir of images from my fried brain. Seth whimpered in surprise. Ew.
Leah whipped her head back and forth like she was trying to shake the image out of her mind. That is easily the freakin’ grossest thing I’ve heard in my life. Yuck. If there was anything in my stomach, it would be coming back.
They are vampires, I guess, Seth allowed after a minute, compensating for Leah’s reaction. I mean, it makes sense. And if it helps Bella, it’s a good thing, right?
Both Leah and I stared at him.
What?
Mom dropped him a lot when he was a baby, Leah told me.
On his head, apparently.
He used to gnaw on the crib bars, too. Lead paint?
Looks like it, she thought.
Seth snorted. Funny. Why don’t you two shut up and sleep?
14. YOU KNOW THINGS ARE BAD WHEN YOU FEEL GUILTY FOR BEING RUDE TO VAMPIRES
When I got back to the house, there was no one waiting outside for my report. Still on alert?
Everything’s cool, I thought tiredly.
My eyes quickly caught a small change in the now-familiar scene. There was a stack of light-colored fabric on the bottom step of the porch. I loped over to investigate. Holding my breath, because the vampire smell stuck to the fabric like you wouldn’t believe, I nudged the stack with my nose.
Someone had laid out clothes. Huh. Edward must have caught my moment of irritation as I’d bolted out the door. Well. That was… nice. And weird.
I took the clothes gingerly between my teeth—ugh—and carried them back to the trees. Just in case this was some joke by the blond psychopath and I had a bunch of girls’ stuff here. Bet she’d love to see the look on my human face as I stood there naked, holding a sundress.
In the cover of the trees, I dropped the stinking pile and shifted back to human. I shook the clothes out, snapping them against a tree to beat some of the smell from them. They were definitely guy’s clothes—tan pants and a white button- down shirt. Neither of them long enough, but they looked like they’d fit around me. Must be Emmett’s. I rolled the cuffs up on the shirtsleeves, but there wasn’t much I could do about the pants. Oh well.
I had to admit, I felt better with some clothes to my name, even stinky ones that didn’t quite fit. It was hard not being able to just jet back home and grab another pair of old sweatpants when I needed them. The homeless thing again—not having anyplace to go back to. No possessions, either, which wasn’t bothering me too bad now, but would probably get annoying soon.
Exhausted, I walked slowly up the Cullens’ porch steps in my fancy new secondhand clothes but hesitated when I got to the door. Did I knock? Stupid, when they knew I was here. I wondered why no one acknowledged that—told me either to come in or get lost. Whatever. I shrugged and let myself in.
More changes. The room had shifted back to normal—almost—in the last twenty minutes. The big flat-screen was on, low volume, showing some chick flick that no one seemed to be watching. Carlisle and Esme stood by the back windows, which were open to the river again. Alice, Jasper, and Emmett were out of sight, but I heard them murmuring upstairs. Bella was on the couch like yesterday, with just one tube still hooked into her, and an IV hanging behind the back of the sofa. She was wrapped up like a burrito in a couple of thick quilts, so at least they’d
listened to me before. Rosalie was cross-legged on the ground by her head. Edward sat at the other end of the couch with Bella’s burrito’ed feet in his lap. He looked up when I came in and smiled at me—just a little twitch of his mouth—like something pleased him.
Bella didn’t hear me. She only glanced up when he did, and then she smiled, too. With real energy, her whole face lighting up. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked so excited to see me.
What was with her? For crying out loud, she was married! Happily married, too—there was no question that she was in love with her vampire past the boundaries of sanity. And hugely pregnant, to top it off.
So why did she have to be so damn thrilled to see me? Like I’d made her whole freakin’ day by walking through the door.
If she would just not care… Or more than that—really not want me around. It would be so much easier to stay away.
Edward seemed to be in agreement with my thoughts—we were on the same wavelength so much lately it was crazy. He was frowning now, reading her face while she beamed at me.
“They just wanted to talk,” I mumbled, my voice dragging with exhaustion. “No attack on the horizon.”
“Yes,” Edward answered. “I heard most of it.”
That woke me up a little. We’d been a good three miles out. “How?”
“I’m hearing you more clearly—it’s a matter of familiarity and concentration. Also, your thoughts are slightly easier to pick up when you’re in your human form. So I caught most of what passed out there.”
“Oh.” It bugged me a little, but for no good reason, so I shrugged it off. “Good. I hate repeating myself.”
“I’d tell you to go get some sleep,” Bella said, “but my guess is that you’re going to pass out on the floor in about six seconds, so there’s probably no point.”
It was amazing how much better she sounded, how much stronger she looked. I smelled fresh blood and saw that the cup was in her hands again. How much blood would it take to keep her going? At some point, would they start trotting in the neighbors?
I headed for the door, counting off the seconds for her as I walked. “One Mississippi… two Mississippi . . .”
“Where’s the flood, mutt?” Rosalie muttered.
“You know how you drown a blonde, Rosalie?” I asked without stopping or turning to look at her. “Glue a mirror to the bottom of a pool.”
I heard Edward chuckle as I pulled the door shut. His mood seemed to improve in exact correlation to Bella’s health.
“I’ve already heard that one,” Rosalie called after me.
I trudged down the steps, my only goal to drag myself far enough into the trees that the air would be pure again. I planned to ditch the clothes a convenient distance from the house for future use rather than tying them to my leg, so I wouldn’t be smelling them, either. As I fumbled with the buttons on the new shirt, I thought randomly about how buttons would never be in style for werewolves.
I heard the voices while I slogged across the lawn. “Where are you going?” Bella asked.
“There was something I forgot to say to him.” “Let Jacob sleep—it can wait.”
Yes, please, let Jacob sleep. “It will only take a moment.”
I turned slowly. Edward was already out the door. He had an apology in his expression as he approached me.
“Jeez, what now?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and then he hesitated, like he didn’t know how to phrase what he was thinking.
What’s on your mind, mind reader?
“When you were speaking to Sam’s delegates earlier,” he murmured, “I was giving a play-by-play for Carlisle and Esme and the rest. They were concerned—”
“Look, we’re not dropping our guard. You don’t have to believe Sam like we do. We’re keeping our eyes open regardless.”
“No, no, Jacob. Not about that. We trust your judgment. Rather, Esme was troubled by the hardships this is putting your pack through. She asked me to speak to you privately about it.”
That took me off guard. “Hardships?”
“The homeless part, particularly. She’s very upset that you are all so… bereft.” I snorted. Vampire mother hen—bizarre. “We’re tough. Tell her not to worry.”
“She’d still like to do what she can. I got the impression that Leah prefers not to eat in her wolf form?”
“And?” I demanded.
“Well, we do have normal human food here, Jacob. Keeping up appearances, and, of course, for Bella. Leah is welcome to anything she’d like. All of you are.”
“I’ll pass that along.” “Leah hates us.” “So?”
“So try to pass it along in such a way as to make her consider it, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“And then there’s the matter of clothes.”
I glanced down at the ones I was wearing. “Oh yeah. Thanks.” It probably wouldn’t be good manners to mention how bad they reeked.
He smiled, just a little. “Well, we’re easily able to help out with any needs there. Alice rarely allows us to wear the same thing twice. We’ve got piles of brand-new clothes that are destined for Goodwill, and I’d imagine that Leah is fairly close to Esme’s size ”
“Not sure how she’ll feel about bloodsucker castoffs. She’s not as practical as I am.”
“I trust that you can present the offer in the best possible light. As well as the offer for any other physical object you might need, or transportation, or anything else at all. And showers, too, since you prefer to sleep outdoors. Please… don’t consider yourselves without the benefits of a home.”
He said the last line softly—not trying to keep quiet this time, but with some kind of real emotion.
I stared at him for a second, blinking sleepily. “That’s, er, nice of you. Tell Esme we appreciate the, uh, thought. But the perimeter cuts through the river in a few places, so we stay pretty clean, thanks.”
“If you would pass the offer on, regardless.” “Sure, sure.”
“Thank you.”
I turned away from him, only to stop cold when I heard the low, pained cry from inside the house. By the time I looked back, he was already gone.
What now?
I followed after him, shuffling like a zombie. Using about the same number of brain cells, too. It didn’t feel like I had a choice. Something was wrong. I would go see what it was. There would be nothing I could do. And I would feel worse.
It seemed inevitable.
I let myself in again. Bella was panting, curled over the bulge in the center of her body. Rosalie held her while Edward, Carlisle, and Esme all hovered. A flicker of motion caught my eye; Alice was at the top of the stairs, staring down into the room with her hands pressed to her temples. It was weird—like she was barred from entering somehow.
“Give me a second, Carlisle,” Bella panted.
“Bella,” the doctor said anxiously, “I heard something crack. I need to take a look.”
“Pretty sure”—pant—“it was a rib. Ow. Yep. Right here.” She pointed to her left side, careful not to touch.
It was breaking her bones now.
“I need to take an X-ray. There might be splinters. We don’t want it to puncture anything.”
Bella took a deep breath. “Okay.”
Rosalie lifted Bella carefully. Edward seemed like he was going to argue, but Rosalie bared her teeth at him and growled, “I’ve already got her.”
So Bella was stronger now, but the thing was, too. You couldn’t starve one without starving the other, and healing worked just the same. No way to win.
Blondie carried Bella swiftly up the big staircase with Carlisle and Edward right on her heels, none of them taking any notice of me standing dumbstruck in the doorway.
So they had a blood bank and an X-ray machine? Guess the doc brought his work home with him.
I was too tired to follow them, too tired to move. I leaned back against the wall and then slid to the ground. The door was still open, and I pointed my nose toward it, grateful for the clean breeze blowing in. I leaned my head against the jamb and listened.
I could hear the sound of the X-ray machinery upstairs. Or maybe I just assumed that’s what it was. And then the lightest of footsteps coming down the stairs. I didn’t look to see which vampire it was.
“Do you want a pillow?” Alice asked me.
“No,” I mumbled. What was with the pushy hospitality? It was creeping me out. “That doesn’t look comfortable,” she observed.
“S’not.”
“Why don’t you move, then?”
“Tired. Why aren’t you upstairs with the rest of them?” I shot back. “Headache,” she answered.
I rolled my head around to look at her.
Alice was a tiny little thing. ’Bout the size of one of my arms. She looked even smaller now, sort of hunched in on herself. Her small face was pinched.
“Vampires get headaches?” “Not the normal ones.”
I snorted. Normal vampires.
“So how come you’re never with Bella anymore?” I asked, making the question an accusation. It hadn’t occurred to me before, because my head had been full of other crap, but it was weird that Alice was never around Bella, not since I’d been
here. Maybe if Alice were by her side, Rosalie wouldn’t be. “Thought you two were like this.” I twisted two of my fingers together.
“Like I said”—she curled up on the tile a few feet from me, wrapping her skinny arms around her skinny knees—“headache.”
“Bella’s giving you a headache?” “Yes.”
I frowned. Pretty sure I was too tired for riddles. I let my head roll back around toward the fresh air and closed my eyes.
“Not Bella, really,” she amended. “The… fetus.”
Ah, someone else who felt like I did. It was pretty easy to recognize. She said the word grudgingly, the way Edward did.
“I can’t see it,” she told me, though she might have been talking to herself. For all she knew, I was already gone. “I can’t see anything about it. Just like you.”
I flinched, and then my teeth ground together. I didn’t like being compared to the creature.
“Bella gets in the way. She’s all wrapped around it, so she’s… blurry. Like bad reception on a TV—like trying to focus your eyes on those fuzzy people jerking around on the screen. It’s killing my head to watch her. And I can’t see more than a few minutes ahead, anyway. The… fetus is too much a part of her future. When she first decided… when she knew she wanted it, she blurred right out of my sight. Scared me to death.”
She was quiet for a second, and then she added, “I have to admit, it’s a relief having you close by—in spite of the wet-dog smell. Everything goes away. Like having my eyes closed. It numbs the headache.”
“Happy to be of service, ma’am,” I mumbled.
“I wonder what it has in common with you… why you’re the same that way.”
Sudden heat flashed in the center of my bones. I clenched my fists to hold off the tremors.
“I have nothing in common with that life-sucker,” I said through my teeth. “Well, there’s something there.”
I didn’t answer. The heat was already burning away. I was too dead tired to stay furious.
“You don’t mind if I sit here by you, do you?” she asked. “Guess not. Stinks anyway.”
“Thanks,” she said. “This is the best thing for it, I guess, since I can’t take aspirin.”
“Could you keep it down? Sleeping, here.”
She didn’t respond, immediately lapsing into silence. I was out in seconds.
I was dreaming that I was really thirsty. And there was a big glass of water in front of me—all cold, you could see the condensation running down the sides. I grabbed the cup and took a huge gulp, only to find out pretty quick that it wasn’t water—it was straight bleach. I choked it back out, spewing it everywhere, and a bunch of it blew out of my nose. It burned. My nose was on fire.…
The pain in my nose woke me up enough to remember where I’d fallen asleep. The smell was pretty fierce, considering that my nose wasn’t actually inside the house. Ugh. And it was noisy. Someone was laughing too loud. A familiar laugh, but one that didn’t go with the smell. Didn’t belong.
I groaned and opened my eyes. The skies were dull gray—it was daytime, but no clue as to when. Maybe close to sunset—it was pretty dark.
“About time,” Blondie mumbled from not too far away. “The chainsaw impersonation was getting a little tired.”
I rolled over and wrenched myself into a sitting position. In the process, I figured out where the smell was coming from. Someone had stuffed a wide feather pillow under my face. Probably trying to be nice, I’d guess. Unless it’d been Rosalie.
Once my face was out of the stinking feathers, I caught other scents. Like bacon and cinnamon, all mixed up with the vampire smell.
I blinked, taking in the room.
Things hadn’t changed too much, except that now Bella was sitting up in the middle of the sofa, and the IV was gone. Blondie sat at her feet, her head resting against Bella’s knees. Still gave me chills to see how casually they touched her, though I guess that was pretty brain-dead, all things considered. Edward was on one side of her, holding her hand. Alice was on the floor, too, like Rosalie. Her face wasn’t pinched up now. And it was easy to see why—she’d found another painkiller.
“Hey, Jake’s coming around!” Seth crowed.
He was sitting on Bella’s other side, his arm slung carelessly over her shoulders, an overflowing plate of food on his lap.
What the hell?
“He came to find you,” Edward said while I got to my feet. “And Esme convinced him to stay for breakfast.”
Seth took in my expression, and he hurried to explain. “Yeah, Jake—I was just checking to see if you were okay ’cause you didn’t ever phase back. Leah got worried. I told her you probably just crashed human, but you know how she is. Anyway, they had all this food and, dang,”—he turned to Edward—“man, you can cook.”
“Thank you,” Edward murmured.
I inhaled slowly, trying to unclench my teeth. I couldn’t take my eyes off Seth’s arm.
“Bella got cold,” Edward said quietly.
Right. None of my business, anyway. She didn’t belong to me.
Seth heard Edward’s comment, looked at my face, and suddenly he needed both hands to eat with. He took his arm off Bella and dug in. I walked over to stand a few feet from the couch, still trying to get my bearings.
“Leah running patrol?” I asked Seth. My voice was still thick with sleep.
“Yeah,” he said as he chewed. Seth had new clothes on, too. They fit him better than mine fit me. “She’s on it. No worries. She’ll howl if there’s anything. We traded off around midnight. I ran twelve hours.” He was proud of that, and it showed in his tone.
“Midnight? Wait a minute—what time is it now?”
“’Bout dawn.” He glanced toward the window, checking.
Well, damn. I’d slept through the rest of the day and the whole night—dropped the ball. “Crap. Sorry about that, Seth. Really. You shoulda kicked me awake.”
“Naw, man, you needed some serious sleep. You haven’t taken a break since when? Night before your last patrol for Sam? Like forty hours? Fifty? You’re not a machine, Jake. ’Sides, you didn’t miss anything at all.”
Nothing at all? I glanced quickly at Bella. Her color was back to the way I remembered it. Pale, but with the rose undertone. Her lips were pink again. Even her hair looked better—shinier. She saw me appraising and gave me a grin.
“How’s the rib?” I asked.
“Taped up nice and tight. I don’t even feel it.”
I rolled my eyes. I heard Edward grind his teeth together, and I figured her blow- it-off attitude bugged him as much at it bugged me.
“What’s for breakfast?” I asked, a little sarcastic. “O negative or AB positive?”
She stuck her tongue out at me. Totally herself again. “Omelets,” she said, but her eyes darted down, and I saw that her cup of blood was wedged between her leg and Edward’s.
“Go get some breakfast, Jake,” Seth said. “There’s a bunch in the kitchen. You’ve got to be empty.”
I examined the food in his lap. Looked like half a cheese omelet and the last fourth of a Frisbee-sized cinnamon roll. My stomach growled, but I ignored it.
“What’s Leah having for breakfast?” I asked Seth critically.
“Hey, I took food to her before I ate anything,” he defended himself. “She said she’d rather eat roadkill, but I bet she caves. These cinnamon rolls… ” He seemed at a loss for words.
“I’ll go hunt with her, then.” Seth sighed as I turned to leave. “A moment, Jacob?”
It was Carlisle asking, so when I turned around again, my face was probably less disrespectful than it would have been if anyone else had stopped me.
“Yeah?”
Carlisle approached me while Esme drifted off toward the other room. He stopped a few feet away, just a little bit farther away than the normal space between two humans having a conversation. I appreciated him giving me my space.
“Speaking of hunting,” he began in a somber tone. “That’s going to be an issue for my family. I understand that our previous truce is inoperative at the moment, so I
wanted your advice. Will Sam be hunting for us outside of the perimeter you’ve created? We don’t want to take a chance with hurting any of your family—or losing any of ours. If you were in our shoes, how would you proceed?”
I leaned away, a little surprised, when he threw it back at me like that. What would I know about being in a bloodsucker’s expensive shoes? But, then again, I did know Sam.
“It’s a risk,” I said, trying to ignore the other eyes I felt on me and to talk only to him. “Sam’s calmed down some, but I’m pretty sure that in his head, the treaty is void. As long as he thinks the tribe, or any other human, is in real danger, he’s not going to ask questions first, if you know what I mean. But, with all that, his priority is going to be La Push. There really aren’t enough of them to keep a decent watch on the people while putting out hunting parties big enough to do much damage. I’d bet he’s keeping it close to home.”
Carlisle nodded thoughtfully.
“So I guess I’d say, go out together, just in case. And probably you should go in the day, ’cause we’d be expecting night. Traditional vampire stuff. You’re fast—go over the mountains and hunt far enough away that there’s no chance he’d send anyone that far from home.”
“And leave Bella behind, unprotected?” I snorted. “What are we, chopped liver?”
Carlisle laughed, and then his face was serious again. “Jacob, you can’t fight against your brothers.”
My eyes tightened. “I’m not saying it wouldn’t be hard, but if they were really coming to kill her—I would be able to stop them.”
Carlisle shook his head, anxious. “No, I didn’t mean that you would be… incapable. But that it would be very wrong. I can’t have that on my conscience.”
“It wouldn’t be on yours, Doc. It would be on mine. And I can take it.”
“No, Jacob. We will make sure that our actions don’t make that a necessity.” He frowned thoughtfully “We’ll go three at a time,” he decided after a second. “That’s probably the best we can do.”
“I don’t know, Doc. Dividing down the middle isn’t the best strategy.”
“We’ve got some extra abilities that will even it up. If Edward is one of the three, he’ll be able to give us a few miles’ radius of safety.”
We both glanced at Edward. His expression had Carlisle backtracking quickly.
“I’m sure there are other ways, too,” Carlisle said. Clearly, there was no physical need strong enough to get Edward away from Bella now. “Alice, I would imagine you could see which routes would be a mistake?”
“The ones that disappear,” Alice said, nodding. “Easy.”
Edward, who had gone all tense with Carlisle’s first plan, loosened up. Bella was staring unhappily at Alice, that little crease between her eyes that she got when she was stressed out.
“Okay, then,” I said. “That’s settled. I’ll just be on my way. Seth, I’ll expect you back on at dusk, so get a nap in there somewhere, all right?”
“Sure, Jake. I’ll phase back soon as I’m done. Unless . . .” he hesitated, looking at Bella. “Do you need me?”
“She’s got blankets,” I snapped at him. “I’m fine, Seth, thanks,” Bella said quickly.
And then Esme flitted back in the room, a big covered dish in her hands. She stopped hesitantly just behind Carlisle’s elbow, her wide, dark gold eyes on my face. She held the dish out and took a shy step closer.
“Jacob,” she said quietly. Her voice wasn’t quite so piercing as the others’. “I know it’s… unappetizing to you, the idea of eating here, where it smells so unpleasant. But I would feel much better if you would take some food with you when you go. I know you can’t go home, and that’s because of us. Please—ease some of my remorse. Take something to eat.” She held the food out to me, her face all soft and pleading. I don’t know how she did it, because she didn’t look older than her mid-twenties, and she was bone pale, too, but something about her expression suddenly reminded me of my mom.
Jeez.
“Uh, sure, sure,” I mumbled. “I guess. Maybe Leah’s still hungry or something.”
I reached out and took the food with one hand, holding it away, at arm’s length. I’d go dump it under a tree or something. I didn’t want her to feel bad.
Then I remembered Edward.
Don’t you say anything to her! Let her think I ate it.
I didn’t look at him to see if he was in agreement. He’d better be in agreement. Bloodsucker owed me.
“Thank you, Jacob,” Esme said, smiling at me. How did a stone face have
dimples, for crying out loud?
“Um, thank you,” I said. My face felt hot—hotter than usual.
This was the problem with hanging out with vampires—you got used to them. They started messing up the way you saw the world. They started feeling like friends.
“Will you come back later, Jake?” Bella asked as I tried to make a run for it. “Uh, I don’t know.”
She pressed her lips together, like she was trying not to smile. “Please? I might get cold.”
I inhaled deeply through my nose, and then realized, too late, that that was not a good idea. I winced. “Maybe.”
“Jacob?” Esme asked. I backed toward the door as she continued; she took a few steps after me. “I left a basket of clothes on the porch. They’re for Leah. They’re freshly washed—I tried to touch them as little as possible.” She frowned. “Do you mind taking them to her?”
“On it,” I muttered, and then I ducked out the door before anyone could guilt me into anything else.
15. TICK TOCK TICK TOCK TICK TOCK
Hey Jake, thought you said you wanted me at dusk. How come you didn’t have Leah wake me up before she crashed?
’Cause I didn’t need you. I’m still good.
He was already picking up the north half of the circle. Anything? Nope. Nothing but nothing.
You did some scouting?
He’d caught the edge of one of my side trips. He headed up the new trail.
Yeah—I ran a few spokes. You know, just checking. If the Cullens are going to make a hunting trip…
Good call.
Seth looped back toward the main perimeter.
It was easier to run with him than it was to do the same with Leah. Though she was trying—trying hard—there was always an edge to her thoughts. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to feel the softening toward the vampires that was going on in my head. She didn’t want to deal with Seth’s cozy friendship with them, a friendship that was only getting stronger.
Funny, though, I’d’ve thought her biggest issue would just be me. We’d always gotten on each other’s nerves when we were in Sam’s pack. But there was no antagonism toward me now at all, just the Cullens and Bella. I wondered why. Maybe it was simply gratitude that I wasn’t forcing her to leave. Maybe it was because I understood her hostility better now. Whichever, running with Leah wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected.
Of course, she hadn’t eased up that much. The food and clothes Esme had sent for her were all taking a trip downriver right now. Even after I’d eaten my share— not because it smelled nearly irresistible away from the vampire burn, but to set a good example of self-sacrificing tolerance for Leah—she’d refused. The small elk she’d taken down around noon had not totally satisfied her appetite. Did make her mood worse, though. Leah hated eating raw.
Maybe we should run a sweep east? Seth suggested. Go deep, see if they’re out there waiting.
I was thinking about that, I agreed. But let’s do it when we’re all awake. I don’t want to let down our guard. We should do it before the Cullens give it a try, though. Soon.
Right.
That got me thinking.
If the Cullens were able to get out of the immediate area safely, they really ought to keep on going. They probably should have taken off the second we’d come to warn them. They had to be able to afford other digs. And they had friends up north, right? Take Bella and run. It seemed like an obvious answer to their problems.
I probably ought to suggest that, but I was afraid they would listen to me. And I didn’t want to have Bella disappear—to never know whether she’d made it or not.
No, that was stupid. I would tell them to go. It made no sense for them to stay, and it would be better—not less painful, but healthier—for me if Bella left.
Easy to say now, when Bella wasn’t right there, looking all thrilled to see me and also clinging to life by her fingernails at the same time…
Oh, I already asked Edward about that, Seth thought.
What?
I asked him why they hadn’t taken off yet. Gone up to Tanya’s place or something. Somewhere too far for Sam to come after them.
I had to remind myself that I’d just decided to give the Cullens that exact advice. That it was best. So I shouldn’t be mad at Seth for taking the chore out of my hands. Not mad at all.
So what did he say? Are they waiting for a window? No. They’re not leaving.
And that shouldn’t sound like good news.
Why not? That’s just stupid.
Not really, Seth said, defensive now. It takes some time to build up the kind of medical access that Carlisle has here. He’s got all the stuff he needs to take care of Bella, and the credentials to get more. That’s one of the reasons they want to make a hunting run. Carlisle thinks they’re going to need more blood for Bella soon. She’s using up all the O negative they stored for her. He doesn’t like
depleting the stockpile. He’s going to buy some more. Did you know you can buy
blood? If you’re a doctor.
I wasn’t ready to be logical yet. Still seems stupid. They could bring most of it with them, right? And steal what they need wherever they go. Who cares about legal crap when you’re the undead?
Edward doesn’t want to take any risks moving her. She’s better than she was.
Seriously, Seth agreed. In his head, he was comparing my memories of Bella hooked up to the tubes with the last time he’d seen her as he’d left the house. She’d smiled at him and waved. But she can’t move around much, you know. That thing is kicking the hell out of her.
I swallowed back the stomach acid in my throat. Yeah, I know. Broke another of her ribs, he told me somberly.
My stride faltered, and I staggered a step before I regained my rhythm.
Carlisle taped her up again. Just another crack, he said. Then Rosalie said something about how even normal human babies have been known to crack ribs. Edward looked like he was gonna rip her head off.
Too bad he didn’t.
Seth was in full report mode now—knowing it was all vitally interesting to me, though I’d never’ve asked to hear it. Bella’s been running a fever off and on today. Just low grade—sweats and then chills. Carlisle’s not sure what to make of it—she might just be sick. Her immune system can’t be in peak form right now.
Yeah, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
She’s in a good mood, though. She was chatting with Charlie, laughing and all— Charlie! What?! What do you mean, she was talking to Charlie?!
Now Seth’s pace stuttered; my fury surprised him. Guess he calls every day to talk to her. Sometimes her mom calls, too. Bella sounds so much better now, so she was reassuring him that she was on the mend—
On the mend? What the hell are they thinking?! Get Charlie’s hopes up just so that he can be destroyed even worse when she dies? I thought they were getting him ready for that! Trying to prepare him! Why would she set him up like this?
She might not die, Seth thought quietly.
I took deep breath, trying to calm myself. Seth. Even if she pulls through this, she’s not doing it human. She knows that, and so do the rest of them. If she doesn’t die, she’s going to have to do a pretty convincing impersonation of a corpse, kid. Either that, or disappear. I thought they were trying to make this easier on Charlie. Why… ?
Think it’s Bella’s idea. No one said anything, but Edward’s face kinda went right along with what you’re thinking now.
On the same wavelength with the bloodsucker yet again.
We ran in silence for a few minutes. I started off along a new line, probing south.
Don’t get too far. Why?
Bella asked me to ask you to stop by.
My teeth locked together.
Alice wants you, too. She says she’s tired of hanging out in the attic like the vampire bat in the belfry. Seth snorted a laugh. I was switching off with Edward before. Trying to keep Bella’s temperature stable. Cold to hot, as needed. I guess, if you don’t want to do it, I could go back—
No. I got it, I snapped.
Okay. Seth didn’t make any more comments. He concentrated very hard on the empty forest.
I kept my southern course, searching for anything new. I turned around when I got close to the first signs of habitation. Not near the town yet, but I didn’t want to get any wolf rumors going again. We’d been nice and invisible for a long while now.
I passed right through the perimeter on my way back, heading for the house. As much as I knew it was a stupid thing to do, I couldn’t stop myself. I must be some kind of masochist.
There’s nothing wrong with you, Jake. This isn’t the most normal situation. Shut up, please, Seth.
Shutting.
I didn’t hesitate at the door this time; I just walked through like I owned the place. I figured that would piss Rosalie off, but it was a wasted effort. Neither Rosalie or Bella were anywhere in sight. I looked around wildly, hoping I’d missed them somewhere, my heart squeezing against my ribs in a weird, uncomfortable way.
“She’s all right,” Edward whispered. “Or, the same, I should say.”
Edward was on the couch with his face in his hands; he hadn’t looked up to speak. Esme was next to him, her arm wrapped tight around his shoulders.
“Hello, Jacob,” she said. “I’m so glad you came back.”
“Me, too,” Alice said with a deep sigh. She came prancing down the stairs, making a face. Like I was late for an appointment.
“Uh, hey,” I said. It felt weird to try to be polite. “Where’s Bella?”
“Bathroom,” Alice told me. “Mostly fluid diet, you know. Plus, the whole pregnancy thing does that to you, I hear.”
“Ah.”
I stood there awkwardly, rocking back and forth on my heels.
“Oh, wonderful,” Rosalie grumbled. I whipped my head around and saw her coming from a hall half-hidden behind the stairway. She had Bella cradled gently in her arms, a harsh sneer on her face for me. “I knew I smelled something nasty.”
And, just like before, Bella’s face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. Like I’d brought her the greatest gift ever.
It was so unfair.
“Jacob,” she breathed. “You came.” “Hi, Bells.”
Esme and Edward both got up. I watched how carefully Rosalie laid Bella out on the couch. I watched how, despite that, Bella turned white and held her breath— like she was set on not making any noise no matter how much it hurt.
Edward brushed his hand across her forehead and then along her neck. He tried to make it look as if he was just sweeping her hair back, but it looked like a doctor’s examination to me.
“Are you cold?” he murmured. “I’m fine.”
“Bella, you know what Carlisle told you,” Rosalie said. “Don’t downplay anything. It doesn’t help us take care of either of you.”
“Okay, I’m a little cold. Edward, can you hand me that blanket?” I rolled my eyes. “Isn’t that sort of the point of me being here?”
“You just walked in,” Bella said. “After running all day, I’d bet. Put your feet up for a minute. I’ll probably warm up again in no time.”
I ignored her, going to sit on the floor next the sofa while she was still telling me what to do. At that point, though, I wasn’t sure how.… She looked pretty brittle, and I was afraid to move her, even to put my arms around her. So I just leaned carefully against her side, letting my arm rest along the length of hers, and held her hand. Then I put my other hand against her face. It was hard to tell if she felt colder than usual.
“Thanks, Jake,” she said, and I felt her shiver once. “Yeah,” I said.
Edward sat on the arm of the sofa by Bella’s feet, his eyes always on her face.
It was too much to hope, with all the super-hearing in the room, that no one would notice my stomach rumbling.
“Rosalie, why don’t you get Jacob something from the kitchen?” Alice said. She was invisible now, sitting quietly behind the back of the sofa.
Rosalie stared at the place Alice’s voice had come from in disbelief.
“Thanks, anyway, Alice, but I don’t think I’d want to eat something Blondie’s spit in. I’d bet my system wouldn’t take too kindly to venom.”
“Rosalie would never embarrass Esme by displaying such a lack of hospitality.”
“Of course not,” Blondie said in a sugar-sweet voice that I immediately distrusted. She got up and breezed out of the room.
Edward sighed.
“You’d tell me if she poisoned it, right?” I asked. “Yes,” Edward promised.
And for some reason I believed him.
There was a lot of banging in the kitchen, and—weirdly—the sound of metal protesting as it was abused. Edward sighed again, but smiled just a little, too. Then Rosalie was back before I could think much more about it. With a pleased smirk, she set a silver bowl on the floor next to me.
“Enjoy, mongrel.”
It had once probably been a big mixing bowl, but she’d bent the bowl back in on itself until it was shaped almost exactly like a dog dish. I had to be impressed with her quick craftsmanship. And her attention to detail. She’d scratched the word Fido into the side. Excellent handwriting.
Because the food looked pretty good—steak, no less, and a big baked potato with all the fixings—I told her, “Thanks, Blondie.”
She snorted.
“Hey, do you know what you call a blonde with a brain?” I asked, and then continued on the same breath, “a golden retriever.”
“I’ve heard that one, too,” she said, no longer smiling. “I’ll keep trying,” I promised, and then I dug in.
She made a disgusted face and rolled her eyes. Then she sat in one of the armchairs and started flicking through channels on the big TV so fast that there was no way she could really be surfing for something to watch.
The food was good, even with the vampire stink in the air. I was getting really used to that. Huh. Not something I’d been wanting to do, exactly…
When I was finished—though I was considering licking the bowl, just to give Rosalie something to complain about—I felt Bella’s cold fingers pulling softly through my hair. She patted it down against the back of my neck.
“Time for a haircut, huh?”
“You’re getting a little shaggy,” she said. “Maybe—”
“Let me guess, someone around here used to cut hair in a salon in Paris?” She chuckled. “Probably.”
“No thanks,” I said before she could really offer. “I’m good for a few more weeks.”
Which made me wonder how long she was good for. I tried to think of a polite way to ask.
“So… um… what’s the, er, date? You know, the due date for the little monster.”
She smacked the back of my head with about as much force as a drifting feather, but didn’t answer.
“I’m serious,” I told her. “I want to know how long I’m gonna have to be here.” How long you’re gonna be here, I added in my head. I turned to look at her then. Her eyes were thoughtful; the stress line was there between her brows again.
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “Not exactly. Obviously, we’re not going with the nine-month model here, and we can’t get an ultrasound, so Carlisle is guesstimating from how big I am. Normal people are supposed to be about forty centimeters here”—she ran her finger right down the middle of her bulging stomach—“when the baby is fully grown. One centimeter for every week. I was thirty this morning, and I’ve been gaining about two centimeters a day, sometimes more ”
Two weeks to a day, the days flying by. Her life speeding by in fast-forward. How many days did that give her, if she was counting to forty? Four? It took me a minute to figure out how to swallow.
“You okay?” she asked.
I nodded, not really sure how my voice would come out.
Edward’s face was turned away from us as he listened to my thoughts, but I could see his reflection in the glass wall. He was the burning man again.
Funny how having a deadline made it harder to think about leaving, or having her leave. I was glad Seth’d brought that up, so I knew they were staying here. It would be intolerable, wondering if they were about to go, to take away one or two or three of those four days. My four days.
Also funny how, even knowing that it was almost over, the hold she had on me only got harder to break. Almost like it was related to her expanding belly—as if by getting bigger, she was gaining gravitational force.
For a minute I tried to look at her from a distance, to separate myself from the pull. I knew it wasn’t my imagination that my need for her was stronger than ever. Why was that? Because she was dying? Or knowing that even if she didn’t, still—best case scenario—she’d be changing into something else that I wouldn’t know or understand?
She ran her finger across my cheekbone, and my skin was wet where she touched it.
“It’s going to be okay,” she sort of crooned. It didn’t matter that the words meant nothing. She said it the way people sang those senseless nursery rhymes to kids. Rock-a-bye, baby.
“Right,” I muttered.
She curled against my arm, resting her head on my shoulder. “I didn’t think you would come. Seth said you would, and so did Edward, but I didn’t believe them.”
“Why not?” I asked gruffly.
“You’re not happy here. But you came anyway.” “You wanted me here.”
“I know. But you didn’t have to come, because it’s not fair for me to want you here. I would have understood.”
It was quiet for a minute. Edward’d put his face back together. He looked at the TV as Rosalie went on flipping through the channels. She was into the six hundreds. I wondered how long it would take to get back to the beginning.
“Thank you for coming,” Bella whispered. “Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Of course.”
Edward didn’t look like he was paying attention to us at all, but he knew what I was about to ask, so he didn’t fool me.
“Why do you want me here? Seth could keep you warm, and he’s probably easier to be around, happy little punk. But when I walk in the door, you smile like I’m your favorite person in the world.”
“You’re one of them.” “That sucks, you know.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Sorry.”
“Why, though? You didn’t answer that.”
Edward was looking away again, like he was staring out the windows. His face was blank in the reflection.
“It feels… complete when you’re here, Jacob. Like all my family is together. I mean, I guess that’s what it’s like—I’ve never had a big family before now. It’s nice.” She smiled for half a second. “But it’s just not whole unless you’re here.”
“I’ll never be part of your family, Bella.”
I could have been. I would have been good there. But that was just a distant future that died long before it had a chance to live.
“You’ve always been a part of my family,” she disagreed. My teeth made a grinding sound. “That’s a crap answer.” “What’s a good one?”
“How about, ‘Jacob, I get a kick out of your pain.’” I felt her flinch.
“You’d like that better?” she whispered.
“It’s easier, at least. I could wrap my head around it. I could deal with it.”
I looked back down at her face then, so close to mine. Her eyes were shut and she was frowning. “We got off track, Jake. Out of balance. You’re supposed to be part of my life—I can feel that, and so can you.” She paused for a second without opening her eyes—like she was waiting for me to deny it. When I didn’t say anything, she went on. “But not like this. We did something wrong. No. I did. I did something wrong, and we got off track ”
Her voice trailed off, and the frown on her face relaxed until it was just a little pucker at the corner of her lips. I waited for her to pour some more lemon juice into my paper cuts, but then a soft snore came from the back of her throat.
“She’s exhausted,” Edward murmured. “It’s been a long day. A hard day. I think she would have gone to sleep earlier, but she was waiting for you.”
I didn’t look at him.
“Seth said it broke another of her ribs.”
“Yes. It’s making it hard for her to breathe.” “Great.”
“Let me know when she gets hot again.” “Yeah.”
She still had goose bumps on the arm that wasn’t touching mine. I’d barely raised my head to look for a blanket when Edward snagged one draped over the arm of the sofa and flung it out so that it settled over her.
Occasionally, the mind-reading thing saved time. For example, maybe I wouldn’t have to make a big production out of the accusation about what was going on with Charlie. That mess. Edward would just hear exactly how furious—
“Yes,” he agreed. “It’s not a good idea.”
“Then why?” Why was Bella telling her father she was on the mend when it would only make him more miserable?
“She can’t bear his anxiety.” “So it’s better—”
“No. It’s not better. But I’m not going to force her to do anything that makes her unhappy now. Whatever happens, this makes her feel better. I’ll deal with the rest afterward.”
That didn’t sound right. Bella wouldn’t just shuffle Charlie’s pain off to some later date, for someone else to face. Even dying. That wasn’t her. If I knew Bella, she had to have some other plan.
“She’s very sure she’s going to live,” Edward said. “But not human,” I protested.
“No, not human. But she hopes to see Charlie again, anyway.” Oh, this just got better and better.
“See. Charlie.” I finally looked at him, my eyes bugging. “Afterwards. See Charlie when she’s all sparkly white with the bright red eyes. I’m not a bloodsucker, so maybe I’m missing something, but Charlie seems like kind of a strange choice for her first meal.”
Edward sighed. “She knows she won’t be able to be near him for at least a year. She thinks she can stall. Tell Charlie she has to go to a special hospital on the other side of the world. Keep in contact through phone calls ”
“That’s insane.” “Yes.”
“Charlie’s not stupid. Even if she doesn’t kill him, he’s going to notice a difference.”
“She’s sort of banking on that.”
I continued to stare, waiting for him to explain.
“She wouldn’t be aging, of course, so that would set a time limit, even if Charlie accepted whatever excuse she comes up with for the changes.” He smiled faintly. “Do you remember when you tried to tell her about your transformation? How you made her guess?”
My free hand flexed into a fist. “She told you about that?”
“Yes. She was explaining her… idea. You see, she’s not allowed to tell Charlie the truth—it would be very dangerous for him. But he’s a smart, practical man. She thinks he’ll come up with his own explanation. She assumes he’ll get it wrong.” Edward snorted. “After all, we hardly adhere to vampire canon. He’ll make some wrong assumption about us, like she did in the beginning, and we’ll go along with it. She thinks she’ll be able to see him… from time to time.”
“Insane,” I repeated. “Yes,” he agreed again.
It was weak of him to let her get her way on this, just to keep her happy now. It wouldn’t turn out well.
Which made me think that he probably wasn’t expecting her to live to try out her crazy plan. Placating her, so that she could be happy for a little while longer.
Like four more days.
“I’ll deal with whatever comes,” he whispered, and he turned his face down and away so that I couldn’t even read his reflection. “I won’t cause her pain now.”
“Four days?” I asked.
He didn’t look up. “Approximately.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean, exactly?”
I thought about what Bella had said. About the thing being wrapped up nice and tight in something strong, something like vampire skin. So how did that work? How did it get out?
“From what little research we’ve been able to do, it would appear the creatures use their own teeth to escape the womb,” he whispered.
I had to pause to swallow back the bile. “Research?” I asked weakly.
“That’s why you haven’t seen Jasper and Emmett around. That’s what Carlisle is doing now. Trying to decipher ancient stories and myths, as much as we can with what we have to work with here, looking for anything that might help us predict the creature’s behavior.”
Stories? If there were myths, then…
“Then is this thing not the first of its kind?” Edward asked, anticipating my question. “Maybe. It’s all very sketchy. The myths could easily be the products of fear and imagination. Though . . .”—he hesitated—“your myths are true, are they not? Perhaps these are, too. They do seem to be localized, linked ”
“How did you find… ?”
“There was a woman we encountered in South America. She’d been raised in the traditions of her people. She’d heard warnings about such creatures, old stories that had been passed down.”
“What were the warnings?” I whispered.
“That the creature must be killed immediately. Before it could gain too much strength.”
Just like Sam thought. Was he right?
“Of course, their legends say the same of us. That we must be destroyed. That we are soulless murderers.”
Two for two.
Edward laughed one hard chuckle.
“What did their stories say about the… mothers?”
Agony ripped across his face, and, as I flinched away from his pain, I knew he wasn’t going to give me an answer. I doubted he could talk.
It was Rosalie—who’d been so still and quiet since Bella’d fallen asleep that I’d nearly forgotten her—who answered.
She made a scornful noise in the back of her throat. “Of course there were no survivors,” she said. No survivors, blunt and uncaring. “Giving birth in the middle of a disease-infested swamp with a medicine man smearing sloth spit across your face to drive out the evil spirits was never the safest method. Even the normal births went badly half the time. None of them had what this baby has— caregivers with an idea of what the baby needs, who try to meet those needs. A doctor with a totally unique knowledge of vampire nature. A plan in place to deliver the baby as safely as possible. Venom that will repair anything that goes wrong. The baby will be fine. And those other mothers would probably have survived if they’d had that—if they even existed in the first place. Something I am not convinced of.” She sniffed disdainfully.
The baby, the baby. Like that was all that mattered. Bella’s life was a minor detail to her—easy to blow off.
Edward’s face went white as snow. His hands curved into claws. Totally egotistical and indifferent, Rosalie twisted in her chair so that her back was to him. He leaned forward, shifting into a crouch.
Allow me, I suggested.
He paused, raising one eyebrow.
Silently, I lifted my doggy bowl off the floor. Then, with a quick, powerful flip of my wrist, I threw it into the back of Blondie’s head so hard that—with an earsplitting bang—it smashed flat before it ricocheted across the room and snapped the round top piece off the thick newel post at the foot of the stairs.
Bella twitched but didn’t wake up. “Dumb blonde,” I muttered.
Rosalie turned her head slowly, and her eyes were blazing. “You. Got. Food. In. My. Hair.”
That did it.
I busted up. I pulled away from Bella so that I wouldn’t shake her, and laughed so hard that tears ran down my face. From behind the couch, I heard Alice’s tinkling laugh join in.
I wondered why Rosalie didn’t spring. I sort of expected it. But then I realized that my laughing had woken Bella up, though she’d slept right through the real noise.
“What’s so funny?” she mumbled.
“I got food in her hair,” I told her, chortling again. “I’m not going to forget this, dog,” Rosalie hissed.
“S’not so hard to erase a blonde’s memory,” I countered. “Just blow in her ear.” “Get some new jokes,” she snapped.
“C’mon, Jake. Leave Rose alo—” Bella broke off mid-sentence and sucked in a sharp breath. In the same second, Edward was leaning over the top of me, ripping the blanket out of the way. She seemed to convulse, her back arching off the sofa.
“He’s just,” she panted, “stretching.”
Her lips were white, and she had her teeth locked together like she was trying to hold back a scream.
Edward put both hands on either side of her face. “Carlisle?” he called in a tense, low voice.
“Right here,” the doctor said. I hadn’t heard him come in.
“Okay,” Bella said, still breathing hard and shallow. “Think it’s over. Poor kid doesn’t have enough room, that’s all. He’s getting so big.”
It was really hard to take, that adoring tone she used to describe the thing that was tearing her up. Especially after Rosalie’s callousness. Made me wish I could throw something at Bella, too.
She didn’t pick up on my mood. “You know, he reminds me of you, Jake,” she said—affectionate tone—still gasping.
“Do not compare me to that thing,” I spit out through my teeth.
“I just meant your growth spurt,” she said, looking like I’d hurt her feelings. Good. “You shot right up. I could watch you getting taller by the minute. He’s like that, too. Growing so fast.”
I bit my tongue to keep from saying what I wanted to say—hard enough that I tasted blood in my mouth. Of course, it would heal before I could swallow. That’s what Bella needed. To be strong like me, to be able to heal.…
She took an easier breath and then relaxed back into the sofa, her body going limp.
“Hmm,” Carlisle murmured. I looked up, and his eyes were on me. “What?” I demanded.
Edward’s head leaned to one side as he reflected on whatever was in Carlisle’s head.
“You know that I was wondering about the fetus’s genetic makeup, Jacob. About his chromosomes.”
“What of it?”
“Well, taking your similarities into consideration—” “Similarities?” I growled, not appreciating the plural.
“The accelerated growth, and the fact that Alice cannot see either of you.” I felt my face go blank. I’d forgotten about that other one.
“Well, I wonder if that means that we have an answer. If the similarities are gene- deep.”
“Twenty-four pairs,” Edward muttered under his breath. “You don’t know that.”
“No. But it’s interesting to speculate,” Carlisle said in a soothing voice. “Yeah. Just fascinating.”
Bella’s light snore started up again, accenting my sarcasm nicely.
They got into it then, quickly taking the genetics conversation to a point where the only words I could understand were the the’s and the and’s. And my own
name, of course. Alice joined in, commenting now and then in her chirpy bird voice.
Even though they were talking about me, I didn’t try to figure out the conclusions they were drawing. I had other things on my mind, a few facts I was trying to reconcile.
Fact one, Bella’d said that the creature was protected by something as strong as vampire skin, something that was too impenetrable for ultrasounds, too tough for needles. Fact two, Rosalie’d said they had a plan to deliver the creature safely.
Fact three, Edward’d said that—in myths—other monsters like this one would chew their way out of their own mothers.
I shuddered.
And that made a sick kind of sense, because, fact four, not many things could cut through something as strong as vampire skin. The half-creature’s teeth— according to myth—were strong enough. My teeth were strong enough.
And vampire teeth were strong enough.
It was hard to miss the obvious, but I sure wished I could. Because I had a pretty good idea exactly how Rosalie planned to get that thing “safely” out.
16. TOO-MUCH-INFORMATION ALERT
I took off early, long before sunrise was due. I’d gotten just a little bit of uneasy sleep leaning against the side of the sofa. Edward woke me when Bella’s face was flushed, and he took my spot to cool her back down. I stretched and decided I was rested enough to get some work done.
“Thank you,” Edward said quietly, seeing my plans. “If the route is clear, they’ll go today.”
“I’ll let you know.”
It felt good to get back to my animal self. I was stiff from sitting still for so long. I extended my stride, working out the kinks.
Morning, Jacob, Leah greeted me.
Good, you’re up. How long’s Seth been out?
Not out yet, Seth thought sleepily. Almost there. What do you need? You think you got another hour in you?
Sure thing. No problem. Seth got to his feet right away, shaking out his fur.
Let’s make the deep run, I told Leah. Seth, take the perimeter. Gotcha. Seth broke into an easy jog.
Off on another vampire errand, Leah grumbled.
You got a problem with that?
Of course not. I just love to coddle those darling leeches. Good. Let’s see how fast we can run.
Okay, I’m definitely up for that!
Leah was on the far western rim of the perimeter. Rather than cut close to the Cullens’ house, she stuck to the circle as she raced around to meet me. I sprinted off straight east, knowing that even with the head start, she’d be passing me soon if I took it easy for even a second.
Nose to the ground, Leah. This isn’t a race, it’s a reconnaissance mission.
I can do both and still kick your butt.
I gave her that one. I know.
She laughed.
We took a winding path through the eastern mountains. It was a familiar route. We’d run these mountains when the vampires had left a year ago, making it part of our patrol route to better protect the people here. Then we’d pulled back the lines when the Cullens returned. This was their treaty land.
But that fact would probably mean nothing to Sam now. The treaty was dead. The question today was how thin he was willing to spread his force. Was he looking for stray Cullens to poach on their land or not? Had Jared spoken the truth or taken advantage of the silence between us?
We got deeper and deeper into the mountains without finding any trace of the pack. Fading vampire trails were everywhere, but the scents were familiar now. I was breathing them in all day long.
I found a heavy, somewhat recent concentration on one particular trail—all of them coming and going here except for Edward. Some reason for gathering that must have been forgotten when Edward brought his dying pregnant wife home. I gritted my teeth. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me.
Leah didn’t push herself past me, though she could have now. I was paying more attention to each new scent than I was to the speed contest. She kept to my right side, running with me rather than racing against me.
We’re getting pretty far out here, she commented.
Yeah. If Sam was hunting strays, we should have crossed his trail by now. Makes more sense right now for him to bunker down in La Push, Leah thought.
He knows we’re giving the bloodsuckers three extra sets of eyes and legs. He’s not going to be able to surprise them.
This was just a precaution, really.
Wouldn’t want our precious parasites taking unnecessary chances. Nope, I agreed, ignoring the sarcasm.
You’ve changed so much, Jacob. Talk about one-eighties.
You’re not exactly the same Leah I’ve always known and loved, either.
True. Am I less annoying than Paul now? Amazingly… yes.
Ah, sweet success. Congrats.
We ran in silence again then. It was probably time to turn around, but neither of us wanted to. It felt nice to run like this. We’d been staring at the same small circle of a trail for too long. It felt good to stretch our muscles and take the rugged terrain. We weren’t in a huge hurry, so I thought maybe we should hunt on the way back. Leah was pretty hungry.
Yum, yum, she thought sourly.
It’s all in your head, I told her. That’s the way wolves eat. It’s natural. It tastes fine. If you didn’t think about it from a human perspective—
Forget the pep talk, Jacob. I’ll hunt. I don’t have to like it.
Sure, sure, I agreed easily. It wasn’t my business if she wanted to make things harder for herself.
She didn’t add anything for a few minutes; I started thinking about turning back.
Thank you, Leah suddenly told me in a much different tone.
For?
For letting me be. For letting me stay. You’ve been nicer than I had any right to expect, Jacob.
Er, no problem. Actually, I mean that. I don’t mind having you here like I thought I would.
She snorted, but it was a playful sound. What a glowing commendation! Don’t let it go to your head.
Okay—if you don’t let this go to yours. She paused for a second. I think you make a good Alpha. Not in the same way Sam does, but in your own way. You’re worth following, Jacob.
My mind went blank with surprise. It took me a second to recover enough to respond.
Er, thanks. Not totally sure I’ll be able to stop that one from going to my head, though. Where did that come from?
She didn’t answer right away, and I followed the wordless direction of her thoughts. She was thinking about the future—about what I’d said to Jared the other morning. About how the time would be up soon, and then I’d go back to the forest. About how I’d promised that she and Seth would return to the pack when the Cullens were gone. . . .
I want to stay with you, she told me.
The shock shot through my legs, locking my joints. She blew past me and then put on the brakes. Slowly, she walked back to where I was frozen in place.
I won’t be a pain, I swear. I won’t follow you around. You can go wherever you want, and I’ll go where I want. You’ll only have to put up with me when we’re both wolves. She paced back and forth in front of me, swishing her long gray tail nervously. And, as I’m planning on quitting as soon as I can manage it… maybe that won’t be so often.
I didn’t know what to say.
I’m happier now, as a part of your pack, than I have been in years.
I want to stay, too, Seth thought quietly. I hadn’t realized he’d been paying much attention to us as he ran the perimeter. I like this pack.
Hey, now! Seth, this isn’t going to be a pack much longer. I tried to put my thoughts together so they would convince him. We’ve got a purpose now, but when… after that’s over, I’m just going to go wolf. Seth, you need a purpose. You’re a good kid. You’re the kind of person who always has a crusade. And there’s no way you’re leaving La Push now. You’re going to graduate from high school and do something with your life. You’re going to take care of Sue. My issues are not going to mess up your future.
But—
Jacob is right, Leah seconded.
You’re agreeing with me?
Of course. But none of that applies to me. I was on my way out, anyway. I’ll get a job somewhere away from La Push. Maybe take some courses at a community college. Get into yoga and meditation to work on my temper issues.… And stay a part of this pack for the sake of my mental well-being. Jacob—you can see how that makes sense, right? I won’t bother you, you won’t bother me, everyone is happy.
I turned back and started loping slowly toward the west.
This is a bit much to deal with, Leah. Let me think about it, ’kay? Sure. Take your time.
It took us longer to make the run back. I wasn’t trying for speed. I was just trying to concentrate enough that I wouldn’t plow headfirst into a tree. Seth was grumbling a little bit in the back of my head, but I was able to ignore him. He knew I was right. He wasn’t going to abandon his mom. He would go back to La Push and protect the tribe like he should.
But I couldn’t see Leah doing that. And that was just plain scary.
A pack of the two of us? No matter the physical distance, I couldn’t imagine the… the intimacy of that situation. I wondered if she’d really thought it through, or if she was just desperate to stay free.
Leah didn’t say anything as I chewed it over. It was like she was trying to prove how easy it would be if it was just us.
We ran into a herd of black-tailed deer just as the sun was coming up, brightening the clouds a little bit behind us. Leah sighed internally but didn’t hesitate. Her lunge was clean and efficient—graceful, even. She took down the largest one, the buck, before the startled animal fully understood the danger.
Not to be outdone, I swooped down on the next largest deer, snapping her neck between my jaws quickly, so she wouldn’t feel unnecessary pain. I could feel Leah’s disgust warring with her hunger, and I tried to make it easier for her by letting the wolf in me have my head. I’d lived all-wolf for long enough that I knew how to be the animal completely, to see his way and think his way. I let the practical instincts take over, letting her feel that, too. She hesitated for a second, but then, tentatively, she seemed to reach out with her mind and try to see my way. It felt very strange—our minds were more closely linked than they had ever been before, because we both were trying to think together.
Strange, but it helped her. Her teeth cut through the fur and skin of her kill’s shoulder, tearing away a thick slab of streaming flesh. Rather than wince away as her human thoughts wanted to, she let her wolf-self react instinctively. It was kind of a numbing thing, a thoughtless thing. It let her eat in peace.
It was easy for me to do the same. And I was glad I hadn’t forgotten this. This would be my life again soon.
Was Leah going to be a part of that life? A week ago, I would’ve found that idea beyond horrifying. I wouldn’t’ve been able to stand it. But I knew her better now. And, relieved from the constant pain, she wasn’t the same wolf. Not the same girl.
We ate together until we both were full.
Thanks, she told me later as she was cleaning her muzzle and paws against the wet grass. I didn’t bother; it had just started to drizzle and we had to swim the river again on our way back. I’d get clean enough. That wasn’t so bad, thinking your way.
You’re welcome.
Seth was dragging when we hit the perimeter. I told him to get some sleep; Leah and I would take over the patrol. Seth’s mind faded into unconsciousness just seconds later.
You headed back to the bloodsuckers? Leah asked.
Maybe.
It’s hard for you to be there, but hard to stay away, too. I know how that feels.
You know, Leah, you might want to think a little bit about the future, about what you really want to do. My head is not going to be the happiest place on earth. And you’ll have to suffer right along with me.
She thought about how to answer me. Wow, this is going to sound bad. But, honestly, it will be easier to deal with your pain than face mine.
Fair enough.
I know it’s going to be bad for you, Jacob. I understand that—maybe better than you think. I don’t like her, but… she’s your Sam. She’s everything you want and everything you can’t have.
I couldn’t answer.
I know it’s worse for you. At least Sam is happy. At least he’s alive and well. I love him enough that I want that. I want him to have what’s best for him. She sighed. I just don’t want to stick around to watch.
Do we need to talk about this?
I think we do. Because I want you to know that I won’t make it worse for you. Hell, maybe I’ll even help. I wasn’t born a compassionless shrew. I used to be sort of nice, you know.
My memory doesn’t go that far back.
We both laughed once.
I’m sorry about this, Jacob. I’m sorry you’re in pain. I’m sorry it’s getting worse and not better.
Thanks, Leah.
She thought about the things that were worse, the black pictures in my head, while I tried to tune her out without much success. She was able to look at them with some distance, some perspective, and I had to admit that this was helpful. I could imagine that maybe I would be able to see it that way, too, in a few years.
She saw the funny side of the daily irritations that came from hanging out around vampires. She liked my ragging on Rosalie, chuckling internally and even running through a few blonde jokes in her mind that I might be able to work in. But then her thoughts turned serious, lingering on Rosalie’s face in a way that confused me.
You know what’s crazy? she asked.
Well, almost everything is crazy right now. But what do you mean? That blond vampire you hate so much—I totally get her perspective.
For a second I thought she was making a joke that was in very poor taste. And then, when I realized she was serious, the fury that ripped through me was hard to control. It was a good thing we’d spread out to run our watch. If she’d been within biting distance…
Hold up! Let me explain!
Don’t want to hear it. I’m outta here.
Wait! Wait! she pleaded as I tried to calm myself enough to phase back. C’mon, Jake!
Leah, this isn’t really the best way to convince me that I want to spend more time with you in the future.
Yeesh! What an overreaction. You don’t even know what I’m talking about. So what are you talking about?
And then she was suddenly the pain-hardened Leah from before. I’m talking about being a genetic dead end, Jacob.
The vicious edge to her words left me floundering. I hadn’t expected to have my anger trumped.
I don’t understand.
You would, if you weren’t just like the rest of them. If my “female stuff”—she thought the words with a hard, sarcastic tone—didn’t send you running for cover just like any stupid male, so you could actually pay attention to what it all means.
Oh.
Yeah, so none of us like to think about that stuff with her. Who would? Of course I remembered Leah’s panic that first month after she joined the pack—and I remembered cringing away from it just like everyone else. Because she couldn’t be pregnant—not unless there was some really freaky religious immaculate crap going on. She hadn’t been with anyone since Sam. And then, when the weeks dragged on and nothing turned into more nothing, she’d realized that her body wasn’t following the normal patterns anymore. The horror—what was she now? Had her body changed because she’d become a werewolf? Or had she become a werewolf because her body was wrong? The only female werewolf in the history of forever. Was that because she wasn’t as female as she should be?
None of us had wanted to deal with that breakdown. Obviously, it wasn’t like we could empathize.
You know why Sam thinks we imprint, she thought, calmer now.
Sure. To carry on the line.
Right. To make a bunch of new little werewolves. Survival of the species, genetic override. You’re drawn to the person who gives you the best chance to pass on the wolf gene.
I waited for her to tell me where she was going with this.
If I was any good for that, Sam would have been drawn to me. Her pain was enough that I broke stride under it.
But I’m not. There’s something wrong with me. I don’t have the ability to pass on the gene, apparently, despite my stellar bloodlines. So I become a freak—the girlie-wolf—good for nothing else. I’m a genetic dead end and we both know it.
We do not, I argued with her. That’s just Sam’s theory. Imprinting happens, but we don’t know why. Billy thinks it’s something else.
I know, I know. He thinks you’re imprinting to make stronger wolves. Because you and Sam are such humongous monsters—bigger than our fathers. But
either way, I’m still not a candidate. I’m… I’m menopausal. I’m twenty years old and I’m menopausal.
Ugh. I so didn’t want to have this conversation. You don’t know that, Leah. It’s probably just the whole frozen-in-time thing. When you quit your wolf and start getting older again, I’m sure things will… er… pick right back up.
I might think that—except that no one’s imprinting on me, notwithstanding my impressive pedigree. You know, she added thoughtfully, if you weren’t around, Seth would probably have the best claim to being Alpha—through his blood, at least. Of course, no one would ever consider me. . . .
You really want to imprint, or be imprinted on, or whichever? I demanded. What’s wrong with going out and falling in love like a normal person, Leah? Imprinting is just another way of getting your choices taken away from you.
Sam, Jared, Paul, Quil… they don’t seem to mind. None of them have a mind of their own.
You don’t want to imprint? Hell, no!
That’s just because you’re already in love with her. That would go away, you know, if you imprinted. You wouldn’t have to hurt over her anymore.
Do you want to forget the way you feel about Sam?
She deliberated for a moment. I think I do.
I sighed. She was in a healthier place than I was.
But back to my original point, Jacob. I understand why your blond vampire is so cold—in the figurative sense. She’s focused. She’s got her eyes on the prize, right? Because you always want the very most what you can never, ever have.
You would act like Rosalie? You would murder someone—because that’s what she’s doing, making sure no one interferes with Bella’s death—you would do that to have a baby? Since when are you a breeder?
I just want the options I don’t have, Jacob. Maybe, if there was nothing wrong with me, I would never give it a thought.
You would kill for that? I demanded, not letting her escape my question.
That’s not what she’s doing. I think it’s more like she’s living vicariously. And… if Bella asked me to help her with this… She paused, considering. Even though I don’t think too much of her, I’d probably do the same as the bloodsucker.
A loud snarl ripped through my teeth.
Because, if it was turned around, I’d want Bella to do that for me. And so would Rosalie. We’d both do it her way.
Ugh! You’re as bad as they are!
That’s the funny thing about knowing you can’t have something. It makes you desperate.
And… that’s my limit. Right there. This conversation is over. Fine.
It wasn’t enough that she’d agreed to stop. I wanted a stronger termination than that.
I was only about a mile from where I’d left my clothes, so I phased back to human and walked. I didn’t think about our conversation. Not because there wasn’t anything to think about, but because I couldn’t stand it. I would not see it that way—but it was harder to keep from doing that when Leah had put the thoughts and emotions straight into my head.
Yeah, I wasn’t running with her when this was finished. She could go be miserable in La Push. One little Alpha command before I left for good wasn’t going to kill anybody.
It was real early when I got to the house. Bella was probably still asleep. I figured I’d poke my head in, see what was going on, give ’em the green light to go hunting, and then find a patch of grass soft enough to sleep on while human. I wasn’t phasing back until Leah was asleep.
But there was a lot of low mumbling going on inside the house, so maybe Bella wasn’t sleeping. And then I heard the machinery sound from upstairs again—the X-ray? Great. It looked like day four on the countdown was starting off with a bang.
Alice opened the door for me before I could walk in. She nodded. “Hey, wolf.”
“Hey, shortie. What’s going on upstairs?” The big room was empty—all the murmurs were on the second floor.
She shrugged her pointy little shoulders. “Maybe another break.” She tried to say the words casually, but I could see the flames in the very back of her eyes. Edward and I weren’t the only ones who were burning over this. Alice loved Bella, too.
“Another rib?” I asked hoarsely. “No. Pelvis this time.”
Funny how it kept hitting me, like each new thing was a surprise. When was I going to stop being surprised? Each new disaster seemed kinda obvious in hindsight.
Alice was staring at my hands, watching them tremble. Then we were listening to Rosalie’s voice upstairs.
“See, I told you I didn’t hear a crack. You need your ears checked, Edward.” There was no answer.
Alice made a face. “Edward’s going to end up ripping Rose into small pieces, I think. I’m surprised she doesn’t see that. Or maybe she thinks Emmett will be able to stop him.”
“I’ll take Emmett,” I offered. “You can help Edward with the ripping part.” Alice half-smiled.
The procession came down the stairs then—Edward had Bella this time. She was gripping her cup of blood in both hands, and her face was white. I could see that, though he compensated for every tiny movement of his body to keep from jostling her, she was hurting.
“Jake,” she whispered, and she smiled through the pain. I stared at her, saying nothing.
Edward placed Bella carefully on her couch and sat on the floor by her head. I wondered briefly why they didn’t leave her upstairs, and then decided at once that it must be Bella’s idea. She’d want to act like things were normal, avoid the hospital setup. And he was humoring her. Naturally.
Carlisle came down slowly, the last one, his face creased with worry. It made him look old enough to be a doctor for once.
“Carlisle,” I said. “We went halfway to Seattle. There’s no sign of the pack. You’re good to go.”
“Thank you, Jacob. This is good timing. There’s much that we need.” His black eyes flickered to the cup that Bella was holding so tight.
“Honestly, I think you’re safe to take more than three. I’m pretty positive that Sam is concentrating on La Push.”
Carlisle nodded in agreement. It surprised me how willingly he took my advice. “If you think so. Alice, Esme, Jasper, and I will go. Then Alice can take Emmett and Rosa—”
“Not a chance,” Rosalie hissed. “Emmett can go with you now.” “You should hunt,” Carlisle said in a gentle voice.
His tone didn’t soften hers. “I’ll hunt when he does,” she growled, jerking her head toward Edward and then flipping her hair back.
Carlisle sighed.
Jasper and Emmett were down the stairs in a flash, and Alice joined them by the glass back door in the same second. Esme flitted to Alice’s side.
Carlisle put his hand on my arm. The icy touch did not feel good, but I didn’t jerk away. I held still, half in surprise, and half because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“Thank you,” he said again, and then he darted out the door with the other four. My eyes followed them as they flew across the lawn and then disappeared before I took another breath. Their needs must have been more urgent than I’d imagined.
There was no sound for a minute. I could feel someone glaring at me, and I knew who it would be. I’d been planning to take off and get some Z’s, but the chance to ruin Rosalie’s morning seemed too good to pass up.
So I sauntered over to the armchair next to the one Rosalie had and settled in, sprawling out so that my head was tilted toward Bella and my left foot was near Rosalie’s face.
“Ew. Someone put the dog out,” she murmured, wrinkling her nose. “Have you heard this one, Psycho? How do a blonde’s brain cells die?” She didn’t say anything.
“Well?” I asked. “Do you know the punch line or not?” She looked pointedly at the TV and ignored me.
“Has she heard it?” I asked Edward.
There was no humor on his tense face—he didn’t move his eyes from Bella. But he said, “No.”
“Awesome. So you’ll enjoy this, bloodsucker—a blonde’s brain cells die alone.”
Rosalie still didn’t look at me. “I have killed a hundred times more often than you have, you disgusting beast. Don’t forget that.”
“Someday, Beauty Queen, you’re going to get tired of just threatening me. I’m really looking forward to that.”
“Enough, Jacob,” Bella said.
I looked down, and she was scowling at me. It looked like yesterday’s good mood was long gone.
Well, I didn’t want to bug her. “You want me to take off?” I offered.
Before I could hope—or fear—that she’d finally gotten tired of me, she blinked, and her frown disappeared. She seemed totally shocked that I would come to that conclusion. “No! Of course not.”
I sighed, and I heard Edward sigh very quietly, too. I knew he wished she’d get over me, too. Too bad he’d never ask her to do anything that might make her unhappy.
“You look tired,” Bella commented. “Dead beat,” I admitted.
“I’d like to beat you dead,” Rosalie muttered, too low for Bella to hear.
I just slumped deeper into the chair, getting comfortable. My bare foot dangled closer to Rosalie, and she stiffened. After a few minutes Bella asked Rosalie for a refill. I felt the wind as Rosalie blew upstairs to get her some more blood. It was really quiet. Might as well take a nap, I figured.
And then Edward said, “Did you say something?” in a puzzled tone. Strange. Because no one had said anything, and because Edward’s hearing was as good as mine, and he should have known that.
He was staring at Bella, and she was staring back. They both looked confused. “Me?” she asked after a second. “I didn’t say anything.”
He moved onto his knees, leaning forward over her, his expression suddenly intense in a whole different way. His black eyes focused on her face.
“What are you thinking about right now?”
She stared at him blankly. “Nothing. What’s going on?” “What were you thinking about a minute ago?” he asked. “Just… Esme’s island. And feathers.”
Sounded like total gibberish to me, but then she blushed, and I figured I was better off not knowing.
“Say something else,” he whispered. “Like what? Edward, what’s going on?”
His face changed again, and he did something that made my mouth fall open with a pop. I heard a gasp behind me, and I knew that Rosalie was back, and just as flabbergasted as I was.
Edward, very lightly, put both of his hands against her huge, round stomach. “The f—” He swallowed. “It… the baby likes the sound of your voice.”
There was one short beat of total silence. I could not move a muscle, even to blink. Then—
“Holy crow, you can hear him!” Bella shouted. In the next second, she winced.
Edward’s hand moved to the top peak of her belly and gently rubbed the spot where it must have kicked her.
“Shh,” he murmured. “You startled it… him.”
Her eyes got all wide and full of wonder. She patted the side of her stomach. “Sorry, baby.”
Edward was listening hard, his head tilted toward the bulge. “What’s he thinking now?” she demanded eagerly.
“It… he or she, is . . .” He paused and looked up into her eyes. His eyes were filled with a similar awe—only his were more careful and grudging. “He’s happy,” Edward said in an incredulous voice.
Her breath caught, and it was impossible not to see the fanatical gleam in her eyes. The adoration and the devotion. Big, fat tears overflowed her eyes and ran silently down her face and over her smiling lips.
As he stared at her, his face was not frightened or angry or burning or any of the other expressions he’d worn since their return. He was marveling with her.
“Of course you’re happy, pretty baby, of course you are,” she crooned, rubbing her stomach while the tears washed her cheeks. “How could you not be, all safe and warm and loved? I love you so much, little EJ, of course you’re happy.”
“What did you call him?” Edward asked curiously.
She blushed again. “I sort of named him. I didn’t think you would want… well, you know.”
“EJ?”
“Your father’s name was Edward, too.”
“Yes, it was. What—?” He paused and then said, “Hmm.” “What?”
“He likes my voice, too.”
“Of course he does.” Her tone was almost gloating now. “You have the most beautiful voice in the universe. Who wouldn’t love it?”
“Do you have a backup plan?” Rosalie asked then, leaning over the back of the sofa with the same wondering, gloating look on her face that was on Bella’s. “What if he’s a she?”
Bella wiped the back of her hand under her wet eyes. “I kicked a few things around. Playing with Renée and Esme. I was thinking… Ruh-nez-may.”
“Ruhnezmay?”
“R-e-n-e-s-m-e-e. Too weird?”
“No, I like it,” Rosalie assured her. Their heads were close together, gold and mahogany. “It’s beautiful. And one of a kind, so that fits.”
“I still think he’s an Edward.”
Edward was staring off into space, his face blank as he listened.
“What?” Bella asked, her face just glowing away. “What’s he thinking now?”
At first he didn’t answer, and then—shocking all the rest of us again, three distinct and separate gasps—he laid his ear tenderly against her belly.
“He loves you,” Edward whispered, sounding dazed. “He absolutely adores you.” In that moment, I knew that I was alone. All alone.
I wanted to kick myself when I realized how much I’d been counting on that loathsome vampire. How stupid—as if you could ever trust a leech! Of course he would betray me in the end.
I’d counted on him to be on my side. I’d counted on him to suffer more than I suffered. And, most of all, I’d counted on him to hate that revolting thing killing Bella more than I hated it.
I’d trusted him with that.
Yet now they were together, the two of them bent over the budding, invisible monster with their eyes lit up like a happy family.
And I was all alone with my hatred and the pain that was so bad it was like being tortured. Like being dragged slowly across a bed of razor blades. Pain so bad you’d take death with a smile just to get away from it.
The heat unlocked my frozen muscles, and I was on my feet.
All three of their heads snapped up, and I watched my pain ripple across Edward’s face as he trespassed in my head again.
“Ahh,” he choked.
I didn’t know what I was doing; I stood there, trembling, ready to bolt for the very first escape that I could think of.
Moving like the strike of a snake, Edward darted to a small end table and ripped something from the drawer there. He tossed it at me, and I caught the object reflexively.
“Go, Jacob. Get away from here.” He didn’t say it harshly—he threw the words at me like they were a life preserver. He was helping me find the escape I was dying for.
The object in my hand was a set of car keys.
17. WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE? THE WIZARD OF OZ? YOU NEED A BRAIN? YOU NEED A HEART? GO
AHEAD. TAKE MINE. TAKE EVERYTHING I HAVE.
I sort of had a plan as I ran to the Cullens’ garage. The second part of it was totaling the bloodsucker’s car on my way back.
So I was at a loss when I mashed the button on the keyless remote, and it was not his Volvo that beeped and flashed its lights for me. It was another car—a standout even in the long line of vehicles that were mostly all drool-worthy in their own ways.
Did he actually mean to give me the keys to an Aston Martin Vanquish, or was that an accident?
I didn’t pause to think about it, or if this would change that second part of my plan. I just threw myself into the silky leather seat and cranked the engine while my knees were still crunched up under the steering wheel. The sound of the motor’s purr might have made me moan another day, but right now it was all I could do to concentrate enough to put it in drive.
I found the seat release and shoved myself back as my foot rammed the pedal down. The car felt almost airborne as it leaped forward.
It only took seconds to race through the tight, winding drive. The car responded to me like my thoughts were steering rather than my hands. As I blew out of the green tunnel and onto the highway, I caught a fleeting glimpse of Leah’s gray face peering uneasily through the ferns.
For half a second, I wondered what she’d think, and then I realized that I didn’t care.
I turned south, because I had no patience today for ferries or traffic or anything else that meant I might have to lift my foot off the pedal.
In a sick way, it was my lucky day. If by lucky you meant taking a well-traveled highway at two hundred without so much as seeing one cop, even in the thirty- mile-an-hour speed-trap towns. What a letdown. A little chase action might have been nice, not to mention that the license plate info would bring the heat down on the leech. Sure, he’d buy his way out of it, but it might have been just a little inconvenient for him.
The only sign of surveillance I came across was just a hint of dark brown fur flitting through the woods, running parallel to me for a few miles on the south side of Forks. Quil, it looked like. He must have seen me, too, because he
disappeared after a minute without raising an alarm. Again, I almost wondered what his story would be before I remembered that I didn’t care.
I raced around the long U-shaped highway, heading for the biggest city I could find. That was the first part of my plan.
It seemed to take forever, probably because I was still on the razor blades, but it actually didn’t even take two hours before I was driving north into the undefined sprawl that was part Tacoma and part Seattle. I slowed down then, because I really wasn’t trying to kill any innocent bystanders.
This was a stupid plan. It wasn’t going to work. But, as I’d searched my head for any way at all to get away from the pain, what Leah’d said today had popped in there.
That would go away, you know, if you imprinted. You wouldn’t have to hurt over her anymore.
Seemed like maybe getting your choices taken away from you wasn’t the very worst thing in the world. Maybe feeling like this was the very worst thing in the world.
But I’d seen all the girls in La Push and up on the Makah rez and in Forks. I needed a wider hunting range.
So how do you look for a random soul mate in a crowd? Well, first, I needed a crowd. So I tooled around, looking for a likely spot. I passed a couple of malls, which probably would’ve been pretty good places to find girls my age, but I couldn’t make myself stop. Did I want to imprint on some girl who hung out in a mall all day?
I kept going north, and it got more and more crowded. Eventually, I found a big park full of kids and families and skateboards and bikes and kites and picnics and the whole bit. I hadn’t noticed till now—it was a nice day. Sun and all that. People were out celebrating the blue sky.
I parked across two handicapped spots—just begging for a ticket—and joined the crowd.
I walked around for what felt like hours. Long enough that the sun changed sides in the sky. I stared into the face of every girl who passed anywhere near me, making myself really look, noticing who was pretty and who had blue eyes and who looked good in braces and who had way too much makeup on. I tried to find something interesting about each face, so that I would know for sure that I’d really tried. Things like: This one had a really straight nose; that one should pull her hair out of her eyes; this one could do lipstick ads if the rest of her face was as perfect as her mouth. . . .
Sometimes they stared back. Sometimes they looked scared—like they were thinking, Who is this big freak glaring at me? Sometimes I thought they looked kind of interested, but maybe that was just my ego running wild.
Either way, nothing. Even when I met the eyes of the girl who was—no contest— the hottest girl in the park and probably in the city, and she stared right back with a speculation that looked like interest, I felt nothing. Just the same desperate drive to find a way out of the pain.
As time went on, I started noticing all the wrong things. Bella things. This one’s hair was the same color. That one’s eyes were sort of shaped the same. This one’s cheekbones cut across her face in just the same way. That one had the same little crease between her eyes—which made me wonder what she was worrying about. .
. .
That was when I gave up. Because it was beyond stupid to think that I had picked exactly the right place and time and I was going to simply walk into my soul mate just because I was so desperate to.
It wouldn’t make sense to find her here, anyway. If Sam was right, the best place to find my genetic match would be in La Push. And, clearly, no one there fit the bill. If Billy was right, then who knew? What made for a stronger wolf?
I wandered back to the car and then slumped against the hood and played with the keys.
Maybe I was what Leah thought she was. Some kind of dead end that shouldn’t be passed on to another generation. Or maybe it was just that my life was a big, cruel joke, and there was no escape from the punch line.
“Hey, you okay? Hello? You there, with the stolen car.”
It took me a second to realize that the voice was talking to me, and then another second to decide to raise my head.
A familiar-looking girl was staring at me, her expression kind of anxious. I knew why I recognized her face—I’d already catalogued this one. Light red-gold hair, fair skin, a few gold-colored freckles sprinkled across her cheeks and nose, and eyes the color of cinnamon.
“If you’re feeling that remorseful over boosting the car,” she said, smiling so that a dimple popped out in her chin, “you could always turn yourself in.”
“It’s borrowed, not stolen,” I snapped. My voice sounded horrible—like I’d been crying or something. Embarrassing.
“Sure, that’ll hold up in court.”
I glowered. “You need something?”
“Not really. I was kidding about the car, you know. It’s just that… you look really upset about something. Oh, hey, I’m Lizzie.” She held out her hand.
I looked at it until she let it fall.
“Anyway…,” she said awkwardly, “I was just wondering if I could help. Seemed like you were looking for someone before.” She gestured toward the park and shrugged.
“Yeah.” She waited.
I sighed. “I don’t need any help. She’s not here.” “Oh. Sorry.”
“Me, too,” I muttered.
I looked at the girl again. Lizzie. She was pretty. Nice enough to try to help a grouchy stranger who must seem nuts. Why couldn’t she be the one? Why did everything have to be so freaking complicated? Nice girl, pretty, and sort of funny. Why not?
“This is a beautiful car,” she said. “It’s really a shame they’re not making them anymore. I mean, the Vantage’s body styling is gorgeous, too, but there’s just something about the Vanquish ”
Nice girl who knew cars. Wow. I stared at her face harder, wishing I knew how to make it work. C’mon, Jake—imprint already.
“How’s it drive?” she asked.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” I told her.
She grinned her one-dimple smile, clearly pleased to have dragged a halfway civil response out of me, and I gave her a reluctant smile back.
But her smile did nothing about the sharp, cutting blades that raked up and down my body. No matter how much I wanted it to, my life was not going to come together like that.
I wasn’t in that healthier place where Leah was headed. I wasn’t going to be able to fall in love like a normal person. Not when I was bleeding over someone else. Maybe—if it was ten years from now and Bella’s heart was long dead and I’d
hauled myself through the whole grieving process and come out in one piece again—maybe then I could offer Lizzie a ride in a fast car and talk makes and models and get to know something about her and see if I liked her as a person. But that wasn’t going to happen now.
Magic wasn’t going to save me. I was just going to have to take the torture like a man. Suck it up.
Lizzie waited, maybe hoping I was going to offer her that ride. Or maybe not. “I’d better get this car back to the guy I borrowed it from,” I muttered.
She smiled again. “Glad to hear you’re going straight.” “Yeah, you convinced me.”
She watched me get in the car, still sort of concerned. I probably looked like someone who was about to drive off a cliff. Which maybe I would’ve, if that kind of move’d work for a werewolf. She waved once, her eyes trailing after the car.
At first, I drove more sanely on the way back. I wasn’t in a rush. I didn’t want to go where I was going. Back to that house, back to that forest. Back to the pain I’d run from. Back to being absolutely alone with it.
Okay, that was melodramatic. I wouldn’t be all alone, but that was a bad thing. Leah and Seth would have to suffer with me. I was glad Seth wouldn’t have to suffer long. Kid didn’t deserve to have his peace of mind ruined. Leah didn’t, either, but at least it was something she understood. Nothing new about pain for Leah.
I sighed big as I thought about what Leah wanted from me, because I knew now that she was going to get it. I was still pissed at her, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that I could make her life easier. And—now that I knew her better—I thought she would probably do this for me, if our positions were reversed.
It would be interesting, at the very least, and strange, too, to have Leah as a companion—as a friend. We were going to get under each other’s skin a lot, that was for sure. She wouldn’t be one to let me wallow, but I thought that was a good thing. I’d probably need someone to kick my butt now and then. But when it came right down to it, she was really the only friend who had any chance of understanding what I was going through now.
I thought of the hunt this morning, and how close our minds had been for that one moment in time. It hadn’t been a bad thing. Different. A little scary, a little awkward. But also nice in a weird way.
I didn’t have to be all alone.
And I knew Leah was strong enough to face with me the months that were coming. Months and years. It made me tired to think about it. I felt like I was staring out across an ocean that I was going to have to swim from shore to shore before I could rest again.
So much time coming, and then so little time before it started. Before I was flung into that ocean. Three and a half more days, and here I was, wasting that little bit of time I had.
I started driving too fast again.
I saw Sam and Jared, one on either side of the road like sentinels, as I raced up the road toward Forks. They were well hidden in the thick branches, but I was expecting them, and I knew what to look for. I nodded as I blew past them, not bothering to wonder what they made of my day trip.
I nodded to Leah and Seth, too, as I cruised up the Cullens’ driveway. It was starting to get dark, and the clouds were thick on this side of the sound, but I saw their eyes glitter in the glow of the headlights. I would explain to them later.
There’d be plenty of time for that.
It was a surprise to find Edward waiting for me in the garage. I hadn’t seen him away from Bella in days. I could tell from his face that nothing bad had happened to her. In fact, he looked more peaceful than before. My stomach tightened as I remembered where that peace came from.
It was too bad that—with all my brooding—I’d forgotten to wreck the car. Oh well. I probably wouldn’t have been able to stand hurting this car, anyway. Maybe he’d guessed as much, and that’s why he’d lent it to me in the first place.
“A few things, Jacob,” he said as soon as I cut the engine.
I took a deep breath and held it for a minute. Then, slowly, I got out of the car and threw the keys to him.
“Thanks for the loan,” I said sourly. Apparently, it would have to be repaid. “What do you want now?”
“Firstly… I know how averse you are to using your authority with your pack, but .
. .”
I blinked, astonished that he would even dream of starting in on this one. “What?”
“If you can’t or won’t control Leah, then I—”
“Leah?” I interrupted, speaking through my teeth. “What happened?”
Edward’s face was hard. “She came up to see why you’d left so abruptly. I tried to explain. I suppose it might not have come out right.”
“What did she do?”
“She phased to her human form and—”
“Really?” I interrupted again, shocked this time. I couldn’t process that. Leah letting her guard down right in the mouth of the enemy’s lair?
“She wanted to… speak to Bella.” “To Bella?”
Edward got all hissy then. “I won’t let Bella be upset like that again. I don’t care how justified Leah thinks she is! I didn’t hurt her—of course I wouldn’t—but I’ll throw her out of the house if it happens again. I’ll launch her right across the river—”
“Hold on. What did she say?” None of this was making any sense.
Edward took a deep breath, composing himself. “Leah was unnecessarily harsh. I’m not going to pretend that I understand why Bella is unable to let go of you, but I do know that she does not behave this way to hurt you. She suffers a great deal over the pain she’s inflicting on you, and on me, by asking you to stay. What Leah said was uncalled for. Bella’s been crying—”
“Wait—Leah was yelling at Bella about me?”
He nodded one sharp nod. “You were quite vehemently championed.” Whoa. “I didn’t ask her to do that.”
“I know.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course he knew. He knew everything.
But that was really something about Leah. Who would have believed it? Leah walking into the bloodsuckers’ place human to complain about how I was being treated.
“I can’t promise to control Leah,” I told him. “I won’t do that. But I’ll talk to her, okay? And I don’t think there’ll be a repeat. Leah’s not one to hold back, so she probably got it all off her chest today.”
“I would say so.”
“Anyway, I’ll talk to Bella about it, too. She doesn’t need to feel bad. This one’s on me.”
“I already told her that.”
“Of course you did. Is she okay?” “She’s sleeping now. Rose is with her.”
So the psycho was “Rose” now. He’d completely crossed over to the dark side.
He ignored that thought, continuing with a more complete answer to my question. “She’s… better in some ways. Aside from Leah’s tirade and the resulting guilt.”
Better. Because Edward was hearing the monster and everything was all lovey- dovey now. Fantastic.
“It’s a bit more than that,” he murmured. “Now that I can make out the child’s thoughts, it’s apparent that he or she has remarkably developed mental facilities. He can understand us, to an extent.”
My mouth fell open. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. He seems to have a vague sense of what hurts her now. He’s trying to avoid that, as much as possible. He… loves her. Already.”
I stared at Edward, feeling sort of like my eyes might pop out of their sockets. Underneath that disbelief, I could see right away that this was the critical factor. This was what had changed Edward—that the monster had convinced him of this love. He couldn’t hate what loved Bella. It was probably why he couldn’t hate me, either. There was a big difference, though. I wasn’t killing her.
Edward went on, acting like he hadn’t heard all that. “The progress, I believe, is more than we’d judged. When Carlisle returns—”
“They’re not back?” I cut in sharply. I thought of Sam and Jared, watching the road. Would they get curious as to what was going on?
“Alice and Jasper are. Carlisle sent all the blood he was able to acquire, but it wasn’t as much as he was hoping for—Bella will use up this supply in another day the way her appetite has grown. Carlisle stayed to try another source. I don’t think that’s necessary now, but he wants to be covered for any eventuality.”
“Why isn’t it necessary? If she needs more?”
I could tell he was watching and listening to my reaction carefully as he explained. “I’m trying to persuade Carlisle to deliver the baby as soon as he is back.”
“What?”
“The child seems to be attempting to avoid rough movements, but it’s difficult. He’s become too big. It’s madness to wait, when he’s clearly developed beyond what Carlisle had guessed. Bella’s too fragile to delay.”
I kept getting my legs knocked out from under me. First, counting on Edward’s hatred of the thing so much. Now, I’d realized that I thought of those four days as a sure thing. I’d banked on them.
The endless ocean of grief that waited stretched out before me. I tried to catch my breath.
Edward waited. I stared at his face while I recovered, recognizing another change there.
“You think she’s going to make it,” I whispered.
“Yes. That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.” I couldn’t say anything. After a minute, he went on.
“Yes,” he said again. “Waiting, as we have been, for the child to be ready, that was insanely dangerous. At any moment it could have been too late. But if we’re proactive about this, if we act quickly, I see no reason why it should not go well.
Knowing the child’s mind is unbelievably helpful. Thankfully, Bella and Rose agree with me. Now that I’ve convinced them it’s safe for the child if we proceed, there’s nothing to keep this from working.”
“When will Carlisle be back?” I asked, still whispering. I hadn’t got my breath back yet.
“By noon tomorrow.”
My knees buckled. I had to grab the car to hold myself up. Edward reached out like he was offering support, but then he thought better of it and dropped his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I am truly sorry for the pain this causes you, Jacob. Though you hate me, I must admit that I don’t feel the same about you. I think of you as a… a brother in many ways. A comrade in arms, at the very least. I regret your suffering more than you realize. But Bella is going to survive”—when he said
that his voice was fierce, even violent—“and I know that’s what really matters to you.”
He was probably right. It was hard to tell. My head was spinning.
“So I hate to do this now, while you’re already dealing with too much, but, clearly, there is little time. I have to ask you for something—to beg, if I must.”
“I don’t have anything left,” I choked out.
He lifted his hand again, as if to put it on my shoulder, but then let it drop like before and sighed.
“I know how much you have given,” he said quietly. “But this is something you do have, and only you. I’m asking this of the true Alpha, Jacob. I’m asking this of Ephraim’s heir.”
I was way past being able to respond.
“I want your permission to deviate from what we agreed to in our treaty with Ephraim. I want you to grant us an exception. I want your permission to save her life. You know I’ll do it anyway, but I don’t want to break faith with you if there is any way to avoid it. We never intended to go back on our word, and we don’t do it lightly now. I want your understanding, Jacob, because you know exactly why we do this. I want the alliance between our families to survive when this is over.”
I tried to swallow. Sam, I thought. It’s Sam you want.
“No. Sam’s authority is assumed. It belongs to you. You’ll never take it from him, but no one can rightfully agree to what I’m asking except for you.”
It’s not my decision.
“It is, Jacob, and you know it. Your word on this will condemn us or absolve us. Only you can give this to me.”
I can’t think. I don’t know.
“We don’t have much time.” He glanced back toward the house. No, there was no time. My few days had become a few hours.
I don’t know. Let me think. Just give me a minute here, okay?
“Yes.”
I started walking to the house, and he followed. Crazy how easy it was, walking through the dark with a vampire right beside me. It didn’t feel unsafe, or even uncomfortable, really. It felt like walking next to anybody. Well, anybody who smelled bad.
There was a movement in the brush at the edge of the big lawn, and then a low whimper. Seth shrugged through the ferns and loped over to us.
“Hey, kid,” I muttered.
He dipped his head, and I patted his shoulder.
“S’all cool,” I lied. “I’ll tell you about it later. Sorry to take off on you like that.” He grinned at me.
“Hey, tell your sister to back off now, okay? Enough.” Seth nodded once.
I shoved against his shoulder this time. “Get back to work. I’ll spell you in a bit.” Seth leaned against me, shoving back, and then he galloped into the trees.
“He has one of the purest, sincerest, kindest minds I’ve ever heard,” Edward murmured when he was out of sight. “You’re lucky to have his thoughts to share.”
“I know that,” I grunted.
We started toward the house, and both of our heads snapped up when we heard the sound of someone sucking through a straw. Edward was in a hurry then. He darted up the porch stairs and was gone.
“Bella, love, I thought you were sleeping,” I heard him say. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have left.”
“Don’t worry. I just got so thirsty—it woke me up. It’s a good thing Carlisle is bringing more. This kid is going to need it when he gets out of me.”
“True. That’s a good point.”
“I wonder if he’ll want anything else,” she mused. “I suppose we’ll find out.”
I walked through the door.
Alice said, “Finally,” and Bella’s eyes flashed to me. That infuriating, irresistible smile broke across her face for one second. Then it faltered, and her face fell. Her lips puckered, like she was trying not to cry.
I wanted to punch Leah right in her stupid mouth. “Hey, Bells,” I said quickly. “How ya doing?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Big day today, huh? Lots of new stuff.” “You don’t have to do that, Jacob.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, going to sit on the arm of the sofa by her head. Edward had the floor there already.
She gave me a reproachful look. “I’m so s—” she started to say. I pinched her lips together between my thumb and finger.
“Jake,” she mumbled, trying to pull my hand away. Her attempt was so weak it was hard to believe that she was really trying.
I shook my head. “You can talk when you’re not being stupid.” “Fine, I won’t say it,” it sounded like she mumbled.
I pulled my hand away.
“Sorry!” she finished quickly, and then grinned. I rolled my eyes and then smiled back at her.
When I stared into her eyes, I saw everything that I’d been looking for in the park.
Tomorrow, she’d be someone else. But hopefully alive, and that was what counted, right? She’d look at me with the same eyes, sort of. Smile with the same lips, almost. She’d still know me better than anyone who didn’t have full access to the inside of my head.
Leah might be an interesting companion, maybe even a true friend—someone who would stand up for me. But she wasn’t my best friend the way that Bella was. Aside from the impossible love I felt for Bella, there was also that other bond, and it ran bone deep.
Tomorrow, she’d be my enemy. Or she’d be my ally. And, apparently, that distinction was up to me.
I sighed.
Fine! I thought, giving up the very last thing I had to give. It made me feel hollow. Go ahead. Save her. As Ephraim’s heir, you have my permission, my word, that this will not violate the treaty. The others will just have to blame me. You were right—they can’t deny that it’s my right to agree to this.
“Thank you.” Edward’s whisper was low enough that Bella didn’t hear anything. But the words were so fervent that, from the corner of my eye, I saw the other vampires turning to stare.
“So,” Bella asked, working to be casual. “How was your day?” “Great. Went for a drive. Hung out in the park.”
“Sounds nice.” “Sure, sure.”
Suddenly, she made a face. “Rose?” she asked. I heard Blondie chuckle. “Again?”
“I think I’ve drunk two gallons in the last hour,” Bella explained.
Edward and I both got out of the way while Rosalie came to lift Bella from the couch and take her to the bathroom.
“Can I walk?” Bella asked. “My legs are so stiff.” “Are you sure?” Edward asked.
“Rose’ll catch me if I trip over my feet. Which could happen pretty easily, since I can’t see them.”
Rosalie set Bella carefully on her feet, keeping her hands right at Bella’s shoulders. Bella stretched her arms out in front of her, wincing a little.
“That feels good,” she sighed. “Ugh, but I’m huge.” She really was. Her stomach was its own continent. “One more day,” she said, and patted her stomach.
I couldn’t help the pain that shot through me in a sudden, stabbing burst, but I tried to keep it off my face. I could hide it for one more day, right?
“All righty, then. Whoops—oh, no!”
The cup Bella had left on the sofa tumbled to one side, the dark red blood spilling out onto the pale fabric.
Automatically, though three other hands beat her there, Bella bent over, reaching out to catch it.
There was the strangest, muffled ripping sound from the center of her body. “Oh!” she gasped.
And then she went totally limp, slumping toward the floor. Rosalie caught her in the same instant, before she could fall. Edward was there, too, hands out, the mess on the sofa forgotten.
“Bella?” he asked, and then his eyes unfocused, and panic shot across his features.
A half second later, Bella screamed.
It was not just a scream, it was a blood-curdling shriek of agony. The horrifying sound cut off with a gurgle, and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her body twitched, arched in Rosalie’s arms, and then Bella vomited a fountain of blood.
18. THERE ARE NO WORDS FOR THIS.
Bella’s body, streaming with red, started to twitch, jerking around in Rosalie’s arms like she was being electrocuted. All the while, her face was blank— unconscious. It was the wild thrashing from inside the center of her body that moved her. As she convulsed, sharp snaps and cracks kept time with the spasms.
Rosalie and Edward were frozen for the shortest half second, and then they broke. Rosalie whipped Bella’s body into her arms, and, shouting so fast it was hard to separate the individual words, she and Edward shot up the staircase to the second floor.
I sprinted after them.
“Morphine!” Edward yelled at Rosalie.
“Alice—get Carlisle on the phone!” Rosalie screeched.
The room I followed them to looked like an emergency ward set up in the middle of a library. The lights were brilliant and white. Bella was on a table under the glare, skin ghostly in the spotlight. Her body flopped, a fish on the sand. Rosalie pinned Bella down, yanking and ripping her clothes out of the way, while Edward stabbed a syringe into her arm.
How many times had I imagined her naked? Now I couldn’t look. I was afraid to have these memories in my head.
“What’s happening, Edward?” “He’s suffocating!”
“The placenta must have detached!”
Somewhere in this, Bella came around. She responded to their words with a shriek that clawed at my eardrums.
“Get him OUT!” she screamed. “He can’t BREATHE! Do it NOW!”
I saw the red spots pop out when her scream broke the blood vessels in her eyes. “The morphine—,” Edward growled.
“NO! NOW—!” Another gush of blood choked off what she was shrieking. He held her head up, desperately trying to clear her mouth so that she could breathe again.
Alice darted into the room and clipped a little blue earpiece under Rosalie’s hair. Then Alice backed away, her gold eyes wide and burning, while Rosalie hissed frantically into the phone.
In the bright light, Bella’s skin seemed more purple and black than it was white. Deep red was seeping beneath the skin over the huge, shuddering bulge of her stomach. Rosalie’s hand came up with a scalpel.
“Let the morphine spread!” Edward shouted at her. “There’s no time,” Rosalie hissed. “He’s dying!”
Her hand came down on Bella’s stomach, and vivid red spouted out from where she pierced the skin. It was like a bucket being turned over, a faucet twisted to full. Bella jerked, but didn’t scream. She was still choking.
And then Rosalie lost her focus. I saw the expression on her face shift, saw her lips pull back from her teeth and her black eyes glint with thirst.
“No, Rose!” Edward roared, but his hands were trapped, trying to prop Bella upright so she could breathe.
I launched myself at Rosalie, jumping across the table without bothering to phase. As I hit her stone body, knocking her toward the door, I felt the scalpel in her hand stab deep into my left arm. My right palm smashed against her face, locking her jaw and blocking her airways.
I used my grip on Rosalie’s face to swing her body out so that I could land a solid kick in her gut; it was like kicking concrete. She flew into the door frame, buckling one side of it. The little speaker in her ear crackled into pieces. Then Alice was there, yanking her by the throat to get her into the hall.
And I had to give it to Blondie—she didn’t put up an ounce of fight. She wanted
us to win. She let me trash her like that, to save Bella. Well, to save the thing. I ripped the blade out of my arm.
“Alice, get her out of here!” Edward shouted. “Take her to Jasper and keep her there! Jacob, I need you!”
I didn’t watch Alice finish the job. I wheeled back to the operating table, where Bella was turning blue, her eyes wide and staring.
“CPR?” Edward growled at me, fast and demanding. “Yes!”
I judged his face swiftly, looking for any sign that he was going to react like Rosalie. There was nothing but single-minded ferocity.
“Get her breathing! I’ve got to get him out before—”
Another shattering crack inside her body, the loudest yet, so loud that we both froze in shock waiting for her answering shriek. Nothing. Her legs, which had been curled up in agony, now went limp, sprawling out in an unnatural way.
“Her spine,” he choked in horror.
“Get it out of her!” I snarled, flinging the scalpel at him. “She won’t feel anything now!”
And then I bent over her head. Her mouth looked clear, so I pressed mine to hers and blew a lungful of air into it. I felt her twitching body expand, so there was nothing blocking her throat.
Her lips tasted like blood.
I could hear her heart, thumping unevenly. Keep it going, I thought fiercely at her, blowing another gust of air into her body. You promised. Keep your heart beating.
I heard the soft, wet sound of the scalpel across her stomach. More blood dripping to the floor.
The next sound jolted through me, unexpected, terrifying. Like metal being shredded apart. The sound brought back the fight in the clearing so many months ago, the tearing sound of the newborns being ripped apart. I glanced over to see Edward’s face pressed against the bulge. Vampire teeth—a surefire way to cut through vampire skin.
I shuddered as I blew more air into Bella.
She coughed back at me, her eyes blinking, rolling blindly.
“You stay with me now, Bella!” I yelled at her. “Do you hear me? Stay! You’re not leaving me. Keep your heart beating!”
Her eyes wheeled, looking for me, or him, but seeing nothing. I stared into them anyway, keeping my gaze locked there.
And then her body was suddenly still under my hands, though her breathing picked up roughly and her heart continued to thud. I realized the stillness meant that it was over. The internal beating was over. It must be out of her.
It was.
Edward whispered, “Renesmee.”
So Bella’d been wrong. It wasn’t the boy she’d imagined. No big surprise there. What hadn’t she been wrong about?
I didn’t look away from her red-spotted eyes, but I felt her hands lift weakly. “Let me…,” she croaked in a broken whisper. “Give her to me.”
I guess I should have known that he would always give her what she wanted, no matter how stupid her request might be. But I didn’t dream he would listen to her now. So I didn’t think to stop him.
Something warm touched my arm. That right there should have caught my attention. Nothing felt warm to me.
But I couldn’t look away from Bella’s face. She blinked and then stared, finally seeing something. She moaned out a strange, weak croon.
“Renes… mee. So… beautiful.”
And then she gasped—gasped in pain.
By the time I looked, it was too late. Edward had snatched the warm, bloody thing out of her limp arms. My eyes flickered across her skin. It was red with blood—the blood that had flowed from her mouth, the blood smeared all over the creature, and fresh blood welling out of a tiny double-crescent bite mark just over her left breast.
“No, Renesmee,” Edward murmured, like he was teaching the monster manners.
I didn’t look at him or it. I watched only Bella as her eyes rolled back into her head.
With a last dull ga-lump, her heart faltered and went silent.
She missed maybe half of one beat, and then my hands were on her chest, doing compressions. I counted in my head, trying to keep the rhythm steady. One. Two. Three. Four.
Breaking away for a second, I blew another lungful of air into her.
I couldn’t see anymore. My eyes were wet and blurry. But I was hyperaware of the sounds in the room. The unwilling glug-glug of her heart under my demanding
hands, the pounding of my own heart, and another—a fluttering beat that was too fast, too light. I couldn’t place it.
I forced more air down Bella’s throat.
“What are you waiting for?” I choked out breathlessly, pumping her heart again. One. Two. Three. Four.
“Take the baby,” Edward said urgently.
“Throw it out the window.” One. Two. Three. Four. “Give her to me,” a low voice chimed from the doorway. Edward and I snarled at the same time.
One. Two. Three. Four.
“I’ve got it under control,” Rosalie promised. “Give me the baby, Edward. I’ll take care of her until Bella . . .”
I breathed for Bella again while the exchange took place. The fluttering thumpa- thumpa-thumpa faded away with distance.
“Move your hands, Jacob.”
I looked up from Bella’s white eyes, still pumping her heart for her. Edward had a syringe in his hand—all silver, like it was made from steel.
“What’s that?”
His stone hand knocked mine out of the way. There was a tiny crunch as his blow broke my little finger. In the same second, he shoved the needle straight into her heart.
“My venom,” he answered as he pushed the plunger down.
I heard the jolt in her heart, like he’d shocked her with paddles.
“Keep it moving,” he ordered. His voice was ice, was dead. Fierce and unthinking. Like he was a machine.
I ignored the healing ache in my finger and started pumping her heart again. It was harder, as if her blood was congealing there—thicker and slower. While I pushed the now-viscous blood through her arteries, I watched what he was doing.
It was like he was kissing her, brushing his lips at her throat, at her wrists, into the crease at the inside of her arm. But I could hear the lush tearing of her skin as his teeth bit through, again and again, forcing venom into her system at as many points as possible. I saw his pale tongue sweep along the bleeding gashes, but before this could make me either sick or angry, I realized what he was doing.
Where his tongue washed the venom over her skin, it sealed shut. Holding the poison and the blood inside her body.
I blew more air into her mouth, but there was nothing there. Just the lifeless rise of her chest in response. I kept pumping her heart, counting, while he worked manically over her, trying to put her back together. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men…
But there was nothing there, just me, just him. Working over a corpse.
Because that’s all that was left of the girl we both loved. This broken, bled-out, mangled corpse. We couldn’t put Bella together again.
I knew it was too late. I knew she was dead. I knew it for sure because the pull was gone. I didn’t feel any reason to be here beside her. She wasn’t here anymore. So this body had no more draw for me. The senseless need to be near her had vanished.
Or maybe moved was the better word. It seemed like I felt the pull from the opposite direction now. From down the stairs, out the door. The longing to get away from here and never, ever come back.
“Go, then,” he snapped, and he hit my hands out of the way again, taking my place this time. Three fingers broken, it felt like.
I straightened them numbly, not minding the throb of pain. He pushed her dead heart faster than I had.
“She’s not dead,” he growled. “She’s going to be fine.” I wasn’t sure he was talking to me anymore.
Turning away, leaving him with his dead, I walked slowly to the door. So slowly. I couldn’t make my feet move faster.
This was it, then. The ocean of pain. The other shore so far away across the boiling water that I couldn’t imagine it, much less see it.
I felt empty again, now that I’d lost my purpose. Saving Bella had been my fight for so long now. And she wouldn’t be saved. She’d willingly sacrificed herself to be torn apart by that monster’s young, and so the fight was lost. It was all over.
I shuddered at the sound coming from behind me as I plodded down the stairs— the sound of a dead heart being forced to thud.
I wanted to somehow pour bleach inside my head and let it fry my brain. To burn away the images left from Bella’s final minutes. I’d take the brain damage if I could get rid of that—the screaming, the bleeding, the unbearable crunching and snapping as the newborn monster tore through her from the inside out. . . .
I wanted to sprint away, to take the stairs ten at a time and race out the door, but my feet were heavy as iron and my body was more tired than it had ever been before. I shuffled down the stairs like a crippled old man.
I rested at the bottom step, gathering my strength to get out the door.
Rosalie was on the clean end of the white sofa, her back to me, cooing and murmuring to the blanket-wrapped thing in her arms. She must have heard me pause, but she ignored me, caught up in her moment of stolen motherhood.
Maybe she would be happy now. Rosalie had what she wanted, and Bella would never come to take the creature from her. I wondered if that’s what the poisonous blonde had been hoping for all along.
She held something dark in her hands, and there was a greedy sucking sound coming from the tiny murderer she held.
The scent of blood in the air. Human blood. Rosalie was feeding it. Of course it would want blood. What else would you feed the kind of monster that would brutally mutilate its own mother? It might as well have been drinking Bella’s blood. Maybe it was.
My strength came back to me as I listened to the sound of the little executioner feeding.
Strength and hate and heat—red heat washing through my head, burning but erasing nothing. The images in my head were fuel, building up the inferno but refusing to be consumed. I felt the tremors rock me from head to toe, and I did not try to stop them.
Rosalie was totally absorbed in the creature, paying no attention to me at all. She wouldn’t be quick enough to stop me, distracted as she was.
Sam had been right. The thing was an aberration—its existence went against nature. A black, soulless demon. Something that had no right to be.
Something that had to be destroyed.
It seemed like the pull had not been leading to the door after all. I could feel it now, encouraging me, tugging me forward. Pushing me to finish this, to cleanse the world of this abomination.
Rosalie would try to kill me when the creature was dead, and I would fight back. I wasn’t sure if I would have time to finish her before the others came to help.
Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t much care either way.
I didn’t care if the wolves, either set, avenged me or called the Cullens’ justice fair. None of that mattered. All I cared about was my own justice. My revenge. The thing that had killed Bella would not live another minute longer.
If Bella’d survived, she would have hated me for this. She would have wanted to kill me personally.
But I didn’t care. She didn’t care what she had done to me—letting herself be slaughtered like an animal. Why should I take her feelings into account?
And then there was Edward. He must be too busy now—too far gone in his insane denial, trying to reanimate a corpse—to listen to my plans.
So I wouldn’t get the chance to keep my promise to him, unless—and it was not a wager I’d put money on—I managed to win the fight against Rosalie, Jasper, and Alice, three on one. But even if I did win, I didn’t think I had it in me to kill Edward.
Because I didn’t have enough compassion for that. Why should I let him get away from what he’d done? Wouldn’t it be more fair—more satisfying—to let him live with nothing, nothing at all?
It made me almost smile, as filled with hate as I was, to imagine it. No Bella. No killer spawn. And also missing as many members of his family as I was able to take down. Of course, he could probably put those back together, since I wouldn’t be around to burn them. Unlike Bella, who would never be whole again.
I wondered if the creature could be put back together. I doubted it. It was part Bella, too—so it must have inherited some of her vulnerability. I could hear that in the tiny, thrumming beat of its heart.
Its heart was beating. Hers wasn’t.
Only a second had passed as I made these easy decisions.
The trembling was getting tighter and faster. I coiled myself, preparing to spring at the blond vampire and rip the murderous thing from her arms with my teeth.
Rosalie cooed at the creature again, setting the empty metal bottle-thing aside and lifting the creature into the air to nuzzle her face against its cheek.
Perfect. The new position was perfect for my strike. I leaned forward and felt the heat begin to change me while the pull toward the killer grew—it was stronger than I’d ever felt it before, so strong it reminded me of an Alpha’s command, like it would crush me if I didn’t obey.
This time I wanted to obey.
The murderer stared past Rosalie’s shoulder at me, its gaze more focused than any newborn creature’s gaze should be.
Warm brown eyes, the color of milk chocolate—the exact same color that Bella’s had been.
My shaking jerked to a stop; heat flooded through me, stronger than before, but it was a new kind of heat—not a burning.
It was a glowing.
Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the tiny porcelain face of the half-vampire, half-human baby. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was—my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space.
I was not left drifting. A new string held me where I was.
Not one string, but a million. Not strings, but steel cables. A million steel cables all tying me to one thing—to the very center of the universe.
I could see that now—how the universe swirled around this one point. I’d never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain.
The gravity of the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood.
It was the baby girl in the blond vampire’s arms that held me here now. Renesmee.
From upstairs, there was a new sound. The only sound that could touch me in this endless instant.
A frantic pounding, a racing beat…
A changing heart.
BOOK THREE
bella CONTENTS
PREFACE
19. BURNING
20. NEW
21. FIRST HUNT
22. PROMISED
23. MEMORIES
24. SURPRISE
25. FAVOR
26. SHINY
27. TRAVEL PLANS
28. THE FUTURE
29. DEFECTION
30. IRRESISTIBLE
31. TALENTED
32. COMPANY
33. FORGERY
34. DECLARED
35. DEADLINE
36. BLOODLUST
37. CONTRIVANCES
38. POWER
39. THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.
Orson Scott Card
Empire
PREFACE
No longer just a nightmare, the line of black advanced on us through the icy mist stirred up by their feet.
We’re going to die, I thought in panic. I was desperate for the precious one I guarded, but even to think of that was a lapse in attention I could not afford.
They ghosted closer, their dark robes billowing slightly with the movement. I saw their hands curl into bone-colored claws. They drifted apart, angling to come at us from all sides. We were outnumbered. It was over.
And then, like a burst of light from a flash, the whole scene was different. Yet nothing changed—the Volturi still stalked toward us, poised to kill. All that really changed was how the picture looked to me. Suddenly, I was hungry for it. I wanted them to charge. The panic changed to bloodlust as I crouched forward, a smile on my face, and a growl ripped through my bared teeth.
19. BURNING
The pain was bewildering.
Exactly that—I was bewildered. I couldn’t understand, couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
My body tried to reject the pain, and I was sucked again and again into a blackness that cut out whole seconds or maybe even minutes of the agony, making it that much harder to keep up with reality.
I tried to separate them.
Non-reality was black, and it didn’t hurt so much.
Reality was red, and it felt like I was being sawed in half, hit by a bus, punched by a prize fighter, trampled by bulls, and submerged in acid, all at the same time.
Reality was feeling my body twist and flip when I couldn’t possibly move because of the pain.
Reality was knowing there was something so much more important than all this torture, and not being able to remember what it was.
Reality had come on so fast.
One moment, everything was as it should have been. Surrounded by people I loved. Smiles. Somehow, unlikely as it was, it seemed like I was about to get everything I’d been fighting for.
And then one tiny, inconsequential thing had gone wrong.
I’d watched as my cup tilted, dark blood spilling out and staining the perfect white, and I’d lurched toward the accident reflexively. I’d seen the other, faster hands, but my body had continued to reach, to stretch. . . .
Inside me, something had yanked the opposite direction. Ripping. Breaking. Agony.
The darkness had taken over, and then washed away to a wave of torture. I couldn’t breathe—I had drowned once before, and this was different; it was too hot in my throat.
Pieces of me shattering, snapping, slicing apart. . . .
More blackness.
Voices, this time, shouting, as the pain came back. “The placenta must have detached!”
Something sharper than knives ripped through me—the words, making sense in spite of the other tortures. Detached placenta—I knew what that meant. It meant that my baby was dying inside me.
“Get him out!” I screamed to Edward. Why hadn’t he done it yet? “He can’t breathe! Do it now!”
“The morphine—”
He wanted to wait, to give me painkillers, while our baby was dying?! “No! Now—,” I choked, unable to finish.
Black spots covered the light in the room as a cold point of new pain stabbed icily into my stomach. It felt wrong—I struggled automatically to protect my womb, my baby, my little Edward Jacob, but I was weak. My lungs ached, oxygen burned away.
The pain faded away again, though I clung to it now. My baby, my baby, dying. . .
.
How long had passed? Seconds or minutes? The pain was gone. Numb. I couldn’t feel. I still couldn’t see, either, but I could hear. There was air in my lungs again, scraping in rough bubbles up and down my throat.
“You stay with me now, Bella! Do you hear me? Stay! You’re not leaving me. Keep your heart beating!”
Jacob? Jacob, still here, still trying to save me.
Of course, I wanted to tell him. Of course I would keep my heart beating. Hadn’t I promised them both?
I tried to feel my heart, to find it, but I was so lost inside my own body. I couldn’t feel the things I should, and nothing felt in the right place. I blinked and I found my eyes. I could see the light. Not what I was looking for, but better than nothing.
As my eyes struggled to adjust, Edward whispered, “Renesmee.” Renesmee?
Not the pale and perfect son of my imagination? I felt a moment of shock. And then a flood of warmth.
Renesmee.
I willed my lips to move, willed the bubbles of air to turn into whispers on my tongue. I forced my numb hands to reach.
“Let me… Give her to me.”
The light danced, shattering off Edward’s crystal hands. The sparkles were tinged with red, with the blood that covered his skin. And more red in his hands.
Something small and struggling, dripping with blood. He touched the warm body to my weak arms, almost like I was holding her. Her wet skin was hot—as hot as Jacob’s.
My eyes focused; suddenly everything was absolutely clear.
Renesmee did not cry, but she breathed in quick, startled pants. Her eyes were open, her expression so shocked it was almost funny. The little, perfectly round head was covered in a thick layer of matted, bloody curls. Her irises were a familiar—but astonishing—chocolate brown. Under the blood, her skin looked pale, a creamy ivory. All besides her cheeks, which flamed with color.
Her tiny face was so absolutely perfect that it stunned me. She was even more beautiful than her father. Unbelievable. Impossible.
“Renesmee,” I whispered. “So… beautiful.”
The impossible face suddenly smiled—a wide, deliberate smile. Behind the shell- pink lips was a full complement of snowy milk teeth.
She leaned her head down, against my chest, burrowing against the warmth. Her skin was warm and silky, but it didn’t give the way mine did.
Then there was pain again—just one warm slash of it. I gasped.
And she was gone. My angel-faced baby was nowhere. I couldn’t see or feel her.
No! I wanted to shout. Give her back to me!
But the weakness was too much. My arms felt like empty rubber hoses for a moment, and then they felt like nothing at all. I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t feel me.
The blackness rushed over my eyes more solidly than before. Like a thick blindfold, firm and fast. Covering not just my eyes but also my self with a
crushing weight. It was exhausting to push against it. I knew it would be so much easier to give in. To let the blackness push me down, down, down to a place where there was no pain and no weariness and no worry and no fear.
If it had only been for myself, I wouldn’t have been able to struggle very long. I was only human, with no more than human strength. I’d been trying to keep up with the supernatural for too long, like Jacob had said.
But this wasn’t just about me.
If I did the easy thing now, let the black nothingness erase me, I would hurt them.
Edward. Edward. My life and his were twisted into a single strand. Cut one, and you cut both. If he were gone, I would not be able to live through that. If I were gone, he wouldn’t live through it, either. And a world without Edward seemed completely pointless. Edward had to exist.
Jacob—who’d said goodbye to me over and over but kept coming back when I needed him. Jacob, who I’d wounded so many times it was criminal. Would I hurt him again, the worst way yet? He’d stayed for me, despite everything. Now all he asked was that I stay for him.
But it was so dark here that I couldn’t see either of their faces. Nothing seemed real. That made it hard not to give up.
I kept pushing against the black, though, almost a reflex. I wasn’t trying to lift it. I was just resisting. Not allowing it to crush me completely. I wasn’t Atlas, and the black felt as heavy as a planet; I couldn’t shoulder it. All I could do was not be entirely obliterated.
It was sort of the pattern to my life—I’d never been strong enough to deal with the things outside my control, to attack the enemies or outrun them. To avoid the pain. Always human and weak, the only thing I’d ever been able to do was keep going. Endure. Survive.
It had been enough up to this point. It would have to be enough today. I would endure this until help came.
I knew Edward would be doing everything he could. He would not give up. Neither would I.
I held the blackness of nonexistence at bay by inches.
It wasn’t enough, though—that determination. As the time ground on and on and the darkness gained by tiny eighths and sixteenths of my inches, I needed something more to draw strength from.
I couldn’t pull even Edward’s face into view. Not Jacob’s, not Alice’s or Rosalie’s or Charlie’s or Renée’s or Carlisle’s or Esme’s… Nothing. It terrified me, and I wondered if it was too late.
I felt myself slipping—there was nothing to hold on to.
No! I had to survive this. Edward was depending on me. Jacob. Charlie Alice Rosalie Carlisle Renée Esme…
Renesmee.
And then, though I still couldn’t see anything, suddenly I could feel something. Like phantom limbs, I imagined I could feel my arms again. And in them, something small and hard and very, very warm.
My baby. My little nudger.
I had done it. Against the odds, I had been strong enough to survive Renesmee, to hold on to her until she was strong enough to live without me.
That spot of heat in my phantom arms felt so real. I clutched it closer. It was exactly where my heart should be. Holding tight the warm memory of my daughter, I knew that I would be able to fight the darkness as long as I needed to.
The warmth beside my heart got more and more real, warmer and warmer. Hotter. The heat was so real it was hard to believe that I was imagining it.
Hotter.
Uncomfortable now. Too hot. Much, much too hot.
Like grabbing the wrong end of a curling iron—my automatic response was to drop the scorching thing in my arms. But there was nothing in my arms. My arms were not curled to my chest. My arms were dead things lying somewhere at my side. The heat was inside me.
The burning grew—rose and peaked and rose again until it surpassed anything I’d ever felt.
I felt the pulse behind the fire raging now in my chest and realized that I’d found my heart again, just in time to wish I never had. To wish that I’d embraced the blackness while I’d still had the chance. I wanted to raise my arms and claw my chest open and rip the heart from it—anything to get rid of this torture. But I couldn’t feel my arms, couldn’t move one vanished finger.
James, snapping my leg under his foot. That was nothing. That was a soft place to rest on a feather bed. I’d take that now, a hundred times. A hundred snaps. I’d take it and be grateful.
The baby, kicking my ribs apart, breaking her way through me piece by piece. That was nothing. That was floating in a pool of cool water. I’d take it a thousand times. Take it and be grateful.
The fire blazed hotter and I wanted to scream. To beg for someone to kill me now, before I lived one more second in this pain. But I couldn’t move my lips. The weight was still there, pressing on me.
I realized it wasn’t the darkness holding me down; it was my body. So heavy. Burying me in the flames that were chewing their way out from my heart now, spreading with impossible pain through my shoulders and stomach, scalding their way up my throat, licking at my face.
Why couldn’t I move? Why couldn’t I scream? This wasn’t part of the stories.
My mind was unbearably clear—sharpened by the fierce pain—and I saw the answer almost as soon as I could form the questions.
The morphine.
It seemed like a million deaths ago that we’d discussed it—Edward, Carlisle, and
I. Edward and Carlisle had hoped that enough painkillers would help fight the pain of the venom. Carlisle had tried with Emmett, but the venom had burned ahead of the medicine, sealing his veins. There hadn’t been time for it to spread.
I’d kept my face smooth and nodded and thanked my rarely lucky stars that Edward could not read my mind.
Because I’d had morphine and venom together in my system before, and I knew the truth. I knew the numbness of the medicine was completely irrelevant while the venom seared through my veins. But there’d been no way I was going to mention that fact. Nothing that would make him more unwilling to change me.
I hadn’t guessed that the morphine would have this effect—that it would pin me down and gag me. Hold me paralyzed while I burned.
I knew all the stories. I knew that Carlisle had kept quiet enough to avoid discovery while he burned. I knew that, according to Rosalie, it did no good to scream. And I’d hoped that maybe I could be like Carlisle. That I would believe Rosalie’s words and keep my mouth shut. Because I knew that every scream that escaped my lips would torment Edward.
Now it seemed like a hideous joke that I was getting my wish fulfilled.
If I couldn’t scream, how could I tell them to kill me?
All I wanted was to die. To never have been born. The whole of my existence did not outweigh this pain. Wasn’t worth living through it for one more heartbeat.
Let me die, let me die, let me die.
And, for a never-ending space, that was all there was. Just the fiery torture, and my soundless shrieks, pleading for death to come. Nothing else, not even time. So that made it infinite, with no beginning and no end. One infinite moment of pain.
The only change came when suddenly, impossibly, my pain was doubled. The lower half of my body, deadened since before the morphine, was suddenly on fire, too. Some broken connection had been healed—knitted together by the scorching fingers of the flame.
The endless burn raged on.
It could have been seconds or days, weeks or years, but, eventually, time came to mean something again.
Three things happened together, grew from each other so that I didn’t know which came first: time restarted, the morphine’s weight faded, and I got stronger.
I could feel the control of my body come back to me in increments, and those increments were my first markers of the time passing. I knew it when I was able to twitch my toes and twist my fingers into fists. I knew it, but I did not act on it.
Though the fire did not decrease one tiny degree—in fact, I began to develop a new capacity for experiencing it, a new sensitivity to appreciate, separately, each blistering tongue of flame that licked through my veins—I discovered that I could think around it.
I could remember why I shouldn’t scream. I could remember the reason why I’d committed to enduring this unendurable agony. I could remember that, though it felt impossible now, there was something that might be worth the torture.
This happened just in time for me to hold on when the weights left my body. To anyone watching me, there would be no change. But for me, as I struggled to keep the screams and thrashing locked up inside my body, where they couldn’t hurt anyone else, it felt like I’d gone from being tied to the stake as I burned, to gripping that stake to hold myself in the fire.
I had just enough strength to lie there unmoving while I was charred alive.
My hearing got clearer and clearer, and I could count the frantic, pounding beats of my heart to mark the time.
I could count the shallow breaths that gasped through my teeth.
I could count the low, even breaths that came from somewhere close beside me. These moved slowest, so I concentrated on them. They meant the most time passing. More even than a clock’s pendulum, those breaths pulled me through the burning seconds toward the end.
I continued to get stronger, my thoughts clearer. When new noises came, I could listen.
There were light footsteps, the whisper of air stirred by an opening door. The footsteps got closer, and I felt pressure against the inside of my wrist. I couldn’t feel the coolness of the fingers. The fire blistered away every memory of cool.
“Still no change?” “None.”
The lightest pressure, breath against my scorched skin. “There’s no scent of the morphine left.”
“I know.”
“Bella? Can you hear me?”
I knew, beyond all doubt, that if I unlocked my teeth I would lose it—I would shriek and screech and writhe and thrash. If I opened my eyes, if I so much as twitched a finger—any change at all would be the end of my control.
“Bella? Bella, love? Can you open your eyes? Can you squeeze my hand?”
Pressure on my fingers. It was harder not to answer this voice, but I stayed paralyzed. I knew that the pain in his voice now was nothing compared to what it could be. Right now he only feared that I was suffering.
“Maybe… Carlisle, maybe I was too late.” His voice was muffled; it broke on the word late.
My resolve wavered for a second.
“Listen to her heart, Edward. It’s stronger than even Emmett’s was. I’ve never heard anything so vital. She’ll be perfect.”
Yes, I was right to keep quiet. Carlisle would reassure him. He didn’t need to suffer with me.
“And her—her spine?”
“Her injuries weren’t so much worse than Esme’s. The venom will heal her as it did Esme.”
“But she’s so still. I must have done something wrong.”
“Or something right, Edward. Son, you did everything I could have and more. I’m not sure I would have had the persistence, the faith it took to save her. Stop berating yourself. Bella is going to be fine.”
A broken whisper. “She must be in agony.”
“We don’t know that. She had so much morphine in her system. We don’t know the effect that will have on her experience.”
Faint pressure inside the crease of my elbow. Another whisper. “Bella, I love you. Bella, I’m sorry.”
I wanted so much to answer him, but I wouldn’t make his pain worse. Not while I had the strength to hold myself still.
Through all this, the racking fire went right on burning me. But there was so much space in my head now. Room to ponder their conversation, room to remember what had happened, room to look ahead to the future, with still endless room left over to suffer in.
Also room to worry.
Where was my baby? Why wasn’t she here? Why weren’t they talking about her?
“No, I’m staying right here,” Edward whispered, answering an unspoken thought. “They’ll sort it out.”
“An interesting situation,” Carlisle responded. “And I’d thought I’d seen just about everything.”
“I’ll deal with it later. We’ll deal with it.” Something pressed softly to my blistering palm.
“I’m sure, between the five of us, we can keep it from turning into bloodshed.”
Edward sighed. “I don’t know which side to take. I’d love to flog them both. Well, later.”
“I wonder what Bella will think—whose side she’ll take,” Carlisle mused.
One low, strained chuckle. “I’m sure she’ll surprise me. She always does.”
Carlisle’s footsteps faded away again, and I was frustrated that there was no further explanation. Were they talking so mysteriously just to annoy me?
I went back to counting Edward’s breaths to mark the time.
Ten thousand, nine hundred forty-three breaths later, a different set of footsteps whispered into the room. Lighter. More… rhythmic.
Strange that I could distinguish the minute differences between footsteps that I’d never been able to hear at all before today.
“How much longer?” Edward asked.
“It won’t be long now,” Alice told him. “See how clear she’s becoming? I can see her so much better.” She sighed.
“Still feeling a little bitter?”
“Yes, thanks so much for bringing it up,” she grumbled. “You would be mortified, too, if you realized that you were handcuffed by your own nature. I see vampires best, because I am one; I see humans okay, because I was one. But I can’t see these odd half-breeds at all because they’re nothing I’ve experienced. Bah!”
“Focus, Alice.”
“Right. Bella’s almost too easy to see now.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Edward sighed. It was a new sound, happier.
“She’s really going to be fine,” he breathed. “Of course she is.”
“You weren’t so sanguine two days ago.”
“I couldn’t see right two days ago. But now that she’s free of all the blind spots, it’s a piece of cake.”
“Could you concentrate for me? On the clock—give me an estimate.” Alice sighed. “So impatient. Fine. Give me a sec—”
Quiet breathing.
“Thank you, Alice.” His voice was brighter.
How long? Couldn’t they at least say it aloud for me? Was that too much to ask? How many more seconds would I burn? Ten thousand? Twenty? Another day— eighty-six thousand, four hundred? More than that?
“She’s going to be dazzling.”
Edward growled quietly. “She always has been.” Alice snorted. “You know what I mean. Look at her.”
Edward didn’t answer, but Alice’s words gave me hope that maybe I didn’t resemble the charcoal briquette I felt like. It seemed as if I must be just a pile of charred bones by now. Every cell in my body had been razed to ash.
I heard Alice breeze out of the room. I heard the swish of the fabric she moved, rubbing against itself. I heard the quiet buzz of the light hanging from the ceiling. I heard the faint wind brushing against the outside of the house. I could hear everything.
Downstairs, someone was watching a ball game. The Mariners were winning by two runs.
“It’s my turn,” I heard Rosalie snap at someone, and there was a low snarl in response.
“Hey, now,” Emmett cautioned. Someone hissed.
I listened for more, but there was nothing but the game. Baseball was not interesting enough to distract me from the pain, so I listened to Edward’s breathing again, counting the seconds.
Twenty-one thousand, nine hundred seventeen and a half seconds later, the pain changed.
On the good-news side of things, it started to fade from my fingertips and toes. Fading slowly, but at least it was doing something new. This had to be it. The pain was on its way out.…
And then the bad news. The fire in my throat wasn’t the same as before. I wasn’t only on fire, but I was now parched, too. Dry as bone. So thirsty. Burning fire, and burning thirst…
Also bad news: The fire inside my heart got hotter.
How was that possible?
My heartbeat, already too fast, picked up—the fire drove its rhythm to a new frantic pace.
“Carlisle,” Edward called. His voice was low but clear. I knew that Carlisle would hear it, if he were in or near the house.
The fire retreated from my palms, leaving them blissfully pain-free and cool. But it retreated to my heart, which blazed hot as the sun and beat at a furious new speed.
Carlisle entered the room, Alice at his side. Their footsteps were so distinct, I could even tell that Carlisle was on the right, and a foot ahead of Alice.
“Listen,” Edward told them.
The loudest sound in the room was my frenzied heart, pounding to the rhythm of the fire.
“Ah,” Carlisle said. “It’s almost over.”
My relief at his words was overshadowed by the excruciating pain in my heart.
My wrists were free, though, and my ankles. The fire was totally extinguished there.
“Soon,” Alice agreed eagerly. “I’ll get the others. Should I have Rosalie… ?” “Yes—keep the baby away.”
What? No. No! What did he mean, keep my baby away? What was he thinking?
My fingers twitched—the irritation breaking through my perfect façade. The room went silent besides the jack-hammering of my heart as they all stopped breathing for a second in response.
A hand squeezed my wayward fingers. “Bella? Bella, love?”
Could I answer him without screaming? I considered that for a moment, and then the fire ripped hotter still through my chest, draining in from my elbows and knees. Better not to chance it.
“I’ll bring them right up,” Alice said, an urgent edge to her tone, and I heard the swish of wind as she darted away.
And then—oh!
My heart took off, beating like helicopter blades, the sound almost a single sustained note; it felt like it would grind through my ribs. The fire flared up in the center of my chest, sucking the last remnants of the flames from the rest of my body to fuel the most scorching blaze yet. The pain was enough to stun me, to break through my iron grip on the stake. My back arched, bowed as if the fire was dragging me upward by my heart.
I allowed no other piece of my body to break rank as my torso slumped back to the table.
It became a battle inside me—my sprinting heart racing against the attacking fire. Both were losing. The fire was doomed, having consumed everything that was combustible; my heart galloped toward its last beat.
The fire constricted, concentrating inside that one remaining human organ with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud. My heart stuttered twice, and then thudded quietly again just once more.
There was no sound. No breathing. Not even mine.
For a moment, the absence of pain was all I could comprehend. And then I opened my eyes and gazed above me in wonder.
20. NEW
Everything was so clear.
Sharp. Defined.
The brilliant light overhead was still blinding-bright, and yet I could plainly see the glowing strands of the filaments inside the bulb. I could see each color of the rainbow in the white light, and, at the very edge of the spectrum, an eighth color I had no name for.
Behind the light, I could distinguish the individual grains in the dark wood ceiling above. In front of it, I could see the dust motes in the air, the sides the light touched, and the dark sides, distinct and separate. They spun like little planets, moving around each other in a celestial dance.
The dust was so beautiful that I inhaled in shock; the air whistled down my throat, swirling the motes into a vortex. The action felt wrong. I considered, and realized the problem was that there was no relief tied to the action. I didn’t need the air. My lungs weren’t waiting for it. They reacted indifferently to the influx.
I did not need the air, but I liked it. In it, I could taste the room around me—taste the lovely dust motes, the mix of the stagnant air mingling with the flow of slightly cooler air from the open door. Taste a lush whiff of silk. Taste a faint hint of something warm and desirable, something that should be moist, but wasn’t.… That smell made my throat burn dryly, a faint echo of the venom burn, though the scent was tainted by the bite of chlorine and ammonia. And most of all, I could taste an almost-honey-lilac-and-sun-flavored scent that was the strongest thing, the closest thing to me.
I heard the sound of the others, breathing again now that I did. Their breath mixed with the scent that was something just off honey and lilac and sunshine, bringing new flavors. Cinnamon, hyacinth, pear, seawater, rising bread, pine, vanilla, leather, apple, moss, lavender, chocolate.… I traded a dozen different comparisons in my mind, but none of them fit exactly. So sweet and pleasant.
The TV downstairs had been muted, and I heard someone—Rosalie?—shift her weight on the first floor.
I also heard a faint, thudding rhythm, with a voice shouting angrily to the beat. Rap music? I was mystified for a moment, and then the sound faded away like a car passing by with the windows rolled down.
With a start, I realized that this could be exactly right. Could I hear all the way to the freeway?
I didn’t realize someone was holding my hand until whoever it was squeezed it lightly. Like it had before to hide the pain, my body locked down again in surprise. This was not a touch I expected. The skin was perfectly smooth, but it was the wrong temperature. Not cold.
After that first frozen second of shock, my body responded to the unfamiliar touch in a way that shocked me even more.
Air hissed up my throat, spitting through my clenched teeth with a low, menacing sound like a swarm of bees. Before the sound was out, my muscles bunched and arched, twisting away from the unknown. I flipped off my back in a spin so fast it should have turned the room into an incomprehensible blur—but it did not. I saw every dust mote, every splinter in the wood-paneled walls, every loose thread in microscopic detail as my eyes whirled past them.
So by the time I found myself crouched against the wall defensively—about a sixteenth of a second later—I already understood what had startled me, and that I had overreacted.
Oh. Of course. Edward wouldn’t feel cold to me. We were the same temperature now.
I held my pose for an eighth of a second longer, adjusting to the scene before me.
Edward was leaning across the operating table that had been my pyre, his hand reached out toward me, his expression anxious.
Edward’s face was the most important thing, but my peripheral vision catalogued everything else, just in case. Some instinct to defend had been triggered, and I automatically searched for any sign of danger.
My vampire family waited cautiously against the far wall by the door, Emmett and Jasper in the front. Like there was danger. My nostrils flared, searching for the threat. I could smell nothing out of place. That faint scent of something delicious—but marred by harsh chemicals—tickled my throat again, setting it to aching and burning.
Alice was peeking around Jasper’s elbow with a huge grin on her face; the light sparkled off her teeth, another eight-color rainbow.
That grin reassured me and then put the pieces together. Jasper and Emmett were in the front to protect the others, as I had assumed. What I hadn’t grasped immediately was that I was the danger.
All this was a sideline. The greater part of my senses and my mind were still focused on Edward’s face.
I had never seen it before this second.
How many times had I stared at Edward and marveled over his beauty? How many hours—days, weeks—of my life had I spent dreaming about what I then deemed to be perfection? I thought I’d known his face better than my own. I’d thought this was the one sure physical thing in my whole world: the flawlessness of Edward’s face.
I may as well have been blind.
For the first time, with the dimming shadows and limiting weakness of humanity taken off my eyes, I saw his face. I gasped and then struggled with my vocabulary, unable to find the right words. I needed better words.
At this point, the other part of my attention had ascertained that there was no danger here besides myself, and I automatically straightened out of my crouch; almost a whole second had passed since I’d been on the table.
I was momentarily preoccupied by the way my body moved. The instant I’d considered standing erect, I was already straight. There was no brief fragment of time in which the action occurred; change was instantaneous, almost as if there was no movement at all.
I continued to stare at Edward’s face, motionless again.
He moved slowly around the table—each step taking nearly half a second, each step flowing sinuously like river water weaving over smooth stones—his hand still outstretched.
I watched the grace of his advance, absorbing it with my new eyes.
“Bella?” he asked in a low, calming tone, but the worry in his voice layered my name with tension.
I could not answer immediately, lost as I was in the velvet folds of his voice. It was the most perfect symphony, a symphony in one instrument, an instrument more profound than any created by man. . . .
“Bella, love? I’m sorry, I know it’s disorienting. But you’re all right. Everything is fine.”
Everything? My mind spun out, spiraling back to my last human hour. Already, the memory seemed dim, like I was watching through a thick, dark veil—because my human eyes had been half blind. Everything had been so blurred.
When he said everything was fine, did that include Renesmee? Where was she? With Rosalie? I tried to remember her face—I knew that she had been beautiful—
but it was irritating to try to see through the human memories. Her face was shrouded in darkness, so poorly lit. . . .
What about Jacob? Was he fine? Did my long-suffering best friend hate me now? Had he gone back to Sam’s pack? Seth and Leah, too?
Were the Cullens safe, or had my transformation ignited the war with the pack? Did Edward’s blanket assurance cover all of that? Or was he just trying to calm me?
And Charlie? What would I tell him now? He must have called while I was burning. What had they told him? What did he think had happened to me?
As I deliberated for one small piece of a second over which question to ask first, Edward reached out tentatively and stroked his fingertips across my cheek.
Smooth as satin, soft as a feather, and now exactly matched to the temperature of my skin.
His touch seemed to sweep beneath the surface of my skin, right through the bones of my face. The feeling was tingly, electric—it jolted through my bones, down my spine, and trembled in my stomach.
Wait, I thought as the trembling blossomed into a warmth, a yearning. Wasn’t I supposed to lose this? Wasn’t giving up this feeling a part of the bargain?
I was a newborn vampire. The dry, scorching ache in my throat gave proof to that. And I knew what being a newborn entailed. Human emotions and longings would come back to me later in some form, but I’d accepted that I would not feel them in the beginning. Only thirst. That was the deal, the price. I’d agreed to pay it.
But as Edward’s hand curled to the shape of my face like satin-covered steel, desire raced through my dried-out veins, singing from my scalp to my toes.
He arched one perfect eyebrow, waiting for me to speak. I threw my arms around him.
Again, it was like there was no movement. One moment I stood straight and still as a statue; in the same instant, he was in my arms.
Warm—or at least, that was my perception. With the sweet, delicious scent that I’d never been able to really take in with my dull human senses, but that was one hundred percent Edward. I pressed my face into his smooth chest.
And then he shifted his weight uncomfortably. Leaned away from my embrace. I stared up at his face, confused and frightened by the rejection.
“Um… carefully, Bella. Ow.”
I yanked my arms away, folding them behind my back as soon as I understood. I was too strong.
“Oops,” I mouthed.
He smiled the kind of smile that would have stopped my heart if it were still beating.
“Don’t panic, love,” he said, lifting his hand to touch my lips, parted in horror. “You’re just a bit stronger than I am for the moment.”
My eyebrows pushed together. I’d known this, too, but it felt more surreal than any other part of this ultimately surreal moment. I was stronger than Edward. I’d made him say ow.
His hand stroked my cheek again, and I all but forgot my distress as another wave of desire rippled through my motionless body.
These emotions were so much stronger than I was used to that it was hard to stick to one train of thought despite the extra room in my head. Each new sensation overwhelmed me. I remembered Edward saying once—his voice in my head a weak shadow compared to the crystal, musical clarity I was hearing now—that his kind, our kind, were easily distracted. I could see why.
I made a concerted effort to focus. There was something I needed to say. The most important thing.
Very carefully, so carefully that the movement was actually discernible, I brought my right arm out from behind my back and raised my hand to touch his cheek. I refused to let myself be sidetracked by the pearly color of my hand or by the smooth silk of his skin or by the charge that zinged in my fingertips.
I stared into his eyes and heard my own voice for the first time.
“I love you,” I said, but it sounded like singing. My voice rang and shimmered like a bell.
His answering smile dazzled me more than it ever had when I was human; I could really see it now.
“As I love you,” he told me.
He took my face between his hands and leaned his face to mine—slow enough to remind me to be careful. He kissed me, soft as a whisper at first, and then
suddenly stronger, fiercer. I tried to remember to be gentle with him, but it was hard work to remember anything in the onslaught of sensation, hard to hold on to any coherent thoughts.
It was like he’d never kissed me—like this was our first kiss. And, in truth, he’d never kissed me this way before.
It almost made me feel guilty. Surely I was in breach of the contract. I couldn’t be allowed to have this, too.
Though I didn’t need oxygen, my breathing sped, raced as fast as it had when I was burning. This was a different kind of fire.
Someone cleared his throat. Emmett. I recognized the deep sound at once, joking and annoyed at the same time.
I’d forgotten we weren’t alone. And then I realized that the way I was curved around Edward now was not exactly polite for company.
Embarrassed, I half-stepped away in another instantaneous movement.
Edward chuckled and stepped with me, keeping his arms tight around my waist. His face was glowing—like a white flame burned from behind his diamond skin.
I took an unnecessary breath to settle myself.
How different this kissing was! I read his expression as I compared the indistinct human memories to this clear, intense feeling. He looked… a little smug.
“You’ve been holding out on me,” I accused in my singing voice, my eyes narrowing a tiny bit.
He laughed, radiant with relief that it was all over—the fear, the pain, the uncertainties, the waiting, all of it behind us now. “It was sort of necessary at the time,” he reminded me. “Now it’s your turn to not break me.” He laughed again.
I frowned as I considered that, and then Edward was not the only one laughing.
Carlisle stepped around Emmett and walked toward me swiftly; his eyes were only slightly wary, but Jasper shadowed his footsteps. I’d never seen Carlisle’s face before either, not really. I had an odd urge to blink—like I was staring at the sun.
“How do you feel, Bella?” Carlisle asked.
I considered that for a sixty-fourth of a second.
“Overwhelmed. There’s so much ” I trailed off, listening to the bell-tone of my
voice again.
“Yes, it can be quite confusing.”
I nodded one fast, jerky bob. “But I feel like me. Sort of. I didn’t expect that.” Edward’s arms squeezed lightly around my waist. “I told you so,” he whispered.
“You are quite controlled,” Carlisle mused. “More so than I expected, even with the time you had to prepare yourself mentally for this.”
I thought about the wild mood swings, the difficulty concentrating, and whispered, “I’m not sure about that.”
He nodded seriously, and then his jeweled eyes glittered with interest. “It seems like we did something right with the morphine this time. Tell me, what do you remember of the transformation process?”
I hesitated, intensely aware of Edward’s breath brushing against my cheek, sending whispers of electricity through my skin.
“Everything was… very dim before. I remember the baby couldn’t breathe ”
I looked at Edward, momentarily frightened by the memory.
“Renesmee is healthy and well,” he promised, a gleam I’d never seen before in his eyes. He said her name with an understated fervor. A reverence. The way devout people talked about their gods. “What do you remember after that?”
I focused on my poker face. I’d never been much of a liar. “It’s hard to remember. It was so dark before. And then… I opened my eyes and I could see everything.”
“Amazing,” Carlisle breathed, his eyes alight.
Chagrin washed through me, and I waited for the heat to burn in my cheeks and give me away. And then I remembered that I would never blush again. Maybe that would protect Edward from the truth.
I’d have to find a way to tip off Carlisle, though. Someday. If he ever needed to create another vampire. That possibility seemed very unlikely, which made me feel better about lying.
“I want you to think—to tell me everything you remember,” Carlisle pressed excitedly, and I couldn’t help the grimace that flashed across my face. I didn’t want to have to keep lying, because I might slip up. And I didn’t want to think
about the burning. Unlike the human memories, that part was perfectly clear and I found I could remember it with far too much precision.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Bella,” Carlisle apologized immediately. “Of course your thirst must be very uncomfortable. This conversation can wait.”
Until he’d mentioned it, the thirst actually wasn’t unmanageable. There was so much room in my head. A separate part of my brain was keeping tabs on the burn in my throat, almost like a reflex. The way my old brain had handled breathing and blinking.
But Carlisle’s assumption brought the burn to the forefront of my mind. Suddenly, the dry ache was all I could think about, and the more I thought about it, the more it hurt. My hand flew up to cup my throat, like I could smother the flames from the outside. The skin of my neck was strange beneath my fingers. So smooth it was somehow soft, though it was hard as stone, too.
Edward dropped his arms and took my other hand, tugging gently. “Let’s hunt, Bella.”
My eyes opened wider and the pain of the thirst receded, shock taking its place. Me? Hunt? With Edward? But… how? I didn’t know what to do.
He read the alarm in my expression and smiled encouragingly. “It’s quite easy, love. Instinctual. Don’t worry, I’ll show you.” When I didn’t move, he grinned his crooked smile and raised his eyebrows. “I was under the impression that you’d always wanted to see me hunt.”
I laughed in a short burst of humor (part of me listened in wonder to the pealing bell sound) as his words reminded me of cloudy human conversations. And then I took a whole second to run quickly through those first days with Edward—the true beginning of my life—in my head so that I would never forget them. I did not expect that it would be so uncomfortable to remember. Like trying to squint through muddy water. I knew from Rosalie’s experience that if I thought of my human memories enough, I would not lose them over time. I did not want to forget one minute I’d spent with Edward, even now, when eternity stretched in front of us. I would have to make sure those human memories were cemented into my infallible vampire mind.
“Shall we?” Edward asked. He reached up to take the hand that was still at my neck. His fingers smoothed down the column of my throat. “I don’t want you to be hurting,” he added in a low murmur. Something I would not have been able to hear before.
“I’m fine,” I said out of lingering human habit. “Wait. First.”
There was so much. I’d never gotten to my questions. There were more important things than the ache.
It was Carlisle who spoke now. “Yes?” “I want to see her. Renesmee.”
It was oddly difficult to say her name. My daughter; these words were even harder to think. It all seemed so distant. I tried to remember how I had felt three days ago, and automatically, my hands pulled free of Edward’s and dropped to my stomach.
Flat. Empty. I clutched at the pale silk that covered my skin, panicking again, while an insignificant part of my mind noted that Alice must have dressed me.
I knew there was nothing left inside me, and I faintly remembered the bloody removal scene, but the physical proof was still hard to process. All I knew was loving my little nudger inside of me. Outside of me, she seemed like something I must have imagined. A fading dream—a dream that was half nightmare.
While I wrestled with my confusion, I saw Edward and Carlisle exchange a guarded glance.
“What?” I demanded.
“Bella,” Edward said soothingly. “That’s not really a good idea. She’s half human, love. Her heart beats, and blood runs in her veins. Until your thirst is positively under control… You don’t want to put her in danger, do you?”
I frowned. Of course I must not want that.
Was I out of control? Confused, yes. Easily unfocused, yes. But dangerous? To her? My daughter?
I couldn’t be positive that the answer was no. So I would have to be patient. That sounded difficult. Because until I saw her again, she wouldn’t be real. Just a fading dream… of a stranger…
“Where is she?” I listened hard, and then I could hear the beating heart on the floor below me. I could hear more than one person breathing—quietly, like they were listening, too. There was also a fluttering sound, a thrumming, that I couldn’t place. . . .
And the sound of the heartbeat was so moist and appealing, that my mouth started watering.
So I would definitely have to learn how to hunt before I saw her. My stranger baby.
“Is Rosalie with her?”
“Yes,” Edward answered in a clipped tone, and I could see that something he’d thought of upset him. I’d thought he and Rose were over their differences. Had the animosity erupted again? Before I could ask, he pulled my hands away from my flat stomach, tugging gently again.
“Wait,” I protested again, trying to focus. “What about Jacob? And Charlie? Tell me everything that I missed. How long was I… unconscious?”
Edward didn’t seem to notice my hesitation over the last word. Instead, he was exchanging another wary glance with Carlisle.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“Nothing is wrong,” Carlisle told me, emphasizing the last word in a strange way. “Nothing has changed much, actually—you were only unaware for just over two days. It was very fast, as these things go. Edward did an excellent job. Quite innovative—the venom injection straight to your heart was his idea.” He paused to smile proudly at his son and then sighed. “Jacob is still here, and Charlie still believes that you are sick. He thinks you’re in Atlanta right now, undergoing tests at the CDC. We gave him a bad number, and he’s frustrated. He’s been speaking to Esme.”
“I should call him…,” I murmured to myself, but, listening to my own voice, I understood the new difficulties. He wouldn’t recognize this voice. It wouldn’t reassure him. And then the earlier surprise intruded. “Hold on—Jacob is still here?”
Another glance between them.
“Bella,” Edward said quickly. “There’s much to discuss, but we should take care of you first. You have to be in pain ”
When he pointed that out, I remembered the burn in my throat and swallowed convulsively. “But Jacob—”
“We have all the time in the world for explanations, love,” he reminded me gently.
Of course. I could wait a little longer for the answer; it would be easier to listen when the fierce pain of the fiery thirst was no longer scattering my concentration. “Okay.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Alice trilled from the doorway. She danced across the room, dreamily graceful. As with Edward and Carlisle, I felt some shock as I really looked at her face for the first time. So lovely. “You promised I could be there the first time! What if you two run past something reflective?”
“Alice—,” Edward protested.
“It will only take a second!” And with that, Alice darted from the room. Edward sighed.
“What is she talking about?”
But Alice was already back, carrying the huge, gilt-framed mirror from Rosalie’s room, which was nearly twice as tall as she was, and several times as wide.
Jasper had been so still and silent that I’d taken no notice of him since he’d followed behind Carlisle. Now he moved again, to hover over Alice, his eyes locked on my expression. Because I was the danger here.
I knew he would be tasting the mood around me, too, and so he must have felt my jolt of shock as I studied his face, looking at it closely for the first time.
Through my sightless human eyes, the scars left from his former life with the newborn armies in the South had been mostly invisible. Only with a bright light to throw their slightly raised shapes into definition could I even make out their existence.
Now that I could see, the scars were Jasper’s most dominant feature. It was hard to take my eyes off his ravaged neck and jaw—hard to believe that even a vampire could have survived so many sets of teeth ripping into his throat.
Instinctively, I tensed to defend myself. Any vampire who saw Jasper would have had the same reaction. The scars were like a lighted billboard. Dangerous, they screamed. How many vampires had tried to kill Jasper? Hundreds?
Thousands? The same number that had died in the attempt.
Jasper both saw and felt my assessment, my caution, and he smiled wryly.
“Edward gave me grief for not getting you to a mirror before the wedding,” Alice said, pulling my attention away from her frightening lover. “I’m not going to be chewed out again.”
“Chewed out?” Edward asked skeptically, one eyebrow curving upward.
“Maybe I’m overstating things,” she murmured absently as she turned the mirror to face me.
“And maybe this has solely to do with your own voyeuristic gratification,” he countered.
Alice winked at him.
I was only aware of this exchange with the lesser part of my concentration. The greater part was riveted on the person in the mirror.
My first reaction was an unthinking pleasure. The alien creature in the glass was indisputably beautiful, every bit as beautiful as Alice or Esme. She was fluid even in stillness, and her flawless face was pale as the moon against the frame of her dark, heavy hair. Her limbs were smooth and strong, skin glistening subtly, luminous as a pearl.
My second reaction was horror.
Who was she? At first glance, I couldn’t find my face anywhere in the smooth, perfect planes of her features.
And her eyes! Though I’d known to expect them, her eyes still sent a thrill of terror through me.
All the while I studied and reacted, her face was perfectly composed, a carving of a goddess, showing nothing of the turmoil roiling inside me. And then her full lips moved.
“The eyes?” I whispered, unwilling to say my eyes. “How long?
“They’ll darken up in a few months,” Edward said in a soft, comforting voice. “Animal blood dilutes the color more quickly than a diet of human blood. They’ll turn amber first, then gold.”
My eyes would blaze like vicious red flames for months?
“Months?” My voice was higher now, stressed. In the mirror, the perfect eyebrows lifted incredulously above her glowing crimson eyes—brighter than any I’d ever seen before.
Jasper took a step forward, alarmed by the intensity of my sudden anxiety. He knew young vampires only too well; did this emotion presage some misstep on my part?
No one answered my question. I looked away, to Edward and Alice. Both their eyes were slightly unfocused—reacting to Jasper’s unease. Listening to its cause, looking ahead to the immediate future.
I took another deep, unnecessary breath.
“No, I’m fine,” I promised them. My eyes flickered to the stranger in the mirror and back. “It’s just… a lot to take in.”
Jasper’s brow furrowed, highlighting the two scars over his left eye. “I don’t know,” Edward murmured.
The woman in the mirror frowned. “What question did I miss?” Edward grinned. “Jasper wonders how you’re doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Controlling your emotions, Bella,” Jasper answered. “I’ve never seen a newborn do that—stop an emotion in its tracks that way. You were upset, but when you saw our concern, you reined it in, regained power over yourself. I was prepared to help, but you didn’t need it.”
“Is that wrong?” I asked. My body automatically froze as I waited for his verdict. “No,” he said, but his voice was unsure.
Edward stroked his hand down my arm, as if encouraging me to thaw. “It’s very impressive, Bella, but we don’t understand it. We don’t know how long it can hold.”
I considered that for a portion of a second. At any moment, would I snap? Turn into a monster?
I couldn’t feel it coming on.… Maybe there was no way to anticipate such a thing.
“But what do you think?” Alice asked, a little impatient now, pointing to the mirror.
“I’m not sure,” I hedged, not wanting to admit how frightened I really was.
I stared at the beautiful woman with the terrifying eyes, looking for pieces of me. There was something there in the shape of her lips—if you looked past the dizzying beauty, it was true that her upper lip was slightly out of balance, a bit too full to match the lower. Finding this familiar little flaw made me feel a tiny bit better. Maybe the rest of me was in there, too.
I raised my hand experimentally, and the woman in the mirror copied the movement, touching her face, too. Her crimson eyes watched me warily.
Edward sighed.
I turned away from her to look at him, raising one eyebrow. “Disappointed?” I asked, my ringing voice impassive.
He laughed. “Yes,” he admitted.
I felt the shock break through the composed mask on my face, followed instantly by the hurt.
Alice snarled. Jasper leaned forward again, waiting for me to snap.
But Edward ignored them and wrapped his arms tightly around my newly frozen form, pressing his lips against my cheek. “I was rather hoping that I’d be able to hear your mind, now that it is more similar to my own,” he murmured. “And here I am, as frustrated as ever, wondering what could possibly be going on inside your head.”
I felt better at once.
“Oh well,” I said lightly, relieved that my thoughts were still my own. “I guess my brain will never work right. At least I’m pretty.”
It was becoming easier to joke with him as I adjusted, to think in straight lines. To be myself.
Edward growled in my ear. “Bella, you have never been merely pretty.”
Then his face pulled away from mine, and he sighed. “All right, all right,” he said to someone.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re making Jasper more edgy by the second. He may relax a little when you’ve hunted.”
I looked at Jasper’s worried expression and nodded. I didn’t want to snap here, if that was coming. Better to be surrounded by trees than family.
“Okay. Let’s hunt,” I agreed, a thrill of nerves and anticipation making my stomach quiver. I unwrapped Edward’s arms from around me, keeping one of his hands, and turned my back on the strange and beautiful woman in the mirror.
21. FIRST HUNT
“The window?” I asked, staring two stories down.
I’d never really been afraid of heights per se, but being able to see all the details with such clarity made the prospect less appealing. The angles of the rocks below were sharper than I would have imagined them.
Edward smiled. “It’s the most convenient exit. If you’re frightened, I can carry you.”
“We have all eternity, and you’re worried about the time it would take to walk to the back door?”
He frowned slightly. “Renesmee and Jacob are downstairs ”
“Oh.”
Right. I was the monster now. I had to keep away from scents that might trigger my wild side. From the people that I loved in particular. Even the ones I didn’t really know yet.
“Is Renesmee… okay… with Jacob there?” I whispered. I realized belatedly that it must have been Jacob’s heart I’d heard below. I listened hard again, but I could only hear the one steady pulse. “He doesn’t like her much.”
Edward’s lips tightened in an odd way. “Trust me, she is perfectly safe. I know exactly what Jacob is thinking.”
“Of course,” I murmured, and looked at the ground again. “Stalling?” he challenged.
“A little. I don’t know how ”
And I was very conscious of my family behind me, watching silently. Mostly silently. Emmett had already chuckled under his breath once. One mistake, and he’d be rolling on the floor. Then the jokes about the world’s only clumsy vampire would start.…
Also, this dress—that Alice must have put me in sometime when I was too lost in the burning to notice—was not what I would have picked out for either jumping or hunting. Tightly fitted ice-blue silk? What did she think I would need it for?
Was there a cocktail party later?
“Watch me,” Edward said. And then, very casually, he stepped out of the tall, open window and fell.
I watched carefully, analyzing the angle at which he bent his knees to absorb the impact. The sound of his landing was very low—a muted thud that could have been a door softly closed, or a book gently laid on a table.
It didn’t look hard.
Clenching my teeth as I concentrated, I tried to copy his casual step into empty air.
Ha! The ground seemed to move toward me so slowly that it was nothing at all to place my feet—what shoes had Alice put me in? Stilettos? She’d lost her mind—to place my silly shoes exactly right so that landing was no different than stepping one foot forward on a flat surface.
I absorbed the impact in the balls of my feet, not wanting to snap off the thin heels. My landing seemed just as quiet as his. I grinned at him.
“Right. Easy.”
He smiled back. “Bella?” “Yes?”
“That was quite graceful—even for a vampire.”
I considered that for a moment, and then I beamed. If he’d just been saying that, then Emmett would have laughed. No one found his remark humorous, so it must have been true. It was the first time anyone had ever applied the word graceful to me in my entire life… or, well, existence anyway.
“Thank you,” I told him.
And then I hooked the silver satin shoes off my feet one by one and lobbed them together back through the open window. A little too hard, maybe, but I heard someone catch them before they could damage the paneling.
Alice grumbled, “Her fashion sense hasn’t improved as much as her balance.”
Edward took my hand—I couldn’t stop marveling at the smoothness, the comfortable temperature of his skin—and darted through the backyard to the edge of the river. I went along with him effortlessly.
Everything physical seemed very simple.
“Are we swimming?” I asked him when we stopped beside the water. “And ruin your pretty dress? No. We’re jumping.”
I pursed my lips, considering. The river was about fifty yards wide here. “You first,” I said.
He touched my cheek, took two quick backward strides, and then ran back those two steps, launching himself from a flat stone firmly embedded in the riverbank. I studied the flash of movement as he arced over the water, finally turning a somersault just before he disappeared into the thick trees on the other side of the river.
“Show-off,” I muttered, and heard his invisible laugh.
I backed up five paces, just in case, and took a deep breath.
Suddenly, I was anxious again. Not about falling or getting hurt—I was more worried about the forest getting hurt.
It had come on slowly, but I could feel it now—the raw, massive strength thrilling in my limbs. I was suddenly sure that if I wanted to tunnel under the river, to claw or beat my way straight through the bedrock, it wouldn’t take me very long. The objects around me—the trees, the shrubs, the rocks… the house—had all begun to look very fragile.
Hoping very much that Esme was not particularly fond of any specific trees across the river, I began my first stride. And then stopped when the tight satin split six inches up my thigh. Alice!
Well, Alice always seemed to treat clothes as if they were disposable and meant for one-time usage, so she shouldn’t mind this. I bent to carefully grasp the hem at the undamaged right seam between my fingers and, exerting the tiniest amount of pressure possible, I ripped the dress open to the top of my thigh. Then I fixed the other side to match.
Much better.
I could hear the muffled laughter in the house, and even the sound of someone gritting her teeth. The laughter came from upstairs and down, and I very easily recognized the much different, rough, throaty chuckle from the first floor.
So Jacob was watching, too? I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking now, or what he was still doing here. I’d envisioned our reunion—if he could ever forgive me—taking place far in the future, when I was more stable, and time had healed the wounds I’d inflicted in his heart.
I didn’t turn to look at him now, wary of my mood swings. It wouldn’t be good to let any emotion take too strong a hold on my frame of mind. Jasper’s fears had me on edge, too. I had to hunt before I dealt with anything else. I tried to forget everything else so I could concentrate.
“Bella?” Edward called from the woods, his voice moving closer. “Do you want to watch again?”
But I remembered everything perfectly, of course, and I didn’t want to give Emmett a reason to find more humor in my education. This was physical—it should be instinctive. So I took a deep breath and ran for the river.
Unhindered by my skirt, it took only one long bound to reach the water’s edge. Just an eighty-fourth of a second, and yet it was plenty of time—my eyes and my mind moved so quickly that one step was enough. It was simple to position my right foot just so against the flat stone and exert the adequate pressure to send my body wheeling up into the air. I was paying more attention to aim than force, and I erred on the amount of power necessary—but at least I didn’t err on the side that would have gotten me wet. The fifty yard width was slightly too easy a distance. . . .
It was a strange, giddy, electrifying thing, but a short thing. An entire second had yet to pass, and I was across.
I was expecting the close-packed trees to be a problem, but they were surprisingly helpful. It was a simple matter to reach out with one sure hand as I fell back toward the earth again deep inside the forest and catch myself on a convenient branch; I swung lightly from the limb and landed on my toes, still fifteen feet from the ground on the wide bough of a Sitka spruce.
It was fabulous.
Over the sound of my peals of delighted laughter, I could hear Edward racing to find me. My jump had been twice as long as his. When he reached my tree, his eyes were wide. I leaped nimbly from the branch to his side, soundlessly landing again on the balls of my feet.
“Was that good?” I wondered, my breathing accelerated with excitement.
“Very good.” He smiled approvingly, but his casual tone didn’t match the surprised expression in his eyes.
“Can we do it again?”
“Focus, Bella—we’re on a hunting trip.” “Oh, right.” I nodded. “Hunting.”
“Follow me… if you can.” He grinned, his expression suddenly taunting, and broke into a run.
He was faster than me. I couldn’t imagine how he moved his legs with such blinding speed, but it was beyond me. However, I was stronger, and every stride of mine matched the length of three of his. And so I flew with him through the living green web, by his side, not following at all. As I ran, I couldn’t help laughing quietly at the thrill of it; the laughter neither slowed me nor upset my focus.
I could finally understand why Edward never hit the trees when he ran—a question that had always been a mystery to me. It was a peculiar sensation, the balance between the speed and the clarity. For, while I rocketed over, under, and through the thick jade maze at a rate that should have reduced everything around me to a streaky green blur, I could plainly see each tiny leaf on all the small branches of every insignificant shrub that I passed.
The wind of my speed blew my hair and my torn dress out behind me, and, though I knew it shouldn’t, it felt warm against my skin. Just as the rough forest floor shouldn’t feel like velvet beneath my bare soles, and the limbs that whipped against my skin shouldn’t feel like caressing feathers.
The forest was much more alive than I’d ever known—small creatures whose existence I’d never guessed at teemed in the leaves around me. They all grew silent after we passed, their breath quickening in fear. The animals had a much wiser reaction to our scent than humans seemed to. Certainly, it’d had the opposite effect on me.
I kept waiting to feel winded, but my breath came effortlessly. I waited for the burn to begin in my muscles, but my strength only seemed to increase as I grew accustomed to my stride. My leaping bounds stretched longer, and soon he was trying to keep up with me. I laughed again, exultant, when I heard him falling behind. My naked feet touched the ground so infrequently now it felt more like flying than running.
“Bella,” he called dryly, his voice even, lazy. I could hear nothing else; he had stopped.
I briefly considered mutiny.
But, with a sigh, I whirled and skipped lightly to his side, some hundred yards back. I looked at him expectantly. He was smiling, with one eyebrow raised. He was so beautiful that I could only stare.
“Did you want to stay in the country?” he asked, amused. “Or were you planning to continue on to Canada this afternoon?”
“This is fine,” I agreed, concentrating less on what he was saying and more on the mesmerizing way his lips moved when he spoke. It was hard not to become sidetracked with everything fresh in my strong new eyes. “What are we hunting?”
“Elk. I thought something easy for your first time . . .” He trailed off when my eyes narrowed at the word easy.
But I wasn’t going to argue; I was too thirsty. As soon as I’d started to think about the dry burn in my throat, it was all I could think about. Definitely getting worse. My mouth felt like four o’clock on a June afternoon in Death Valley.
“Where?” I asked, scanning the trees impatiently. Now that I had given the thirst my attention, it seemed to taint every other thought in my head, leaking into the more pleasant thoughts of running and Edward’s lips and kissing and… scorching thirst. I couldn’t get away from it.
“Hold still for a minute,” he said, putting his hands lightly on my shoulders. The urgency of my thirst receded momentarily at his touch.
“Now close your eyes,” he murmured. When I obeyed, he raised his hands to my face, stroking my cheekbones. I felt my breathing speed and waited briefly again for the blush that wouldn’t come.
“Listen,” Edward instructed. “What do you hear?”
Everything, I could have said; his perfect voice, his breath, his lips brushing together as he spoke, the whisper of birds preening their feathers in the treetops, their fluttering heartbeats, the maple leaves scraping together, the faint clicking of ants following each other in a long line up the bark of the nearest tree. But I knew he meant something specific, so I let my ears range outward, seeking something different than the small hum of life that surrounded me. There was an open space near us—the wind had a different sound across the exposed grass— and a small creek, with a rocky bed. And there, near the noise of the water, was the splash of lapping tongues, the loud thudding of heavy hearts, pumping thick streams of blood. . . .
It felt like the sides of my throat had sucked closed.
“By the creek, to the northeast?” I asked, my eyes still shut.
“Yes.” His tone was approving. “Now… wait for the breeze again and… what do you smell?”
Mostly him—his strange honey-lilac-and-sun perfume. But also the rich, earthy smell of rot and moss, the resin in the evergreens, the warm, almost nutty aroma of the small rodents cowering beneath the tree roots. And then, reaching out again, the clean smell of the water, which was surprisingly unappealing despite
my thirst. I focused toward the water and found the scent that must have gone with the lapping noise and the pounding heart. Another warm smell, rich and tangy, stronger than the others. And yet nearly as unappealing as the brook. I wrinkled my nose.
He chuckled. “I know—it takes some getting used to.” “Three?” I guessed.
“Five. There are two more in the trees behind them.” “What do I do now?”
His voice sounded like he was smiling. “What do you feel like doing?”
I thought about that, my eyes still shut as I listened and breathed in the scent. Another bout of baking thirst intruded on my awareness, and suddenly the warm, tangy odor wasn’t quite so objectionable. At least it would be something hot and wet in my desiccated mouth. My eyes snapped open.
“Don’t think about it,” he suggested as he lifted his hands off my face and took a step back. “Just follow your instincts.”
I let myself drift with the scent, barely aware of my movement as I ghosted down the incline to the narrow meadow where the stream flowed. My body shifted forward automatically into a low crouch as I hesitated at the fern-fringed edge of the trees. I could see a big buck, two dozen antler points crowning his head, at the stream’s edge, and the shadow-spotted shapes of the four others heading eastward into forest at a leisurely pace.
I centered myself around the scent of the male, the hot spot in his shaggy neck where the warmth pulsed strongest. Only thirty yards—two or three bounds— between us. I tensed myself for the first leap.
But as my muscles bunched in preparation, the wind shifted, blowing stronger now, and from the south. I didn’t stop to think, hurtling out of the trees in a path perpendicular to my original plan, scaring the elk into the forest, racing after a new fragrance so attractive that there wasn’t a choice. It was compulsory.
The scent ruled completely. I was single-minded as I traced it, aware only of the thirst and the smell that promised to quench it. The thirst got worse, so painful now that it confused all my other thoughts and began to remind me of the burn of venom in my veins.
There was only one thing that had any chance of penetrating my focus now, an instinct more powerful, more basic than the need to quench the fire—it was the instinct to protect myself from danger. Self-preservation.
I was suddenly alert to the fact that I was being followed. The pull of the irresistible scent warred with the impulse to turn and defend my hunt. A bubble of sound built in my chest, my lips pulled back of their own accord to expose my teeth in warning. My feet slowed, the need to protect my back struggling against the desire to quench my thirst.
And then I could hear my pursuer gaining, and defense won. As I spun, the rising sound ripped its way up my throat and out.
The feral snarl, coming from my own mouth, was so unexpected that it brought me up short. It unsettled me, and it cleared my head for a second—the thirst- driven haze receded, though the thirst burned on.
The wind shifted, blowing the smell of wet earth and coming rain across my face, further freeing me from the other scent’s fiery grip—a scent so delicious it could only be human.
Edward hesitated a few feet away, his arms raised as if to embrace me—or restrain me. His face was intent and cautious as I froze, horrified.
I realized that I had been about to attack him. With a hard jerk, I straightened out of my defensive crouch. I held my breath as I refocused, fearing the power of the fragrance swirling up from the south.
He could see reason return to my face, and he took a step toward me, lowering his arms.
“I have to get away from here,” I spit through my teeth, using the breath I had. Shock crossed his face. “Can you leave?”
I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant by that. I knew the ability to think clearly would last only as long as I could stop myself from thinking of—
I burst into a run again, a flat-out sprint straight north, concentrating solely on the uncomfortable feeling of sensory deprivation that seemed to be my body’s only response to the lack of air. My one goal was to run far enough away that the scent behind me would be completely lost. Impossible to find, even if I changed my mind…
Once again, I was aware of being followed, but I was sane this time. I fought the instinct to breathe—to use the flavors in the air to be sure it was Edward. I didn’t have to fight long; though I was running faster than I ever had before, shooting like a comet through the straightest path I could find in the trees; Edward caught up with me after a short minute.
A new thought occurred to me, and I stopped dead, my feet planted. I was sure it must be safe here, but I held my breath just in case.
Edward blew past me, surprised by my sudden freeze. He wheeled around and was at my side in a second. He put his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes, shock still the dominant emotion on his face.
“How did you do that?” he demanded.
“You let me beat you before, didn’t you?” I demanded back, ignoring his question. And I’d thought I’d been doing so well!
When I opened my mouth, I could taste the air—it was unpolluted now, with no trace of the compelling perfume to torment my thirst. I took a cautious breath.
He shrugged and shook his head, refusing to be deflected. “Bella, how did you do it?”
“Run away? I held my breath.” “But how did you stop hunting?”
“When you came up behind me… I’m so sorry about that.”
“Why are you apologizing to me? I’m the one who was horribly careless. I assumed no one would be so far from the trails, but I should have checked first. Such a stupid mistake! You have nothing to apologize for.”
“But I growled at you!” I was still horrified that I was physically capable of such blasphemy.
“Of course you did. That’s only natural. But I can’t understand how you ran away.”
“What else could I do?” I asked. His attitude confused me—what did he want to have happened? “It might have been someone I know!”
He startled me, suddenly bursting into a spasm of loud laughter, throwing his head back and letting the sound echo off the trees.
“Why are you laughing at me?”
He stopped at once, and I could see he was wary again.
Keep it under control, I thought to myself. I had to watch my temper. Just like I was a young werewolf rather than a vampire.
“I’m not laughing at you, Bella. I’m laughing because I am in shock. And I am in shock because I am completely amazed.”
“Why?”
“You shouldn’t be able to do any of this. You shouldn’t be so… so rational. You shouldn’t be able to stand here discussing this with me calmly and coolly. And, much more than any of that, you should not have been able to break off mid-hunt with the scent of human blood in the air. Even mature vampires have difficulty with that—we’re always very careful of where we hunt so as not to put ourselves in the path of temptation. Bella, you’re behaving like you’re decades rather than days old.”
“Oh.” But I’d known it was going to be hard. That was why I’d been so on guard. I’d been expecting it to be difficult.
He put his hands on my face again, and his eyes were full of wonder. “What wouldn’t I give to be able to see into your mind for just this one moment.”
Such powerful emotions. I’d been prepared for the thirst part, but not this. I’d been so sure it wouldn’t be the same when he touched me. Well, truthfully, it wasn’t the same.
It was stronger.
I reached up to trace the planes of his face; my fingers lingered on his lips.
“I thought I wouldn’t feel this way for a long time?” My uncertainty made the words a question. “But I still want you.”
He blinked in shock. “How can you even concentrate on that? Aren’t you unbearably thirsty?”
Of course I was now, now that he’d brought it up again!
I tried to swallow and then sighed, closing my eyes like I had before to help me concentrate. I let my senses range out around me, tensed this time in case of another onslaught of the delicious taboo scent.
Edward dropped his hands, not even breathing while I listened farther and farther out into the web of green life, sifting through the scents and sounds for something not totally repellant to my thirst. There was a hint of something different, a faint trail to the east. . . .
My eyes flashed open, but my focus was still on sharper senses as I turned and darted silently eastward. The ground sloped steeply upward almost at once, and I ran in a hunting crouch, close to the ground, taking to the trees when that was
easier. I sensed rather than heard Edward with me, flowing quietly through the woods, letting me lead.
The vegetation thinned as we climbed higher; the scent of pitch and resin grew more powerful, as did the trail I followed—it was a warm scent, sharper than the smell of the elk and more appealing. A few seconds more and I could hear the muted padding of immense feet, so much subtler than the crunch of hooves. The sound was up—in the branches rather than on the ground. Automatically I darted into the boughs as well, gaining the strategic higher position, halfway up a towering silver fir.
The soft thud of paws continued stealthily beneath me now; the rich scent was very close. My eyes pinpointed the movement linked with the sound, and I saw the tawny hide of the great cat slinking along the wide branch of a spruce just down and to the left of my perch. He was big—easily four times my mass. His eyes were intent on the ground beneath; the cat hunted, too. I caught the smell of something smaller, bland next to the aroma of my prey, cowering in brush below the tree. The lion’s tail twitched spasmodically as he prepared to spring.
With a light bound, I sailed through the air and landed on the lion’s branch. He felt the shiver of the wood and whirled, shrieking surprise and defiance. He clawed the space between us, his eyes bright with fury. Half-crazed with thirst, I ignored the exposed fangs and the hooked claws and launched myself at him, knocking us both to the forest floor.
It wasn’t much of a fight.
His raking claws could have been caressing fingers for all the impact they had on my skin. His teeth could find no purchase against my shoulder or my throat. His weight was nothing. My teeth unerringly sought his throat, and his instinctive resistance was pitifully feeble against my strength. My jaws locked easily over the precise point where the heat flow concentrated.
It was effortless as biting into butter. My teeth were steel razors; they cut through the fur and fat and sinews like they weren’t there.
The flavor was wrong, but the blood was hot and wet and it soothed the ragged, itching thirst as I drank in an eager rush. The cat’s struggles grew more and more feeble, and his screams choked off with a gurgle. The warmth of the blood radiated throughout my whole body, heating even my fingertips and toes.
The lion was finished before I was. The thirst flared again when he ran dry, and I shoved his carcass off my body in disgust. How could I still be thirsty after all that?
I wrenched myself erect in one quick move. Standing, I realized I was a bit of a mess. I wiped my face off on the back of my arm and tried to fix the dress. The
claws that had been so ineffectual against my skin had had more success with the thin satin.
“Hmm,” Edward said. I looked up to see him leaning casually against a tree trunk, watching me with a thoughtful look on his face.
“I guess I could have done that better.” I was covered in dirt, my hair knotted, my dress bloodstained and hanging in tatters. Edward didn’t come home from hunting trips looking like this.
“You did perfectly fine,” he assured me. “It’s just that… it was much more difficult for me to watch than it should have been.”
I raised my eyebrows, confused.
“It goes against the grain,” he explained, “letting you wrestle with lions. I was having an anxiety attack the whole time.”
“Silly.”
“I know. Old habits die hard. I like the improvements to your dress, though.”
If I could have blushed, I would have. I changed the subject. “Why am I still thirsty?”
“Because you’re young.”
I sighed. “And I don’t suppose there are any other mountain lions nearby.” “Plenty of deer, though.”
I made a face. “They don’t smell as good.”
“Herbivores. The meat-eaters smell more like humans,” he explained. “Not that much like humans,” I disagreed, trying not to remember.
“We could go back,” he said solemnly, but there was a teasing light in his eye. “Whoever it was out there, if they were men, they probably wouldn’t even mind death if you were the one delivering it.” His gaze ran over my ravaged dress again. “In fact, they would think they were already dead and gone to heaven the moment they saw you.”
I rolled my eyes and snorted. “Let’s go hunt some stinking herbivores.”
We found a large herd of mule deer as we ran back toward home. He hunted with me this time, now that I’d gotten the hang of it. I brought down a large buck,
making nearly as much of a mess as I had with the lion. He’d finished with two before I was done with the first, not a hair ruffled, not a spot on his white shirt. We chased the scattered and terrified herd, but instead of feeding again, this time I watched carefully to see how he was able to hunt so neatly.
All the times that I had wished that Edward would not have to leave me behind when he hunted, I had secretly been just a little relieved. Because I was sure that seeing this would be frightening. Horrifying. That seeing him hunt would finally make him look like a vampire to me.
Of course, it was much different from this perspective, as a vampire myself. But I doubted that even my human eyes would have missed the beauty here.
It was a surprisingly sensual experience to observe Edward hunting. His smooth spring was like the sinuous strike of a snake; his hands were so sure, so strong, so completely inescapable; his full lips were perfect as they parted gracefully over his gleaming teeth. He was glorious. I felt a sudden jolt of both pride and desire. He was mine. Nothing could ever separate him from me now. I was too strong to be torn from his side.
He was very quick. He turned to me and gazed curiously at my gloating expression.
“No longer thirsty?” he asked.
I shrugged. “You distracted me. You’re much better at it than I am.”
“Centuries of practice.” He smiled. His eyes were a disconcertingly lovely shade of honey gold now.
“Just one,” I corrected him.
He laughed. “Are you done for today? Or did you want to continue?”
“Done, I think.” I felt very full, sort of sloshy, even. I wasn’t sure how much more liquid would fit into my body. But the burn in my throat was only muted. Then again, I’d known that thirst was just an inescapable part of this life.
And worth it.
I felt in control. Perhaps my sense of security was false, but I did feel pretty good about not killing anyone today. If I could resist totally human strangers, wouldn’t I be able to handle the werewolf and a half-vampire child that I loved?
“I want to see Renesmee,” I said. Now that my thirst was tamed (if nothing close to erased), my earlier worries were hard to forget. I wanted to reconcile the stranger who was my daughter with the creature I’d loved three days ago. It was
so odd, so wrong not to have her inside me still. Abruptly, I felt empty and uneasy.
He held out his hand to me. I took it, and his skin felt warmer than before. His cheek was faintly flushed, the shadows under his eyes all but vanished.
I was unable to resist stroking his face again. And again.
I sort of forgot that I was waiting for a response to my request as I stared into his shimmering gold eyes.
It was almost as hard as it had been to turn away from the scent of human blood, but I somehow kept the need to be careful firmly in my head as I stretched up on my toes and wrapped my arms around him. Gently.
He was not so hesitant in his movements; his arms locked around my waist and pulled me tight against his body. His lips crushed down on mine, but they felt soft. My lips no longer shaped themselves around his; they held their own.
Like before, it was as if the touch of his skin, his lips, his hands, was sinking right through my smooth, hard skin and into my new bones. To the very core of my body. I hadn’t imagined that I could love him more than I had.
My old mind hadn’t been capable of holding this much love. My old heart had not been strong enough to bear it.
Maybe this was the part of me that I’d brought forward to be intensified in my new life. Like Carlisle’s compassion and Esme’s devotion. I would probably never be able to do anything interesting or special like Edward, Alice, and Jasper could do. Maybe I would just love Edward more than anyone in the history of the world had ever loved anyone else.
I could live with that.
I remembered parts of this—twisting my fingers in his hair, tracing the planes of his chest—but other parts were so new. He was new. It was an entirely different experience with Edward kissing me so fearlessly, so forcefully. I responded to his intensity, and then suddenly we were falling.
“Oops,” I said, and he laughed underneath me. “I didn’t mean to tackle you like that. Are you okay?”
He stroked my face. “Slightly better than okay.” And then a perplexed expression crossed his face. “Renesmee?” he asked uncertainly, trying to ascertain what I wanted most in this moment. A very difficult question to answer, because I wanted so many things at the same time.
I could tell that he wasn’t exactly averse to procrastinating our return trip, and it was hard to think about much besides his skin on mine—there really wasn’t that much left of the dress. But my memory of Renesmee, before and after her birth, was becoming more and more dreamlike to me. More unlikely. All my memories of her were human memories; an aura of artificiality clung to them. Nothing seemed real that I hadn’t seen with these eyes, touched with these hands.
Every minute, the reality of that little stranger slipped further away.
“Renesmee,” I agreed, rueful, and I whipped back up onto my feet, pulling him with me.
22. PROMISED
Thinking of Renesmee brought her to that center-stage place in my strange, new, and roomy but distractible mind. So many questions.
“Tell me about her,” I insisted as he took my hand. Being linked barely slowed us.
“She’s like nothing else in the world,” he told me, and the sound of an almost religious devotion was there again in his voice.
I felt a sharp pang of jealousy over this stranger. He knew her and I did not. It wasn’t fair.
“How much is she like you? How much like me? Or like I was, anyway.” “It seems a fairly even divide.”
“She was warm-blooded,” I remembered.
“Yes. She has a heartbeat, though it runs a little bit faster than a human’s. Her temperature is a little bit hotter than usual, too. She sleeps.”
“Really?”
“Quite well for a newborn. The only parents in the world who don’t need sleep, and our child already sleeps through the night.” He chuckled.
I liked the way he said our child. The words made her more real.
“She has exactly your color eyes—so that didn’t get lost, after all.” He smiled at me. “They’re so beautiful.”
“And the vampire parts?” I asked.
“Her skin seems about as impenetrable as ours. Not that anyone would dream of testing that.”
I blinked at him, a little shocked.
“Of course no one would,” he assured me again. “Her diet… well, she prefers to drink blood. Carlisle continues to try to persuade her to drink some baby formula, too, but she doesn’t have much patience with it. Can’t say that I blame her—
nasty-smelling stuff, even for human food.”
I gaped openly at him now. He made it sound like they were having conversations. “Persuade her?”
“She’s intelligent, shockingly so, and progressing at an immense pace. Though she doesn’t speak—yet—she communicates quite effectively.”
“Doesn’t. Speak. Yet.”
He slowed our pace further, letting me absorb this.
“What do you mean, she communicates effectively?” I demanded.
“I think it will be easier for you to… see for yourself. It’s rather difficult to describe.”
I considered that. I knew there was a lot that I needed to see for myself before it would be real. I wasn’t sure how much more I was ready for, so I changed the subject.
“Why is Jacob still here?” I asked. “How can he stand it? Why should he?” My ringing voice trembled a little. “Why should he have to suffer more?”
“Jacob isn’t suffering,” he said in a strange new tone. “Though I might be willing to change his condition,” Edward added through his teeth.
“Edward!” I hissed, yanking him to a stop (and feeling a little thrill of smugness that I was able to do it). “How can you say that? Jacob has given up everything to protect us! What I’ve put him through—!” I cringed at the dim memory of shame and guilt. It seemed odd now that I had needed him so much then. That sense of absence without him near had vanished; it must have been a human weakness.
“You’ll see exactly how I can say that,” Edward muttered. “I promised him that I would let him explain, but I doubt you’ll see it much differently than I do. Of course, I’m often wrong about your thoughts, aren’t I?” He pursed his lips and eyed me.
“Explain what?”
Edward shook his head. “I promised. Though I don’t know if I really owe him anything at all anymore ” His teeth ground together.
“Edward, I don’t understand.” Frustration and indignation took over my head.
He stroked my cheek and then smiled gently when my face smoothed out in response, desire momentarily overruling annoyance. “It’s harder than you make it look, I know. I remember.”
“I don’t like feeling confused.”
“I know. And so let’s get you home, so that you can see it all for yourself.” His eyes ran over the remains of my dress as he spoke of going home, and he frowned. “Hmm.” After a half second of thought, he unbuttoned his white shirt and held it out for me to put my arms through.
“That bad?” He grinned.
I slipped my arms into his sleeves and then buttoned it swiftly over my ragged bodice. Of course, that left him without a shirt, and it was impossible not to find that distracting.
“I’ll race you,” I said, and then cautioned, “no throwing the game this time!” He dropped my hand and grinned. “On your mark . . .”
Finding my way to my new home was simpler than walking down Charlie’s street to my old one. Our scent left a clear and easy trail to follow, even running as fast as I could.
Edward had me beat till we hit the river. I took a chance and made my leap early, trying to use my extra strength to win.
“Ha!” I exulted when I heard my feet touch the grass first.
Listening for his landing, I heard something I did not expect. Something loud and much too close. A thudding heart.
Edward was beside me in the same second, his hands clamped down hard on the tops of my arms.
“Don’t breathe,” he cautioned me urgently.
I tried not to panic as I froze mid-breath. My eyes were the only things that moved, wheeling instinctively to find the source of the sound.
Jacob stood at the line where the forest touched the Cullens’ lawn, his arms folded across his body, his jaw clenched tight. Invisible in the woods behind him, I heard now two larger hearts, and the faint crush of bracken under huge, pacing paws.
“Carefully, Jacob,” Edward said. A snarl from the forest echoed the concern in his voice. “Maybe this isn’t the best way—”
“You think it would be better to let her near the baby first?” Jacob interrupted. “It’s safer to see how Bella does with me. I heal fast.”
This was a test? To see if I could not kill Jacob before I tried to not kill Renesmee? I felt sick in the strangest way—it had nothing to do with my stomach, only my mind. Was this Edward’s idea?
I glanced at his face anxiously; Edward seemed to deliberate for a moment, and then his expression twisted from concern into something else. He shrugged, and there was an undercurrent of hostility in his voice when he said, “It’s your neck, I guess.”
The growl from the forest was furious this time; Leah, I had no doubt.
What was with Edward? After all that we’d been through, shouldn’t he have been able to feel some kindness for my best friend? I’d thought—maybe foolishly—that Edward was sort of Jacob’s friend now, too. I must have misread them.
But what was Jacob doing? Why would he offer himself as a test to protect Renesmee?
It didn’t make any sense to me. Even if our friendship had survived…
And as my eyes met Jacob’s now, I thought that maybe it had. He still looked like my best friend. But he wasn’t the one who had changed. What did I look like to him?
Then he smiled his familiar smile, the smile of a kindred spirit, and I was sure our friendship was intact. It was just like before, when we were hanging out in his homemade garage, just two friends killing time. Easy and normal. Again, I noticed that the strange need I’d felt for him before I’d changed was completely gone. He was just my friend, the way it was supposed to be.
It still made no sense what he was doing now, though. Was he really so selfless that he would try to protect me—with his own life—from doing something in an uncontrolled split second that I would regret in agony forever? That went way beyond simply tolerating what I had become, or miraculously managing to stay my friend. Jacob was one of the best people I knew, but this seemed like too much to accept from anyone.
His grin widened, and he shuddered slightly. “I gotta say it, Bells. You’re a freak show.”
I grinned back, falling easily into the old pattern. This was a side of him I understood.
Edward growled. “Watch yourself, mongrel.”
The wind blew from behind me and I quickly filled my lungs with the safe air so I could speak. “No, he’s right. The eyes are really something, aren’t they?”
“Super-creepy. But it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” “Gee—thanks for the amazing compliment!”
He rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. You still look like you—sort of. Maybe it’s not the look so much as… you are Bella. I didn’t think it would feel like you were still here.” He smiled at me again without a trace of bitterness or resentment anywhere in his face. Then he chuckled and said, “Anyway, I guess I’ll get used to the eyes soon enough.”
“You will?” I asked, confused. It was wonderful that we were still friends, but it wasn’t like we’d be spending much time together.
The strangest look crossed his face, erasing the smile. It was almost… guilty? Then his eyes shifted to Edward.
“Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t know if you’d be able to keep it from her, promise or not. Usually, you just give her everything she wants.”
“Maybe I’m hoping she’ll get irritated and rip your head off,” Edward suggested. Jacob snorted.
“What’s going on? Are you two keeping secrets from me?” I demanded, incredulous.
“I’ll explain later,” Jacob said self-consciously—like he didn’t really plan on it. Then he changed the subject. “First, let’s get this show on the road.” His grin was a challenge now as he started slowly forward.
There was a whine of protest behind him, and then Leah’s gray body slid out of the trees behind him. The taller, sandy-colored Seth was right behind her.
“Cool it, guys,” Jacob said. “Stay out of this.”
I was glad they didn’t listen to him but only followed after him a little more slowly.
The wind was still now; it wouldn’t blow his scent away from me.
He got close enough that I could feel the heat of his body in the air between us. My throat burned in response.
“C’mon, Bells. Do your worst.” Leah hissed.
I didn’t want to breathe. It wasn’t right to take such dangerous advantage of Jacob, no matter if he was the one offering. But I couldn’t get away from the logic. How else could I be sure that I wouldn’t hurt Renesmee?
“I’m getting older here, Bella,” Jacob taunted. “Okay, not technically, but you get the idea. Go on, take a whiff.”
“Hold on to me,” I said to Edward, cringing back into his chest. His hands tightened on my arms.
I locked my muscles in place, hoping I could keep them frozen. I resolved that I would do at least as well as I had on the hunt. Worst-case scenario, I would stop breathing and run for it. Nervously, I took a tiny breath in through my nose, braced for anything.
It hurt a little, but my throat was already burning dully anyway. Jacob didn’t smell that much more human than the mountain lion. There was an animal edge to his blood that instantly repelled. Though the loud, wet sound of his heart was appealing, the scent that went with it made my nose wrinkle. It was actually easier with the smell to temper my reaction to the sound and heat of his pulsing blood.
I took another breath and relaxed. “Huh. I can see what everyone’s been going on about. You stink, Jacob.”
Edward burst into laughter; his hands slipped from my shoulders to wrap around my waist. Seth barked a low chortle in harmony with Edward; he came a little closer while Leah retreated several paces. And then I was aware of another audience when I heard Emmett’s low, distinct guffaw, muffled a little by the glass wall between us.
“Look who’s talking,” Jacob said, theatrically plugging his nose. His face didn’t pucker at all while Edward embraced me, not even when Edward composed himself and whispered “I love you” in my ear. Jacob just kept grinning. This made me feel hopeful that things were going to be right between us, the way they hadn’t been for so long now. Maybe now I could truly be his friend, since I disgusted him enough physically that he couldn’t love me the same way as before. Maybe that was all that was needed.
“Okay, so I passed, right?” I said. “Now are you going to tell me what this big secret is?”
Jacob’s expression became very nervous. “It’s nothing you need to worry about this second ”
I heard Emmett chuckle again—a sound of anticipation.
I would have pressed my point, but as I listened to Emmett, I heard other sounds, too. Seven people breathing. One set of lungs moving more rapidly than the others. Only one heart fluttering like a bird’s wings, light and quick.
I was totally diverted. My daughter was just on the other side of that thin wall of glass. I couldn’t see her—the light bounced off the reflective windows like a mirror. I could only see myself, looking very strange—so white and still— compared to Jacob. Or, compared to Edward, looking exactly right.
“Renesmee,” I whispered. Stress made me a statue again. Renesmee wasn’t going to smell like an animal. Would I put her in danger?
“Come and see,” Edward murmured. “I know you can handle this.” “You’ll help me?” I whispered through motionless lips.
“Of course I will.”
“And Emmett and Jasper—just in case?”
“We’ll take care of you, Bella. Don’t worry, we’ll be ready. None of us would risk Renesmee. I think you’ll be surprised at how entirely she’s already wrapped us all around her little fingers. She’ll be perfectly safe, no matter what.”
My yearning to see her, to understand the worship in his voice, broke my frozen pose. I took a step forward.
And then Jacob was in my way, his face a mask of worry.
“Are you sure, bloodsucker?” he demanded of Edward, his voice almost pleading. I’d never heard him speak to Edward that way. “I don’t like this. Maybe she should wait—”
“You had your test, Jacob.” It was Jacob’s test? “But—,” Jacob began.
“But nothing,” Edward said, suddenly exasperated. “Bella needs to see our
daughter. Get out of her way.”
Jacob shot me an odd, frantic look and then turned and nearly sprinted into the house ahead of us.
Edward growled.
I couldn’t make sense of their confrontation, and I couldn’t concentrate on it, either. I could only think about the blurred child in my memory and struggle against the haziness, trying to remember her face exactly.
“Shall we?” Edward said, his voice gentle again. I nodded nervously.
He took my hand tightly in his and led the way into the house.
They waited for me in a smiling line that was both welcoming and defensive. Rosalie was several paces behind the rest of them, near the front door. She was alone until Jacob joined her and then stood in front of her, closer than was normal. There was no sense of comfort in that closeness; both of them seemed to cringe from the proximity.
Someone very small was leaning forward out of Rosalie’s arms, peering around Jacob. Immediately, she had my absolute attention, my every thought, the way nothing else had owned them since the moment I’d opened my eyes.
“I was out just two days?” I gasped, disbelieving.
The stranger-child in Rosalie’s arms had to be weeks, if not months, old. She was maybe twice the size of the baby in my dim memory, and she seemed to be supporting her own torso easily as she stretched toward me. Her shiny bronze- colored hair fell in ringlets past her shoulders. Her chocolate brown eyes examined me with an interest that was not at all childlike; it was adult, aware and intelligent. She raised one hand, reaching in my direction for a moment, and then reached back to touch Rosalie’s throat.
If her face had not been astonishing in its beauty and perfection, I wouldn’t have believed it was the same child. My child.
But Edward was there in her features, and I was there in the color of her eyes and cheeks. Even Charlie had a place in her thick curls, though their color matched Edward’s. She must be ours. Impossible, but still true.
Seeing this unanticipated little person did not make her more real, though. It only made her more fantastic.
Rosalie patted the hand against her neck and murmured, “Yes, that’s her.”
Renesmee’s eyes stayed locked on mine. Then, as she had just seconds after her violent birth, she smiled at me. A brilliant flash of tiny, perfect white teeth.
Reeling inside, I took a hesitant step toward her.
Everyone moved very fast.
Emmett and Jasper were right in front of me, shoulder to shoulder, hands ready. Edward gripped me from behind, fingers tight again on the tops of my arms.
Even Carlisle and Esme moved to get Emmett’s and Jasper’s flanks, while Rosalie backed to the door, her arms clutching at Renesmee. Jacob moved, too, keeping his protective stance in front of them.
Alice was the only one who held her place.
“Oh, give her some credit,” she chided them. “She wasn’t going to do anything. You’d want a closer look, too.”
Alice was right. I was in control of myself. I’d been braced for anything—for a scent as impossibly insistent as the human smell in the woods. The temptation here was really not comparable. Renesmee’s fragrance was perfectly balanced right on the line between the scent of the most beautiful perfume and the scent of the most delicious food. There was enough of the sweet vampire smell to keep the human part from being overwhelming.
I could handle it. I was sure.
“I’m okay,” I promised, patting Edward’s hand on my arm. Then I hesitated and added, “Keep close, though, just in case.”
Jasper’s eyes were tight, focused. I knew he was taking in my emotional climate, and I worked on settling into a steady calm. I felt Edward free my arms as he read Jasper’s assessment. But, though Jasper was getting it firsthand, he didn’t seem as certain.
When she heard my voice, the too-aware child struggled in Rosalie’s arms, reaching toward me. Somehow, her expression managed to look impatient.
“Jazz, Em, let us through. Bella’s got this.” “Edward, the risk—,” Jasper said.
“Minimal. Listen, Jasper—on the hunt she caught the scent of some hikers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time ”
I heard Carlisle suck in a shocked breath. Esme’s face was suddenly full of concern mingled with compassion. Jasper’s eyes widened, but he nodded just a tiny bit, as if Edward’s words answered some question in his head. Jacob’s mouth screwed up into a disgusted grimace. Emmett shrugged. Rosalie seemed even less concerned than Emmett as she tried to hold on to the struggling child in her arms.
Alice’s expression told me that she was not fooled. Her narrowed eyes, focused with burning intensity on my borrowed shirt, seemed more worried about what I’d done to my dress than anything else.
“Edward!” Carlisle chastened. “How could you be so irresponsible?”
“I know, Carlisle, I know. I was just plain stupid. I should have taken the time to make sure we were in a safe zone before I set her loose.”
“Edward,” I mumbled, embarrassed by the way they stared at me. It was like they were trying to see a brighter red in my eyes.
“He’s absolutely right to rebuke me, Bella,” Edward said with a grin. “I made a huge mistake. The fact that you are stronger than anyone I’ve ever known doesn’t change that.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “Tasteful joke, Edward.”
“I wasn’t making a joke. I was explaining to Jasper why I know Bella can handle this. It’s not my fault everyone jumped to conclusions.”
“Wait,” Jasper gasped. “She didn’t hunt the humans?”
“She started to,” Edward said, clearly enjoying himself. My teeth ground together. “She was entirely focused on the hunt.”
“What happened?” Carlisle interjected. His eyes were suddenly bright, an amazed smile beginning to form on his face. It reminded me of before, when he’d wanted the details on my transformation experience. The thrill of new information.
Edward leaned toward him, animated. “She heard me behind her and reacted defensively. As soon as my pursuit broke into her concentration, she snapped right out of it. I’ve never seen anything to equal her. She realized at once what was happening, and then… she held her breath and ran away.”
“Whoa,” Emmett murmured. “Seriously?”
“He’s not telling it right,” I muttered, more embarrassed than before. “He left out the part where I growled at him.”
“Did ya get in a couple of good swipes?” Emmett asked eagerly. “No! Of course not.”
“No, not really? You really didn’t attack him?” “Emmett!” I protested.
“Aw, what a waste,” Emmett groaned. “And here you’re probably the one person who could take him—since he can’t get in your head to cheat—and you had a perfect excuse, too.” He sighed. “I’ve been dying to see how he’d do without that advantage.”
I glared at him frostily. “I would never.”
Jasper’s frown caught my attention; he seemed even more disturbed than before.
Edward touched his fist lightly to Jasper’s shoulder in a mock punch. “You see what I mean?”
“It’s not natural,” Jasper muttered.
“She could have turned on you—she’s only hours old!” Esme scolded, putting her hand against her heart. “Oh, we should have gone with you.”
I wasn’t paying so much attention, now that Edward was past the punch line of his joke. I was staring at the gorgeous child by the door, who was still staring at me. Her little dimpled hands reached out toward me like she knew exactly who I was. Automatically, my hand lifted to mimic hers.
“Edward,” I said, leaning around Jasper to see her better. “Please?” Jasper’s teeth were set; he didn’t move.
“Jazz, this isn’t anything you’ve seen before,” Alice said quietly. “Trust me.”
Their eyes met for a short second, and then Jasper nodded. He moved out of my way, but put one hand on my shoulder and moved with me as I walked slowly forward.
I thought about every step before I took it, analyzing my mood, the burn in my throat, the position of the others around me. How strong I felt versus how well they would be able to contain me. It was a slow procession.
And then the child in Rosalie’s arms, struggling and reaching all this time while her expression got more and more irritated, let out a high, ringing wail. Everyone reacted as if—like me—they’d never heard her voice before.
They swarmed around her in a second, leaving me standing alone, frozen in place. The sound of Renesmee’s cry pierced right through me, spearing me to the floor. My eyes pricked in the strangest way, like they wanted to tear.
It seemed like everyone had a hand on her, patting and soothing. Everyone but me.
“What’s the matter? Is she hurt? What happened?”
It was Jacob’s voice that was loudest, that raised anxiously above the others. I watched in shock as he reached for Renesmee, and then in utter horror as Rosalie surrendered her to him without a fight.
“No, she’s fine,” Rosalie reassured him. Rosalie was reassuring Jacob?
Renesmee went to Jacob willingly enough, pushing her tiny hand against his cheek and then squirming around to stretch toward me again.
“See?” Rosalie told him. “She just wants Bella.” “She wants me?” I whispered.
Renesmee’s eyes—my eyes—stared impatiently at me.
Edward darted back to my side. He put his hands lightly on my arms and urged me forward.
“She’s been waiting for you for almost three days,” he told me.
We were only a few feet away from her now. Bursts of heat seemed to tremble out from her to touch me.
Or maybe it was Jacob who was trembling. I saw his hands shaking as I got closer. And yet, despite his obvious anxiety, his face was more serene than I had seen it in a long time.
“Jake—I’m fine,” I told him. It made me panicky to see Renesmee in his shaking hands, but I worked to keep myself in control.
He frowned at me, eyes tight, like he was just as panicky at the thought of Renesmee in my arms.
Renesmee whimpered eagerly and stretched, her little hands grasping into fists again and again.
Something in me clicked into place at that moment. The sound of her cry, the familiarity of her eyes, the way she seemed even more impatient than I did for this reunion—all of it wove together into the most natural of patterns as she clutched the air between us. Suddenly, she was absolutely real, and of course I knew her. It was perfectly ordinary that I should take that last easy step and reach for her, putting my hands exactly where they would fit best as I pulled her gently toward me.
Jacob let his long arms stretch so that I could cradle her, but he didn’t let go. He shuddered a little when our skin touched. His skin, always so warm to me before, felt like an open flame to me now. It was almost the same temperature as Renesmee’s. Perhaps one or two degrees difference.
Renesmee seemed oblivious to the coolness of my skin, or at least very used to it.
She looked up and smiled at me again, showing her square little teeth and two dimples. Then, very deliberately, she reached for my face.
The moment she did this, all the hands on me tightened, anticipating my reaction. I barely noticed.
I was gasping, stunned and frightened by the strange, alarming image that filled my mind. It felt like a very strong memory—I could still see through my eyes while I watched it in my head—but it was completely unfamiliar. I stared through it to Renesmee’s expectant expression, trying to understand what was happening, struggling desperately to hold on to my calm.
Besides being shocking and unfamiliar, the image was also wrong somehow—I almost recognized my own face in it, my old face, but it was off, backward. I grasped quickly that I was seeing my face as others saw it, rather than flipped in a reflection.
My memory face was twisted, ravaged, covered in sweat and blood. Despite this, my expression in the vision became an adoring smile; my brown eyes glowed over their deep circles. The image enlarged, my face came closer to the unseen vantage point, and then abruptly vanished.
Renesmee’s hand dropped from my cheek. She smiled wider, dimpling again.
It was totally silent in the room but for the heartbeats. No one but Jacob and Renesmee was so much as breathing. The silence stretched on; it seemed like they were waiting for me to say something.
“What… was… that?” I managed to choke out.
“What did you see?” Rosalie asked curiously, leaning around Jacob, who seemed very much in the way and out of place at the moment. “What did she show you?”
“She showed me that?” I whispered.
“I told you it was hard to explain,” Edward murmured in my ear. “But effective as means of communications go.”
“What was it?” Jacob asked.
I blinked quickly several times. “Um. Me. I think. But I looked terrible.”
“It was the only memory she had of you,” Edward explained. It was obvious he’d seen what she was showing me as she thought of it. He was still cringing, his voice rough from reliving the memory. “She’s letting you know that she’s made the connection, that she knows who you are.”
“But how did she do that?”
Renesmee seemed unconcerned with my boggling eyes. She was smiling slightly and pulling on a lock of my hair.
“How do I hear thoughts? How does Alice see the future?” Edward asked rhetorically, and then shrugged. “She’s gifted.”
“It’s an interesting twist,” Carlisle said to Edward. “Like she’s doing the exact opposite of what you can.”
“Interesting,” Edward agreed. “I wonder ”
I knew they were speculating away, but I didn’t care. I was staring at the most beautiful face in the world. She was hot in my arms, reminding me of the moment when the blackness had almost won, when there was nothing in the world left to hold on to. Nothing strong enough to pull me through the crushing darkness. The moment when I’d thought of Renesmee and found something I would never let go of.
“I remember you, too,” I told her quietly.
It seemed very natural to lean in and press my lips to her forehead. She smelled wonderful. The scent of her skin set my throat burning, but it was easy to ignore. It didn’t strip the joy from the moment. Renesmee was real and I knew her. She was the same one I’d fought for from the beginning. My little nudger, the one who loved me from the inside, too. Half Edward, perfect and lovely. And half me— which, surprisingly, made her better rather than detracting.
I’d been right all along. She was worth the fight.
“She’s fine,” Alice murmured, probably to Jasper. I could feel them hovering, not trusting me.
“Haven’t we experimented enough for one day?” Jacob asked, his voice a slightly higher pitch with stress. “Okay, Bella’s doing great, but let’s not push it.”
I glared at him with real irritation. Jasper shuffled uneasily next to me. We were all crowded so close that every tiny movement seemed very big.
“What is your problem, Jacob?” I demanded. I tugged lightly against his hold on Renesmee, and he just stepped closer to me. He was pressed right up to me, Renesmee touching both of our chests.
Edward hissed at him. “Just because I understand, it doesn’t mean I won’t throw you out, Jacob. Bella’s doing extraordinarily well. Don’t ruin the moment for her.”
“I’ll help him toss you, dog,” Rosalie promised, her voice seething. “I owe you a good kick in the gut.” Obviously, there was no change in that relationship, unless it had gotten worse.
I glared at Jacob’s anxious half-angry expression. His eyes were locked on Renesmee’s face. With everyone pressed together, he had to be touching at least six different vampires at the moment, and it didn’t even seem to bug him.
Would he really go through all this just to protect me from myself? What could have happened during my transformation—my alteration into something he hated—that would soften him so much toward the reason for its necessity?
I puzzled over it, watching him stare at my daughter. Staring at her like… like he was a blind man seeing the sun for the very first time.
“No!” I gasped.
Jasper’s teeth came together and Edward’s arms wrapped around my chest like constricting boas. Jacob had Renesmee out of my arms in the same second, and I did not try to hold on to her. Because I felt it coming—the snap that they’d all been waiting for.
“Rose,” I said through my teeth, very slowly and precisely. “Take Renesmee.”
Rosalie held her hands out, and Jacob handed my daughter to her at once. Both of them backed away from me.
“Edward, I don’t want to hurt you, so please let go of me.” He hesitated.
“Go stand in front of Renesmee,” I suggested. He deliberated, and then let me go.
I leaned into my hunting crouch and took two slow steps forward toward Jacob. “You didn’t,” I snarled at him.
He backed away, palms up, trying to reason with me. “You know it’s not something I can control.”
“You stupid mutt! How could you? My baby!”
He backed out the front door now as I stalked him, half-running backward down the stairs. “It wasn’t my idea, Bella!”
“I’ve held her all of one time, and already you think you have some moronic wolfy claim to her? She’s mine.”
“I can share,” he said pleadingly as he retreated across the lawn.
“Pay up,” I heard Emmett say behind me. A small part of my brain wondered who had bet against this outcome. I didn’t waste much attention on it. I was too furious.
“How dare you imprint on my baby? Have you lost your mind?” “It was involuntary!” he insisted, backing into the trees.
Then he wasn’t alone. The two huge wolves reappeared, flanking him on either side. Leah snapped at me.
A fearsome snarl ripped through my teeth back at her. The sound disturbed me, but not enough to stop my advance.
“Bella, would you try to listen for just a second? Please?” Jacob begged. “Leah, back off,” he added.
Leah curled her lip at me and didn’t move.
“Why should I listen?” I hissed. Fury reigned in my head. It clouded everything else out.
“Because you’re the one who told me this. Do you remember? You said we belonged in each other’s lives, right? That we were family. You said that was how you and I were supposed to be. So… now we are. It’s what you wanted.”
I glared ferociously. I did dimly remember those words. But my new quick brain was two steps ahead of his nonsense.
“You think you’ll be part of my family as my son-in-law!” I screeched. My bell voice ripped through two octaves and still came out sounding like music.
Emmett laughed.
“Stop her, Edward,” Esme murmured. “She’ll be unhappy if she hurts him.” But I felt no pursuit behind me.
“No!” Jacob was insisting at the same time. “How can you even look at it that way? She’s just a baby, for crying out loud!”
“That’s my point!” I yelled.
“You know I don’t think of her that way! Do you think Edward would have let me live this long if I did? All I want is for her to be safe and happy—is that so bad? So different from what you want?” He was shouting right back at me.
Beyond words, I shrieked a growl at him. “Amazing, isn’t she?” I heard Edward murmur.
“She hasn’t gone for his throat even once,” Carlisle agreed, sounding stunned. “Fine, you win this one,” Emmett said grudgingly.
“You’re going to stay away from her,” I hissed up at Jacob. “I can’t do that!”
Through my teeth: “Try. Starting now.”
“It’s not possible. Do you remember how much you wanted me around three days ago? How hard it was to be apart from each other? That’s gone for you now, isn’t it?”
I glared, not sure what he was implying.
“That was her,” he told me. “From the very beginning. We had to be together, even then.”
I remembered, and then I understood; a tiny part of me was relieved to have the madness explained. But that relief somehow only made me angrier. Was he expecting that to be enough for me? That one little clarification would make me okay with this?
“Run away while you still can,” I threatened. “C’mon, Bells! Nessie likes me, too,” he insisted.
I froze. My breathing stopped. Behind me, I heard the lack of sound that was their anxious reaction.
“What… did you call her?”
Jacob took a step farther back, managing to look sheepish. “Well,” he mumbled, “that name you came up with is kind of a mouthful and—”
“You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?” I screeched. And then I lunged for his throat.
23. MEMORIES
“I’m so sorry, Seth. I should have been closer.”
Edward was still apologizing, and I didn’t think that was either fair or appropriate. After all, Edward hadn’t completely and inexcusably lost control of his temper. Edward hadn’t tried to rip Jacob’s head off—Jacob, who wouldn’t even phase to protect himself—and then accidentally broken Seth’s shoulder and collarbone when he jumped in between. Edward hadn’t almost killed his best friend.
Not that the best friend didn’t have a few things to answer for, but, obviously, nothing Jacob had done could have mitigated my behavior.
So shouldn’t I have been the one apologizing? I tried again. “Seth, I—”
“Don’t worry about it, Bella, I’m totally fine,” Seth said at the same time that Edward said, “Bella, love, no one is judging you. You’re doing so well.”
They hadn’t let me finish a sentence yet.
It only made it worse that Edward was having a difficult time keeping the smile off his face. I knew that Jacob didn’t deserve my overreaction, but Edward seemed to find something satisfying in it. Maybe he was just wishing that he had the excuse of being a newborn so that he could do something physical about his irritation with Jacob, too.
I tried to erase the anger from my system entirely, but it was hard, knowing that Jacob was outside with Renesmee right now. Keeping her safe from me, the crazed newborn.
Carlisle secured another piece of the brace to Seth’s arm, and Seth winced. “Sorry, sorry!” I mumbled, knowing I’d never get a fully articulated apology out.
“Don’t freak, Bella,” Seth said, patting my knee with his good hand while Edward rubbed my arm from the other side.
Seth seemed to feel no aversion to having me sit beside him on the sofa as Carlisle treated him. “I’ll be back to normal in half an hour,” he continued, still patting my knee as if oblivious to the cold, hard texture of it. “Anyone would have done the same, what with Jake and Ness—” He broke off mid-word and changed the subject quickly. “I mean, at least you didn’t bite me or anything. That would’ve sucked.”
I buried my face in my hands and shuddered at the thought, at the very real possibility. It could have happened so easily. And werewolves didn’t react to vampire venom the same way humans did, they’d told me only now. It was poison to them.
“I’m a bad person.”
“Of course you aren’t. I should have—,” Edward started.
“Stop that,” I sighed. I didn’t want him taking the blame for this the way he always took everything on himself.
“Lucky thing Ness—Renesmee’s not venomous,” Seth said after a second of awkward silence. “’Cause she bites Jake all the time.”
My hands dropped. “She does?”
“Sure. Whenever he and Rose don’t get dinner in her mouth fast enough. Rose thinks it’s pretty hilarious.”
I stared at him, shocked, and also feeling guilty, because I had to admit that this pleased me a teensy bit in a petulant way.
Of course, I already knew that Renesmee wasn’t venomous. I was the first person she’d bitten. I didn’t make this observation aloud, as I was feigning memory loss on those recent events.
“Well, Seth,” Carlisle said, straightening up and stepping away from us. “I think that’s as much as I can do. Try to not move for, oh, a few hours, I guess.” Carlisle chuckled. “I wish treating humans were this instantaneously gratifying.” He rested his hand for a moment on Seth’s black hair. “Stay still,” he ordered, and then he disappeared upstairs. I heard his office door close, and I wondered if they’d already removed the evidence of my time there.
“I can probably manage sitting still for a while,” Seth agreed after Carlisle was already gone, and then he yawned hugely. Carefully, making sure not to tweak his shoulder, Seth leaned his head against the sofa’s back and closed his eyes.
Seconds later, his mouth fell slack.
I frowned at his peaceful face for another minute. Like Jacob, Seth seemed to have the gift of falling asleep at will. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to apologize again for a while, I got up; the motion didn’t jostle the couch in the slightest. Everything physical was so easy. But the rest…
Edward followed me to the back windows and took my hand.
Leah was pacing along the river, stopping every now and then to look at the house. It was easy to tell when she was looking for her brother and when she was looking for me. She alternated between anxious glances and murderous glares.
I could hear Jacob and Rosalie outside on the front steps bickering quietly over whose turn it was to feed Renesmee. Their relationship was as antagonistic as ever; the only thing they agreed on now was that I should be kept away from my baby until I was one hundred percent recovered from my temper tantrum.
Edward had disputed their verdict, but I’d let it go. I wanted to be sure, too. I was worried, though, that my one hundred percent sure and their one hundred percent sure might be very different things.
Other than their squabbling, Seth’s slow breathing, and Leah’s annoyed panting, it was very quiet. Emmett, Alice, and Esme were hunting. Jasper had stayed behind to watch me. He stood unobtrusively behind the newel post now, trying not to be obnoxious about it.
I took advantage of the calm to think of all the things Edward and Seth had told me while Carlisle splinted Seth’s arm. I’d missed a whole lot while I was burning, and this was the first real chance to catch up.
The main thing was the end of the feud with Sam’s pack—which was why the others felt safe to come and go as they pleased again. The truce was stronger than ever. Or more binding, depending on your viewpoint, I imagined.
Binding, because the most absolute of all the pack’s laws was that no wolf ever kill the object of another wolf’s imprinting. The pain of such a thing would be intolerable for the whole pack. The fault, whether intended or accidental, could not be forgiven; the wolves involved would fight to the death—there was no other option. It had happened long ago, Seth told me, but only accidentally. No wolf would ever intentionally destroy a brother that way.
So Renesmee was untouchable because of the way Jacob now felt about her. I tried to concentrate on the relief of this fact rather than the chagrin, but it wasn’t easy. My mind had enough room to feel both emotions intensely at the same time.
And Sam couldn’t get mad about my transformation, either, because Jacob— speaking as the rightful Alpha—had allowed it. It rankled to realize over and over again how much I owed Jacob when I just wanted to be mad at him.
I deliberately redirected my thoughts in order to control my emotions. I considered another interesting phenomenon; though the silence between the separate packs continued, Jacob and Sam had discovered that Alphas could speak to each other while in their wolf form. It wasn’t the same as before; they couldn’t hear every thought the way they had prior to the split. It was more like speaking aloud, Seth had said. Sam could only hear the thoughts Jacob wanted to share,
and vice versa. They found they could communicate over distance, too, now that they were talking to each other again.
They hadn’t found all this out until Jacob had gone alone—over Seth’s and Leah’s objections—to explain to Sam about Renesmee; it was the only time he’d left Renesmee since first laying eyes on her.
Once Sam had understood how absolutely everything had changed, he’d come back with Jacob to talk to Carlisle. They’d spoken in human form (Edward had refused to leave my side to translate), and the treaty had been renewed. The friendly feeling of the relationship, however, might never be the same.
One big worry down.
But there was another that, though not as physically dangerous as an angry wolf pack, still seemed more urgent to me.
Charlie.
He’d spoken to Esme earlier this morning, but that hadn’t kept him from calling again, twice, just a few minutes ago while Carlisle treated Seth. Carlisle and Edward had let the phone ring.
What would be the right thing to tell him? Were the Cullens right? Was telling him that I’d died the best, the kindest way? Would I be able to lie still in a coffin while he and my mother cried over me?
It didn’t seem right to me. But putting Charlie or Renée in danger of the Volturi’s obsession with secrecy was clearly out of the question.
There was still my idea—let Charlie see me, when I was ready for that, and let him make his own wrong assumptions. Technically, the vampire rules would remain unbroken. Wouldn’t it be better for Charlie if he knew that I was alive—sort of— and happy? Even if I was strange and different and probably frightening to him?
My eyes, in particular, were much too frightening right now. How long before my self-control and my eye color were ready for Charlie?
“What’s the matter, Bella?” Jasper asked quietly, reading my growing tension. “No one is angry with you”—a low snarl from the riverside contradicted him, but he ignored it—“or even surprised, really. Well, I suppose we are surprised.
Surprised that you were able to snap out of it so quickly. You did well. Better than anyone expects of you.”
While he was speaking, the room became very calm. Seth’s breathing slipped into a low snore. I felt more peaceful, but I didn’t forget my anxieties.
“I was thinking about Charlie, actually.” Out front, the bickering cut off.
“Ah,” Jasper murmured.
“We really have to leave, don’t we?” I asked. “For a while, at the very least. Pretend we’re in Atlanta or something.”
I could feel Edward’s gaze locked on my face, but I looked at Jasper. He was the one who answered me in a grave tone.
“Yes. It’s the only way to protect your father.”
I brooded for a moment. “I’m going to miss him so much. I’ll miss everyone here.”
Jacob, I thought, despite myself. Though that yearning was both vanished and defined—and I was vastly relieved that it was—he was still my friend. Someone who knew the real me and accepted her. Even as a monster.
I thought about what Jacob had said, pleading with me before I’d attacked him. You said we belonged in each other’s lives, right? That we were family. You said that was how you and I were supposed to be. So… now we are. It’s what you wanted.
But it didn’t feel like how I’d wanted it. Not exactly. I remembered further back, to the fuzzy, weak memories of my human life. Back to the very hardest part to remember—the time without Edward, a time so dark I’d tried to bury it in my head. I couldn’t get the words exactly right; I only remembered wishing that Jacob were my brother so that we could love each other without any confusion or pain. Family. But I’d never factored a daughter into the equation.
I remembered a little later—one of the many times that I’d told Jacob goodbye— wondering aloud who he would end up with, who would make his life right after what I’d done to it. I had said something about how whoever she was, she wouldn’t be good enough for him.
I snorted, and Edward raised one eyebrow questioningly. I just shook my head at him.
But as much as I might miss my friend, I knew there was a bigger problem. Had Sam or Jared or Quil ever gone a whole day without seeing the objects of their fixations, Emily, Kim, and Claire? Could they? What would the separation from Renesmee do to Jacob? Would it cause him pain?
There was still enough petty ire in my system to make me glad, not for his pain, but for the idea of having Renesmee away from him. How was I supposed to deal with having her belong to Jacob when she only barely seemed to belong to me?
The sound of movement on the front porch interrupted my thoughts. I heard them get up, and then they were through the door. At exactly the same time, Carlisle came down the stairs with his hands full of odd things—a measuring tape, a scale. Jasper darted to my side. As if there was some signal I’d missed, even Leah sat down outside and stared through the window with an expression like she was expecting something that was both familiar and also totally uninteresting.
“Must be six,” Edward said.
“So?” I asked, my eyes locked on Rosalie, Jacob, and Renesmee. They stood in the doorway, Renesmee in Rosalie’s arms. Rose looked wary. Jacob looked troubled. Renesmee looked beautiful and impatient.
“Time to measure Ness—er, Renesmee,” Carlisle explained. “Oh. You do this every day?”
“Four times a day,” Carlisle corrected absently as he motioned the others toward the couch. I thought I saw Renesmee sigh.
“Four times? Every day? Why?”
“She’s still growing quickly,” Edward murmured to me, his voice quiet and strained. He squeezed my hand, and his other arm wrapped securely around my waist, almost as if he needed the support.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Renesmee to check his expression.
She looked perfect, absolutely healthy. Her skin glowed like backlit alabaster; the color in her cheeks was rose petals against it. There couldn’t be anything wrong with such radiant beauty. Surely there could be nothing more dangerous in her life than her mother. Could there?
The difference between the child I’d given birth to and the one I’d met again an hour ago would have been obvious to anyone. The difference between Renesmee an hour ago and Renesmee now was subtler. Human eyes never would have detected it. But it was there.
Her body was slightly longer. Just a little bit slimmer. Her face wasn’t quite as round; it was more oval by one minute degree. Her ringlets hung a sixteenth of an inch lower down her shoulders. She stretched out helpfully in Rosalie’s arms
while Carlisle ran the tape measure down the length of her and then used it to circle her head. He took no notes; perfect recall.
I was aware that Jacob’s arms were crossed as tightly over his chest as Edward’s arms were locked around me. His heavy brows were mashed together into one line over his deep-set eyes.
She had matured from a single cell to a normal-sized baby in the course of a few weeks. She looked well on her way to being a toddler just days after her birth. If this rate of growth held…
My vampire mind had no trouble with the math. “What do we do?” I whispered, horrified.
Edward’s arms tightened. He understood exactly what I was asking. “I don’t know.”
“It’s slowing,” Jacob muttered through his teeth.
“We’ll need several more days of measurements to track the trend, Jacob. I can’t make any promises.”
“Yesterday she grew two inches. Today it’s less.”
“By a thirty-second of an inch, if my measurements are perfect,” Carlisle said quietly.
“Be perfect, Doc,” Jacob said, making the words almost threatening. Rosalie stiffened.
“You know I’ll do my best,” Carlisle assured him. Jacob sighed. “Guess that’s all I can ask.”
I felt irritated again, like Jacob was stealing my lines—and delivering them all wrong.
Renesmee seemed irritated, too. She started to squirm and then reached her hand imperiously toward Rosalie. Rosalie leaned forward so that Renesmee could touch her face. After a second, Rose sighed.
“What does she want?” Jacob demanded, taking my line again.
“Bella, of course,” Rosalie told him, and her words made my insides feel a little warmer. Then she looked at me. “How are you?”
“Worried,” I admitted, and Edward squeezed me. “We all are. But that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m in control,” I promised. Thirstiness was way down the list right now. Besides, Renesmee smelled good in a very non-food way.
Jacob bit his lip but made no move to stop Rosalie as she offered Renesmee to me. Jasper and Edward hovered but allowed it. I could see how tense Rose was, and I wondered how the room felt to Jasper right now. Or was he focusing so hard on me that he couldn’t feel the others?
Renesmee reached for me as I reached for her, a blinding smile lighting her face. She fit so easily in my arms, like they’d been shaped just for her. Immediately, she put her hot little hand against my cheek.
Though I was prepared, it still made me gasp to see the memory like a vision in my head. So bright and colorful but also completely transparent.
She was remembering me charging Jacob across the front lawn, remembering Seth leaping between us. She’d seen and heard it all with perfect clarity. It didn’t look like me, this graceful predator leaping at her prey like an arrow arcing from a bow. It had to be someone else. That made me feel a very small bit less guilty as Jacob stood there defenselessly with his hands raised in front of him. His hands did not tremble.
Edward chuckled, watching Renesmee’s thoughts with me. And then we both winced as we heard the crack of Seth’s bones.
Renesmee smiled her brilliant smile, and her memory eyes did not leave Jacob through all the following mess. I tasted a new flavor to the memory—not exactly protective, more possessive—as she watched Jacob. I got the distinct impression that she was glad Seth had put himself in front of my spring. She didn’t want Jacob hurt. He was hers.
“Oh, wonderful,” I groaned. “Perfect.”
“It’s just because he tastes better than the rest of us,” Edward assured me, voice stiff with his own annoyance.
“I told you she likes me, too,” Jacob teased from across the room, his eyes on Renesmee. His joking was halfhearted; the tense angle of his eyebrows had not relaxed.
Renesmee patted my face impatiently, demanding my attention. Another memory: Rosalie pulling a brush gently through each of her curls. It felt nice.
Carlisle and his tape measure, knowing she had to stretch and be still. It was not interesting to her.
“It looks like she’s going to give you a rundown of everything you missed,” Edward commented in my ear.
My nose wrinkled as she dumped the next one on me. The smell coming from a strange metal cup—hard enough not to be bitten through easily—sent a flash burn through my throat. Ouch.
And then Renesmee was out of my arms, which were pinned behind my back. I didn’t struggle with Jasper; I just looked at Edward’s frightened face.
“What did I do?”
Edward looked at Jasper behind me, and then at me again.
“But she was remembering being thirsty,” Edward muttered, his forehead pressing into lines. “She was remembering the taste of human blood.”
Jasper’s arms pulled mine tighter together. Part of my head noted that this wasn’t particularly uncomfortable, let alone painful, as it would have been to a human. It was just annoying. I was sure I could break his hold, but I didn’t fight it.
“Yes,” I agreed. “And?”
Edward frowned at me for a second more, and then his expression loosened. He laughed once. “And nothing at all, it seems. The overreaction is mine this time. Jazz, let her go.”
The binding hands disappeared. I reached out for Renesmee as soon as I was free. Edward handed her to me without hesitation.
“I can’t understand,” Jasper said. “I can’t bear this.”
I watched in surprise as Jasper strode out the back door. Leah moved to give him a wide margin of space as he paced to the river and then launched himself over it in one bound.
Renesmee touched my neck, repeating the scene of departure right back, like an instant replay. I could feel the question in her thought, an echo of mine.
I was already over the shock of her odd little gift. It seemed an entirely natural part of her, almost to be expected. Maybe now that I was part of the supernatural myself, I would never be a skeptic again.
But what was wrong with Jasper?
“He’ll be back,” Edward said, whether to me or Renesmee, I wasn’t sure. “He just needs a moment alone to readjust his perspective on life.” There was a grin threatening at the corners of his mouth.
Another human memory—Edward telling me that Jasper would feel better about himself if I “had a hard time adjusting” to being a vampire. This was in the context of a discussion about how many people I would kill my first newborn year.
“Is he mad at me?” I asked quietly.
Edward’s eyes widened. “No. Why would he be?” “What’s the matter with him, then?”
“He’s upset with himself, not you, Bella. He’s worrying about… self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose you could say.”
“How so?” Carlisle asked before I could.
“He’s wondering if the newborn madness is really as difficult as we’ve always thought, or if, with the right focus and attitude, anyone could do as well as Bella. Even now—perhaps he only has such difficulty because he believes it’s natural and unavoidable. Maybe if he expected more of himself, he would rise to those expectations. You’re making him question a lot of deep-rooted assumptions, Bella.”
“But that’s unfair,” Carlisle said. “Everyone is different; everyone has their own challenges. Perhaps what Bella is doing goes beyond the natural. Maybe this is her gift, so to speak.”
I froze with surprise. Renesmee felt the change, and touched me. She remembered the last second of time and wondered why.
“That’s an interesting theory, and quite plausible,” Edward said.
For a tiny space, I was disappointed. What? No magic visions, no formidable offensive abilities like, oh, shooting lightning bolts from my eyes or something? Nothing helpful or cool at all?
And then I realized what that might mean, if my “superpower” was no more than exceptional self-control.
For one thing, at least I had a gift. It could have been nothing.
But, much more than that, if Edward was right, then I could skip right over the part I’d feared the very most.
What if I didn’t have to be a newborn? Not in the crazed killing-machine sense, anyway. What if I could fit right in with the Cullens from my first day? What if we didn’t have to hide out somewhere remote for a year while I “grew up”? What if, like Carlisle, I never killed a single person? What if I could be a good vampire right away?
I could see Charlie.
I sighed as soon as reality filtered through hope. I couldn’t see Charlie right away. The eyes, the voice, the perfected face. What could I possibly say to him; how could I even begin? I was furtively glad that I had some excuses for putting things off for a while; as much as I wanted to find some way to keep Charlie in my life, I was terrified of that first meeting. Seeing his eyes pop as he took in my new face, my new skin. Knowing that he was frightened. Wondering what dark explanation would form in his head.
I was chicken enough to wait for a year while my eyes cooled. And here I’d thought I would be so fearless when I was indestructible.
“Have you ever seen an equivalent to self-control as a talent?” Edward asked Carlisle. “Do you really think that’s a gift, or just a product of all her preparation?”
Carlisle shrugged. “It’s slightly similar to what Siobhan has always been able to do, though she wouldn’t call it a gift.”
“Siobhan, your friend in that Irish coven?” Rosalie asked. “I wasn’t aware that she did anything special. I thought it was Maggie who was talented in that bunch.”
“Yes, Siobhan thinks the same. But she has this way of deciding her goals and then almost… willing them into reality. She considers it good planning, but I’ve always wondered if it was something more. When she included Maggie, for instance. Liam was very territorial, but Siobhan wanted it to work out, and so it did.”
Edward, Carlisle, and Rosalie settled into chairs as they continued with the discussion. Jacob sat next to Seth protectively, looking bored. From the way his eyelids drooped, I was sure he’d be unconscious momentarily.
I listened, but my attention was divided. Renesmee was still telling me about her day. I held her by the window wall, my arms rocking her automatically as we stared into each other’s eyes.
I realized that the others had no reason for sitting down. I was perfectly comfortable standing. It was just as restful as stretching out on a bed would be. I knew I would be able to stand like this for a week without moving and I would feel just as relaxed at the end of the seven days as I did at the beginning.
They must sit out of habit. Humans would notice someone standing for hours without ever shifting her weight to a different foot. Even now, I saw Rosalie brush her fingers against her hair and Carlisle cross his legs. Little motions to keep from being too still, too much a vampire. I would have to pay attention to what they
did and start practicing.
I rolled my weight back to my left leg. It felt kind of silly.
Maybe they were just trying to give me a little alone time with my baby—as alone as was safe.
Renesmee told me about every minute happening of the day, and I got the feeling from the tenor of her little stories that she wanted me to know her every bit as much I wanted the same thing. It worried her that I had missed things—like the sparrows that had hopped closer and closer when Jacob had held her, both of them very still beside one of the big hemlocks; the birds wouldn’t come close to Rosalie. Or the outrageously icky white stuff—baby formula—that Carlisle had put in her cup; it smelled like sour dirt. Or the song Edward had crooned to her that was so perfect Renesmee played it for me twice; I was surprised that I was in the background of that memory, perfectly motionless but looking fairly battered still. I shuddered, remembering that time from my own perspective. The hideous fire…
After almost an hour—the others were still deeply absorbed in their discussion, Seth and Jacob snoring in harmony on the couch—Renesmee’s memory stories began to slow. They got slightly blurry around the edges and drifted out of focus before they came to their conclusions. I was about to interrupt Edward in a panic—was there something wrong with her?—when her eyelids fluttered and closed. She yawned, her plump pink lips stretching into a round O, and her eyes never reopened.
Her hand fell away from my face as she drifted to sleep—the backs of her eyelids were the pale lavender color of thin clouds before the sunrise. Careful not to disturb her, I lifted that hand back to my skin and held it there curiously. At first there was nothing, and then, after a few minutes, a flickering of colors like a handful of butterflies were scattering from her thoughts.
Mesmerized, I watched her dreams. There was no sense to it. Just colors and shapes and faces. I was pleased by how often my face—both of my faces, hideous human and glorious immortal—cropped up in her unconscious thoughts. More than Edward or Rosalie. I was neck and neck with Jacob; I tried not to let that get to me.
For the first time, I understood how Edward had been able to watch me sleep night after boring night, just to hear me talk in my sleep. I could watch Renesmee dream forever.
The change in Edward’s tone caught my attention when he said, “Finally,” and turned to gaze out the window. It was deep, purply night outside, but I could see just as far as before. Nothing was hidden in the darkness; everything had just changed colors.
Leah, still glowering, got up and slunk into the brush just as Alice came into view on the other side of the river. Alice swung back and forth from a branch like a trapeze artist, toes touching hands, before throwing her body into a graceful flat spin over the river. Esme made a more traditional leap, while Emmett charged right through the water, splashing water so far that splatters hit the back windows. To my surprise, Jasper followed after, his own efficient leap seeming understated, even subtle, after the others.
The huge grin stretching Alice’s face was familiar in a dim, odd way. Everyone was suddenly smiling at me—Esme sweet, Emmett excited, Rosalie a little superior, Carlisle indulgent, and Edward expectant.
Alice skipped into the room ahead of everyone else, her hand stretched out in front of her and impatience making a nearly visible aura around her. In her palm was an everyday brass key with an oversized pink satin bow tied around it.
She held the key out for me, and I automatically gripped Renesmee more securely in my right arm so that I could open my left. Alice dropped the key into it.
“Happy birthday!” she squealed.
I rolled my eyes. “No one starts counting on the actual day of birth,” I reminded her. “Your first birthday is at the year mark, Alice.”
Her grin turned smug. “We’re not celebrating your vampire birthday. Yet. It’s September thirteenth, Bella. Happy nineteenth birthday!”
24. SURPRISE
“No. No way!” I shook my head fiercely and then shot a glance at the smug smile on my seventeen-year-old husband’s face. “No, this doesn’t count. I stopped aging three days ago. I am eighteen forever.”
“Whatever,” Alice said, dismissing my protest with a quick shrug. “We’re celebrating anyway, so suck it up.”
I sighed. There was rarely a point to arguing with Alice.
Her grin got impossibly wider as she read the acquiescence in my eyes. “Are you ready to open your present?” Alice sang.
“Presents,” Edward corrected, and he pulled another key—this one longer and silver with a less gaudy blue bow—from his pocket.
I struggled to keep from rolling my eyes. I knew immediately what this key was to—the “after car.” I wondered if I should feel excited. It seemed the vampire conversion hadn’t given me any sudden interest in sports cars.
“Mine first,” Alice said, and then stuck her tongue out, foreseeing his answer. “Mine is closer.”
“But look at how she’s dressed.” Alice’s words were almost a moan. “It’s been killing me all day. That is clearly the priority.”
My eyebrows pulled together as I wondered how a key could get me into new clothes. Had she gotten me a whole trunkful?
“I know—I’ll play you for it,” Alice suggested. “Rock, paper, scissors.” Jasper chuckled and Edward sighed.
“Why you don’t you just tell me who wins?” Edward said wryly. Alice beamed. “I do. Excellent.”
“It’s probably better that I wait for morning, anyway.” Edward smiled crookedly at me and then nodded toward Jacob and Seth, who looked like they were crashed for the night; I wonder how long they’d stayed up this time. “I think it might be more fun if Jacob was awake for the big reveal, don’t you agree? So that someone there is able to express the right level of enthusiasm?”
I grinned back. He knew me well.
“Yay,” Alice sang. “Bella, give Ness—Renesmee to Rosalie.” “Where does she usually sleep?”
Alice shrugged. “In Rose’s arms. Or Jacob’s. Or Esme’s. You get the picture. She has never been set down in her entire life. She’s going to be the most spoiled half- vampire in existence.”
Edward laughed while Rosalie took Renesmee expertly in her arms. “She is also the most unspoiled half-vampire in existence,” Rosalie said. “The beauty of being one of a kind.”
Rosalie grinned at me, and I was glad to see that the new comradeship between us was still there in her smile. I hadn’t been entirely sure it would last after Renesmee’s life was no longer tied to mine. But maybe we had fought together on the same side long enough that we would always be friends now. I’d finally made the same choice she would have if she’d been in my shoes. That seemed to have washed away her resentment for all my other choices.
Alice shoved the beribboned key in my hand, then grabbed my elbow and steered me toward the back door. “Let’s go, let’s go,” she trilled.
“Is it outside?”
“Sort of,” Alice said, pushing me forward.
“Enjoy your gift,” Rosalie said. “It’s from all of us. Esme especially.” “Aren’t you coming, too?” I realized that no one had moved.
“We’ll give you a chance to appreciate it alone,” Rosalie said. “You can tell us about it… later.”
Emmett guffawed. Something about his laugh made me feel like blushing, though I wasn’t sure why.
I realized that lots of things about me—like truly hating surprises, and not liking gifts in general much more—had not changed one bit. It was a relief and revelation to discover how much of my essential core traits had come with me into this new body.
I hadn’t expected to be myself. I smiled widely.
Alice tugged my elbow, and I couldn’t stop smiling as I followed her into the purple night. Only Edward came with us.
“There’s the enthusiasm I’m looking for,” Alice murmured approvingly. Then she dropped my arm, made two lithe bounds, and leaped over the river.
“C’mon, Bella,” she called from the other side.
Edward jumped at the same time I did; it was every bit as fun as it had been this afternoon. Maybe a little bit more fun because the night changed everything into new, rich colors.
Alice took off with us on her heels, heading due north. It was easier to follow the sound of her feet whispering against the ground and the fresh path of her scent than it was to keep my eyes on her through the thick vegetation.
At no sign I could see, she whirled and dashed back to where I paused. “Don’t attack me,” she warned, and sprang at me.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, squirming as she scrambled onto my back and wrapped her hands around my face. I felt the urge to throw her off, but I controlled it.
“Making sure you can’t see.”
“I could take care of that without the theatrics,” Edward offered. “You might let her cheat. Take her hand and lead her forward.” “Alice, I—”
“Don’t bother, Bella. We’re doing this my way.”
I felt Edward’s fingers weave through mine. “Just a few seconds more, Bella. Then she’ll go annoy someone else.” He pulled me forward. I kept up easily. I wasn’t afraid of hitting a tree; the tree would be the only one getting hurt in that scenario.
“You might be a little more appreciative,” Alice chided him. “This is as much for you as it is for her.”
“True. Thank you again, Alice.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay.” Alice’s voice suddenly shot up with excitement. “Stop there. Turn her just a little to the right. Yes, like that. Okay. Are you ready?” she squeaked.
“I’m ready.” There were new scents here, piquing my interest, increasing my curiosity. Scents that didn’t belong in the deep woods. Honeysuckle. Smoke.
Roses. Sawdust? Something metallic, too. The richness of deep earth, dug up and exposed. I leaned toward the mystery.
Alice hopped down from my back, releasing her grip on my eyes.
I stared into the violet dark. There, nestled into a small clearing in the forest, was a tiny stone cottage, lavender gray in the light of the stars.
It belonged here so absolutely that it seemed as if it must have grown from the rock, a natural formation. Honeysuckle climbed up one wall like a lattice, winding all the way up and over the thick wooden shingles. Late summer roses bloomed in a handkerchief-sized garden under the dark, deep-set windows. There was a little path of flat stones, amethyst in the night, that led up to the quaint arched wooden door.
I curled my hand around the key I held, shocked.
“What do you think?” Alice’s voice was soft now; it fit with the perfect quiet of the storybook scene.
I opened my mouth but said nothing.
“Esme thought we might like a place of our own for a while, but she didn’t want us too far away,” Edward murmured. “And she loves any excuse to renovate. This little place has been crumbling away out here for at least a hundred years.”
I continued staring, mouth gaping like a fish.
“Don’t you like it?” Alice’s face fell. “I mean, I’m sure we could fix it up differently, if you want. Emmett was all for adding a few thousand square feet, a second story, columns, and a tower, but Esme thought you would like it best the way it was meant to look.” Her voice started to climb, to go faster. “If she was wrong, we can get back to work. It won’t take long to—”
“Shh!” I managed.
She pressed her lips together and waited. It took me a few seconds to recover. “You’re giving me a house for my birthday?” I whispered.
“Us,” Edward corrected. “And it’s no more than a cottage. I think the word house
implies more legroom.”
“No knocking my house,” I whispered to him. Alice beamed. “You like it.”
I shook my head. “Love it?”
I nodded.
“I can’t wait to tell Esme!” “Why didn’t she come?”
Alice’s smile faded a little, twisted just off what it had been, like my question was hard to answer. “Oh, you know… they all remember how you are about presents. They didn’t want to put you under too much pressure to like it.”
“But of course I love it. How could I not?”
“They’ll like that.” She patted my arm. “Anyhoo, your closet is stocked. Use it wisely. And… I guess that’s everything.”
“Aren’t you going to come inside?”
She strolled casually a few feet back. “Edward knows his way around. I’ll stop by… later. Call me if you can’t match your clothes right.” She threw me a doubtful look and then smiled. “Jazz wants to hunt. See you.”
She shot off into the trees like the most graceful bullet.
“That was weird,” I said when the sound of her flight had vanished completely. “Am I really that bad? They didn’t have to stay away. Now I feel guilty. I didn’t even thank her right. We should go back, tell Esme—”
“Bella, don’t be silly. No one thinks you’re that unreasonable.” “Then what—”
“Alone time is their other gift. Alice was trying to be subtle about it.” “Oh.”
That was all it took to make the house disappear. We could have been anywhere. I didn’t see the trees or the stones or the stars. It was just Edward.
“Let me show you what they’ve done,” he said, pulling my hand. Was he oblivious to the fact that an electric current was pulsing through my body like adrenaline- spiked blood?
Once again I felt oddly off balance, waiting for reactions my body wasn’t capable of anymore. My heart should have been thundering like a steam engine about to hit us. Deafening. My cheeks should have been brilliant red.
For that matter, I ought to have been exhausted. This had been the longest day of my life.
I laughed out loud—just one quiet little laugh of shock—when I realized that this day would never end.
“Do I get to hear the joke?”
“It’s not a very good one,” I told him as he led the way to the little rounded door. “I was just thinking—today is the first and last day of forever. It’s kind of hard to wrap my head around it. Even with all this extra room for wrapping.” I laughed again.
He chuckled with me. He held his hand out toward the doorknob, waiting for me to do the honors. I stuck the key in the lock and turned it.
“You’re such a natural at this, Bella; I forget how very strange this all must be for you. I wish I could hear it.” He ducked down and yanked me up into his arms so fast that I didn’t see it coming—and that was really something.
“Hey!”
“Thresholds are part of my job description,” he reminded me. “But I’m curious. Tell me what you’re thinking about right now.”
He opened the door—it fell back with a barely audible creak—and stepped through into the little stone living room.
“Everything,” I told him. “All at the same time, you know. Good things and things to worry about and things that are new. How I keep using too many superlatives in my head. Right now, I’m thinking that Esme is an artist. It’s so perfect!”
The cottage room was something from a fairy tale. The floor was a crazy quilt of smooth, flat stones. The low ceiling had long exposed beams that someone as tall as Jacob would surely knock his head on. The walls were warm wood in some places, stone mosaics in others. The beehive fireplace in the corner held the remains of a slow flickering fire. It was driftwood burning there—the low flames were blue and green from the salt.
It was furnished in eclectic pieces, not one of them matching another, but harmonious just the same. One chair seemed vaguely medieval, while a low ottoman by the fire was more contemporary and the stocked bookshelf against the far window reminded me of movies set in Italy. Somehow each piece fit
together with the others like a big three-dimensional puzzle. There were a few paintings on the walls that I recognized—some of my very favorites from the big house. Priceless originals, no doubt, but they seemed to belong here, too, like all the rest.
It was a place where anyone could believe magic existed. A place where you just expected Snow White to walk right in with her apple in hand, or a unicorn to stop and nibble at the rosebushes.
Edward had always thought that he belonged to the world of horror stories. Of course, I’d known he was dead wrong. It was obvious that he belonged here. In a fairy tale.
And now I was in the story with him.
I was about to take advantage of the fact that he hadn’t gotten around to setting me back on my feet and that his wits-scramblingly beautiful face was only inches away when he said, “We’re lucky Esme thought to add an extra room. No one was planning for Ness—Renesmee.”
I frowned at him, my thoughts channeled down a less pleasant path. “Not you, too,” I complained.
“Sorry, love. I hear it in their thoughts all the time, you know. It’s rubbing off on me.”
I sighed. My baby, the sea serpent. Maybe there was no help for it. Well, I wasn’t giving in.
“I’m sure you’re dying to see the closet. Or, at least I’ll tell Alice that you were, to make her feel good.”
“Should I be afraid?” “Terrified.”
He carried me down a narrow stone hallway with tiny arches in the ceiling, like it was our own miniature castle.
“That will be Renesmee’s room,” he said, nodding to an empty room with a pale wooden floor. “They didn’t have time to do much with it, what with the angry werewolves ”
I laughed quietly, amazed at how quickly everything had turned right when it had all had looked so nightmarish just a week ago.
Drat Jacob for making everything perfect this way.
“Here’s our room. Esme tried to bring some of her island back here for us. She guessed that we would get attached.”
The bed was huge and white, with clouds of gossamer floating down from the canopy to the floor. The pale wood floor matched the other room, and now I grasped that it was precisely the color of a pristine beach. The walls were that almost-white-blue of a brilliant sunny day, and the back wall had big glass doors that opened into a little hidden garden. Climbing roses and a small round pond, smooth as a mirror and edged with shiny stones. A tiny, calm ocean for us.
“Oh” was all I could say. “I know,” he whispered.
We stood there for a minute, remembering. Though the memories were human and clouded, they took over my mind completely.
He smiled a wide, gleaming smile and then laughed. “The closet is through those double doors. I should warn you—it’s bigger than this room.”
I didn’t even glance at the doors. There was nothing else in the world but him again—his arms curled under me, his sweet breath on my face, his lips just inches from mine—and there was nothing that could distract me now, newborn vampire or not.
“We’re going to tell Alice that I ran right to the clothes,” I whispered, twisting my fingers into his hair and pulling my face closer to his. “We’re going to tell her I spent hours in there playing dress-up. We’re going to lie.”
He caught up to my mood in an instant, or maybe he’d already been there, and he was just trying to let me fully appreciate my birthday present, like a gentleman.
He pulled my face to his with a sudden fierceness, a low moan in his throat. The sound sent the electric current running through my body into a near-frenzy, like I couldn’t get close enough to him fast enough.
I heard the fabric tearing under our hands, and I was glad my clothes, at least, were already destroyed. It was too late for his. It felt almost rude to ignore the pretty white bed, but we just weren’t going to make it that far.
This second honeymoon wasn’t like our first.
Our time on the island had been the epitome of my human life. The very best of it. I’d been so ready to string along my human time, just to hold on to what I had with him for a little while longer. Because the physical part wasn’t going to be the same ever again.
I should have guessed, after a day like today, that it would be better.
I could really appreciate him now—could properly see every beautiful line of his perfect face, of his long, flawless body with my strong new eyes, every angle and every plane of him. I could taste his pure, vivid scent on my tongue and feel the unbelievable silkiness of his marble skin under my sensitive fingertips.
My skin was so sensitive under his hands, too.
He was all new, a different person as our bodies tangled gracefully into one on the sand-pale floor. No caution, no restraint. No fear—especially not that. We could love together—both active participants now. Finally equals.
Like our kisses before, every touch was more than I was used to. So much of himself he’d been holding back. Necessary at the time, but I couldn’t believe how much I’d been missing.
I tried to keep in mind that I was stronger than he was, but it was hard to focus on anything with sensations so intense, pulling my attention to a million different places in my body every second; if I hurt him, he didn’t complain.
A very, very small part of my head considered the interesting conundrum presented in this situation. I was never going to get tired, and neither was he. We didn’t have to catch our breath or rest or eat or even use the bathroom; we had no more mundane human needs. He had the most beautiful, perfect body in the world and I had him all to myself, and it didn’t feel like I was ever going to find a point where I would think, Now I’ve had enough for one day. I was always going to want more. And the day was never going to end. So, in such a situation, how did we ever stop?
It didn’t bother me at all that I had no answer.
I sort of noticed when the sky began to lighten. The tiny ocean outside turned from black to gray, and a lark started to sing somewhere very close by—maybe she had a nest in the roses.
“Do you miss it?” I asked him when her song was done.
It wasn’t the first time we’d spoken, but we weren’t exactly keeping up a conversation, either.
“Miss what?” he murmured.
“All of it—the warmth, the soft skin, the tasty smell… I’m not losing anything at all, and I just wondered if it was a little bit sad for you that you were.”
He laughed, low and gentle. “It would be hard to find someone less sad than I am now. Impossible, I’d venture. Not many people get every single thing they want, plus all the things they didn’t think to ask for, in the same day.”
“Are you avoiding the question?”
He pressed his hand against my face. “You are warm,” he told me.
It was true, in a sense. To me, his hand was warm. It wasn’t the same as touching Jacob’s flame-hot skin, but it was more comfortable. More natural.
Then he pulled his fingers very slowly down my face, lightly tracing from my jaw to my throat and then all the way down to my waist. My eyes rolled back into my head a little.
“You are soft.”
His fingers were like satin against my skin, so I could see what he meant.
“And as for the scent, well, I couldn’t say I missed that. Do you remember the scent of those hikers on our hunt?”
“I’ve been trying very hard not to.” “Imagine kissing that.”
My throat ripped into flames like pulling the cord on a hot-air balloon.
“Oh.”
“Precisely. So the answer is no. I am purely full of joy, because I am missing
nothing. No one has more than I do now.”
I was about to inform him of the one exception to his statement, but my lips were suddenly very busy.
When the little pool turned pearl-colored with the sunrise, I thought of another question for him.
“How long does this go on? I mean, Carlisle and Esme, Em and Rose, Alice and Jasper—they don’t spend all day locked in their rooms. They’re out in public, fully clothed, all the time. Does this… craving ever let up?” I twisted myself closer into him—quite an accomplishment, actually—to make it clear what I was talking about.
“That’s difficult to say. Everyone is different and, well, so far you’re the very most different of all. The average young vampire is too obsessed with thirst to notice
much else for a while. That doesn’t seem to apply to you. With the average vampire, though, after that first year, other needs make themselves known. Neither thirst nor any other desire really ever fades. It’s simply a matter of learning to balance them, learning to prioritize and manage ”
“How long?”
He smiled, wrinkling his nose a little. “Rosalie and Emmett were the worst. It took a solid decade before I could stand to be within a five-mile radius of them. Even Carlisle and Esme had a difficult time stomaching it. They kicked the happy couple out eventually. Esme built them a house, too. It was grander than this one, but then, Esme knows what Rose likes, and she knows what you like.”
“So, after ten years, then?” I was pretty sure that Rosalie and Emmett had nothing on us, but it might sound cocky if I went higher than a decade. “Everybody is normal again? Like they are now?”
Edward smiled again. “Well, I’m not sure what you mean by normal. You’ve seen my family going about life in a fairly human way, but you’ve been sleeping nights.” He winked at me. “There’s a tremendous amount of time left over when you don’t have to sleep. It makes balancing your… interests quite easy. There’s a reason why I’m the best musician in the family, why—besides Carlisle—I’ve read the most books, studied the most sciences, become fluent in the most languages.… Emmett would have you believe that I’m such a know-it-all because of the mind reading, but the truth is that I’ve just had a lot of free time.”
We laughed together, and the motion of our laughter did interesting things to the way our bodies were connected, effectively ending that conversation.
25. FAVOR
It was only a little while later that Edward reminded me of my priorities. It took him just one word.
“Renesmee . . .”
I sighed. She would be awake soon. It must be nearly seven in the morning. Would she be looking for me? Abruptly, something close to panic had my body freezing up. What would she look like today?
Edward felt the total distraction of my stress. “It’s all right, love. Get dressed, and we’ll be back to the house in two seconds.”
I probably looked like a cartoon, the way I sprung up, then looked back at him— his diamond body faintly glinting in the diffuse light—then away to the west, where Renesmee waited, then back at him again, then back toward her, my head whipping from side to side a half dozen times in a second. Edward smiled, but didn’t laugh; he was a strong man.
“It’s all about balance, love. You’re so good at all of this, I don’t imagine it will take too long to put everything in perspective.”
“And we have all night, right?”
He smiled wider. “Do you think I could bear to let you get dressed now if that weren’t the case?”
That would have to be enough to get me through the daylight hours. I would balance this overwhelming, devastating desire so that I could be a good— It was hard to think the word. Though Renesmee was very real and vital in my life, it was still difficult to think of myself as a mother. I supposed anyone would feel the same, though, without nine months to get used to the idea. And with a child that changed by the hour.
The thought of Renesmee’s speeding life had me stressed-out again in an instant. I didn’t even pause at the ornately carved double doors to catch my breath before finding out what Alice had done. I just burst through, intent on wearing the first things I touched. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Which ones are mine?” I hissed. As promised, the room was bigger than our bedroom. It might have been bigger than the rest of the house put together, but I’d have to pace it off to be positive. I had a brief mental flash of Alice trying to persuade Esme to ignore classic proportions and allow this monstrosity. I wondered how Alice had won that one.
Everything was wrapped in garment bags, pristine and white, row after row after row.
“To the best of my knowledge, everything but this rack here”—he touched a bar that stretched along the half-wall to the left of the door—“is yours.”
“All of this?” He shrugged.
“Alice,” we said together. He said her name like an explanation; I said it like an expletive.
“Fine,” I muttered, and I pulled down the zipper on the closest bag. I growled under my breath when I saw the floorlength silk gown inside—baby pink.
Finding something normal to wear could take all day!
“Let me help,” Edward offered. He sniffed carefully at the air and then followed some scent to the back of the long room. There was a built-in dresser there. He sniffed again, then opened a drawer. With a triumphant grin, he held out a pair of artfully faded blue jeans.
I flitted to his side. “How did you do that?”
“Denim has its own scent just like anything else. Now… stretch cotton?”
He followed his nose to a half-rack, unearthing a long-sleeved white t-shirt. He tossed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said fervently. I inhaled each fabric, memorizing the scent for future searches through this madhouse. I remembered silk and satin; I would avoid those.
It only took him seconds to find his own clothes—if I hadn’t seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis and pale beige pullover—and then he took my hand. We darted through the hidden garden, leaped lightly over the stone wall, and hit the forest at a dead sprint. I pulled my hand free so that we could race back. He beat me this time.
Renesmee was awake; she was sitting up on the floor with Rose and Emmett hovering over her, playing with a little pile of twisted silverware. She had a mangled spoon in her right hand. As soon as she spied me through the glass, she chucked the spoon on the floor—where it left a divot in the wood—and pointed in my direction imperiously. Her audience laughed; Alice, Jasper, Esme, and Carlisle were sitting on the couch, watching her as if she were the most engrossing film.
I was through the door before their laughter had barely begun, bounding across the room and scooping her up from the floor in the same second. We smiled widely at each other.
She was different, but not so much. A little longer again, her proportions drifting from babyish to childlike. Her hair was longer by a quarter inch, the curls bouncing like springs with every movement. I’d let my imagination run wild on the trip back, and I’d imagined worse than this. Thanks to my overdone fears, these little changes were almost a relief. Even without Carlisle’s measurements, I was sure the changes were slower than yesterday.
Renesmee patted my cheek. I winced. She was hungry again.
“How long has she been up?” I asked as Edward disappeared through the kitchen doorway. I was sure he was on his way to get her breakfast, having seen what she’d just thought as clearly as I had. I wondered if he would ever have noticed her little quirk, if he’d been the only one to know her. To him, it probably would have seemed like hearing anyone.
“Just a few minutes,” Rose said. “We would have called you soon. She’s been asking for you—demanding might be a better description. Esme sacrificed her second-best silver service to keep the little monster entertained.” Rose smiled at Renesmee with so much gloating affection that the criticism was entirely weightless. “We didn’t want to… er, bother you.”
Rosalie bit her lip and looked away, trying not to laugh. I could feel Emmett’s silent laughter behind me, sending vibrations through the foundations of the house.
I kept my chin high. “We’ll get your room set up right away,” I said to Renesmee. “You’ll like the cottage. It’s magic.” I look up at Esme. “Thank you, Esme. So much. It’s absolutely perfect.”
Before Esme could respond, Emmett was laughing again—it wasn’t silent this time.
“So it’s still standing?” he managed to get out between his snickers. “I would’ve thought you two had knocked it to rubble by now. What were you doing last night? Discussing the national debt?” He howled with laughter.
I gritted my teeth and reminded myself of the negative consequences when I’d let my temper get away from me yesterday. Of course, Emmett wasn’t as breakable as Seth. . . .
Thinking of Seth made me wonder. “Where’re the wolves today?” I glanced out the window wall, but there had been no sign of Leah on the way in.
“Jacob took off this morning pretty early,” Rosalie told me, a little frown creasing her forehead. “Seth followed him out.”
“What was he so upset about?” Edward asked as he came back into the room with Renesmee’s cup. There must have been more in Rosalie’s memory than I’d seen in her expression.
Without breathing, I handed Renesmee off to Rosalie. Super-self-control, maybe, but there was no way I was going to be able to feed her. Not yet.
“I don’t know—or care,” Rosalie grumbled, but she answered Edward’s question more fully. “He was watching Nessie sleep, his mouth hanging open like the moron he is, and then he just jumped to his feet without any kind of trigger—that I noticed, anyway—and stormed out. I was glad to be rid of him. The more time he spends here, the less chance there is that we’ll ever get the smell out.”
“Rose,” Esme chided gently.
Rosalie flipped her hair. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. We won’t be here that much longer.”
“I still say we should go straight to New Hampshire and get things set up,” Emmett said, obviously continuing an earlier conversation. “Bella’s already registered at Dartmouth. Doesn’t look like it will take her all that long to be able to handle school.” He turned to look at me with a teasing grin. “I’m sure you’ll ace your classes… apparently there’s nothing interesting for you to do at night besides study.”
Rosalie giggled.
Do not lose your temper, do not lose your temper, I chanted to myself. And then I was proud of myself for keeping my head.
So I was pretty surprised that Edward didn’t.
He growled—an abrupt, shocking rasp of sound—and the blackest fury rolled across his expression like storm clouds.
Before any of us could respond, Alice was on her feet.
“What is he doing? What is that dog doing that has erased my schedule for the entire day? I can’t see anything! No!” She shot me a tortured glance. “Look at you! You need me to show you how to use your closet.”
For one second I was grateful for whatever Jacob was up to.
And then Edward’s hands balled up into fists and he snarled, “He talked to Charlie. He thinks Charlie is following after him. Coming here. Today.”
Alice said a word that sounded very odd in her trilling, ladylike voice, and then she blurred into motion, streaking out the back door.
“He told Charlie?” I gasped. “But—doesn’t he understand? How could he do that?” Charlie couldn’t know about me! About vampires! That would put him on a hit list that even the Cullens couldn’t save him from. “No!”
Edward spoke through his teeth. “Jacob’s on his way in now.”
It must have started raining farther east. Jacob came through the door shaking his wet hair like a dog, flipping droplets on the carpet and the couch where they made little round gray spots on the white. His teeth glinted against his dark lips; his eyes were bright and excited. He walked with jerky movements, like he was all hyped-up about destroying my father’s life.
“Hey, guys,” he greeted us, grinning. It was perfectly silent.
Leah and Seth slipped in behind him, in their human forms—for now; both of their hands were trembling with the tension in the room.
“Rose,” I said, holding my arms out. Wordlessly, Rosalie handed me Renesmee. I pressed her close to my motionless heart, holding her like a talisman against rash behavior. I would keep her in my arms until I was sure my decision to kill Jacob was based entirely on rational judgment rather than fury.
She was very still, watching and listening. How much did she understand?
“Charlie’ll be here soon,” Jacob said to me casually. “Just a heads-up. I assume Alice is getting you sunglasses or something?”
“You assume way too much,” I spit through my teeth. “What. Have. You. Done?”
Jacob’s smile wavered, but he was still too wound up to answer seriously. “Blondie and Emmett woke me up this morning going on and on about you all moving cross-country. Like I could let you leave. Charlie was the biggest issue there, right? Well, problem solved.”
“Do you even realize what you’ve done? The danger you’ve put him in?”
He snorted. “I didn’t put him in danger. Except from you. But you’ve got some kind of supernatural self-control, right? Not as good as mind reading, if you ask me. Much less exciting.”
Edward moved then, darting across the room to get in Jacob’s face. Though he was half a head shorter than Jacob, Jacob leaned away from his staggering anger as if Edward towered over him.
“That’s just a theory, mongrel,” he snarled. “You think we should test it out on Charlie? Did you consider the physical pain you’re putting Bella through, even if she can resist? Or the emotional pain if she doesn’t? I suppose what happens to Bella no longer concerns you!” He spit the last word.
Renesmee pressed her fingers anxiously to my cheek, anxiety coloring the replay in her head.
Edward’s words finally cut through Jacob’s strangely electric mood. His mouth dropped into a frown. “Bella will be in pain?”
“Like you’ve shoved a white-hot branding iron down her throat!” I flinched, remembering the scent of pure human blood.
“I didn’t know that,” Jacob whispered.
“Then perhaps you should have asked first,” Edward growled back through his teeth.
“You would have stopped me.” “You should have been stopped—”
“This isn’t about me,” I interrupted. I stood very still, keeping my hold on Renesmee and sanity. “This is about Charlie, Jacob. How could you put him in danger this way? Do you realize it’s death or vampire life for him now, too?” My voice trembled with the tears my eyes could no longer shed.
Jacob was still troubled by Edward’s accusations, but mine didn’t seem to bother him. “Relax, Bella. I didn’t tell him anything you weren’t planning to tell him.”
“But he’s coming here!”
“Yeah, that’s the idea. Wasn’t the whole ‘let him make the wrong assumptions’ thing your plan? I think I provided a very nice red herring, if I do say so myself.”
My fingers flexed away from Renesmee. I curled them back in securely. “Say it straight, Jacob. I don’t have the patience for this.”
“I didn’t tell him anything about you, Bella. Not really. I told him about me. Well,
show is probably a better verb.”
“He phased in front of Charlie,” Edward hissed. I whispered, “You what?”
“He’s brave. Brave as you are. Didn’t pass out or throw up or anything. I gotta say, I was impressed. You should’ve seen his face when I started taking my clothes off, though. Priceless,” Jacob chortled.
“You absolute moron! You could have given him a heart attack!”
“Charlie’s fine. He’s tough. If you’d give this just a minute, you’ll see that I did you a favor here.”
“You have half of that, Jacob.” My voice was flat and steely. “You have thirty seconds to tell me every single word before I give Renesmee to Rosalie and rip your miserable head off. Seth won’t be able to stop me this time.”
“Jeez, Bells. You didn’t used to be so melodramatic. Is that a vampire thing?” “Twenty-six seconds.”
Jacob rolled his eyes and flopped into the nearest chair. His little pack moved to stand on his flanks, not at all relaxed the way he seemed to be; Leah’s eyes were on me, her teeth slightly bared.
“So I knocked on Charlie’s door this morning and asked him to come for a walk with me. He was confused, but when I told him it was about you and that you were back in town, he followed me out to the woods. I told him you weren’t sick anymore, and that things were a little weird, but good. He was about to take off to see you, but I told him I had to show him something first. And then I phased.” Jacob shrugged.
My teeth felt like a vise was pushing them together. “I want every word, you monster.”
“Well, you said I only had thirty seconds—okay, okay.” My expression must have convinced him that I wasn’t in the mood for teasing. “Lemme see… I phased back and got dressed, and then after he started breathing again, I said something like, ‘Charlie, you don’t live in the world you thought you lived in. The good news is, nothing has changed—except that now you know. Life’ll go on the same way it always has. You can go right back to pretending that you don’t believe any of this.’
“It took him a minute to get his head together, and then he wanted to know what was really going on with you, with the whole rare-disease thing. I told him that you had been sick, but you were fine now—it was just that you’d had to change a little bit in the process of getting better. He wanted to know what I meant by
‘change,’ and I told him that you looked a lot more like Esme now than you looked like Renée.”
Edward hissed while I stared in horror; this was headed in a dangerous direction.
“After a few minutes, he asked, real quietly, if you turned into an animal, too. And I said, ‘She wishes she was that cool!’” Jacob chuckled.
Rosalie made a noise of disgust.
“I started to tell him more about werewolves, but I didn’t even get the whole word out—Charlie cut me off and said he’d ‘rather not know the specifics.’ Then he asked if you’d known what you were getting yourself into when you married Edward, and I said, ‘Sure, she’s known all about this for years, since she first came to Forks.’ He didn’t like that very much. I let him rant till he got it out of his system. After he got calmed down, he just wanted two things. He wanted to see you, and I said it would be better if he gave me a head start to explain.”
I inhaled deeply. “What was the other thing he wanted?”
Jacob smiled. “You’ll like this. His main request is that he be told as little as possible about all of this. If it’s not absolutely essential for him to know something, then keep it to yourself. Need to know, only.”
I felt relief for the first time since Jacob had walked in. “I can handle that part.”
“Other than that, he’d just like to pretend things are normal.” Jacob’s smile turned smug; he must suspect that I would be starting to feel the first faint stirrings of gratitude about now.
“What did you tell him about Renesmee?” I struggled to maintain the razor edge in my voice, fighting the reluctant appreciation. It was premature. There was still so much wrong with this situation. Even if Jacob’s intervention had brought out a better reaction in Charlie than I’d ever hoped for…
“Oh yeah. So I told him that you and Edward had inherited a new little mouth to feed.” He glanced at Edward. “She’s your orphaned ward—like Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.” Jacob snorted. “I didn’t think you’d mind me lying. That’s all part of the game, right?” Edward didn’t respond in any way, so Jacob went on. “Charlie was way past being shocked at this point, but he did ask if you were adopting her. ‘Like a daughter? Like I’m sort of a grandfather?’ were his exact words. I told him yes. ‘Congrats, Gramps,’ and all of that. He even smiled a little.”
The stinging returned to my eyes, but not out of fear or anguish this time. Charlie was smiling at the idea of being a grandpa? Charlie would meet Renesmee?
“But she’s changing so fast,” I whispered.
“I told him that she was more special than all of us put together,” Jacob said in a soft voice. He stood and walked right up to me, waving Leah and Seth off when they started to follow. Renesmee reached out to him, but I hugged her more tightly to me. “I told him, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know about this. But if you can ignore all the strange parts, you’re going to be amazed. She’s the most wonderful person in the whole world.’ And then I told him that if he could deal with that, you all would stick around for a while and he would have a chance to get to know her. But that if it was too much for him, you would leave. He said as long as no one forced too much information on him, he’d deal.”
Jacob stared at me with half a smile, waiting.
“I’m not going to say thank you,” I told him. “You’re still putting Charlie at a huge risk.”
“I am sorry about it hurting you. I didn’t know it was like that. Bella, things are different with us now, but you’ll always be my best friend, and I’ll always love you. But I’ll love you the right way now. There’s finally a balance. We both have people we can’t live without.”
He smiled his very most Jacob-y smile. “Still friends?”
Try as hard as I could to resist, I had to smile back. Just a tiny smile. He held out his hand: an offer.
I took a deep breath and shifted Renesmee’s weight to one arm. I put my left hand in his—he didn’t even flinch at the feel of my cool skin. “If I don’t kill Charlie tonight, I’ll consider forgiving you for this.”
“When you don’t kill Charlie tonight, you’ll owe me huge.” I rolled my eyes.
He held out his other hand toward Renesmee, a request this time. “Can I?”
“I’m actually holding her so that my hands aren’t free to kill you, Jacob. Maybe later.”
He sighed but didn’t push me on it. Wise of him.
Alice raced back through the door then, her hands full and her expression promising violence.
“You, you, and you,” she snapped, glaring at the werewolves. “If you must stay, get over in the corner and commit to being there for a while. I need to see. Bella, you’d better give him the baby, too. You’ll need your arms free, anyway.”
Jacob grinned in triumph.
Undiluted fear ripped through my stomach as the enormity of what I was about to do hit me. I was going to gamble on my iffy self-control with my pure human father as the guinea pig. Edward’s earlier words crashed in my ears again.
Did you consider the physical pain you’re putting Bella through, even if she can resist? Or the emotional pain if she doesn’t?
I couldn’t imagine the pain of failure. My breathing turned to gasps. “Take her,” I whispered, sliding Renesmee into Jacob’s arms.
He nodded, concern wrinkling his forehead. He gestured to the others, and they all went to the far corner of the room. Seth and Jake slouched on the floor at once, but Leah shook her head and pursed her lips.
“Am I allowed to leave?” she griped. She looked uncomfortable in her human body, wearing the same dirty t-shirt and cotton shorts she’d worn to shriek at me the other day, her short hair sticking up in irregular tufts. Her hands were still shaking.
“Of course,” Jake said.
“Stay east so you don’t cross Charlie’s path,” Alice added.
Leah didn’t look at Alice; she ducked out the back door and stomped into the bushes to phase.
Edward was back at my side, stroking my face. “You can do this. I know you can. I’ll help you; we all will.”
I met Edward’s eyes with panic screaming from my face. Was he strong enough to stop me if I made a wrong move?
“If I didn’t believe you could handle it, we’d disappear today. This very minute. But you can. And you’ll be happier if you can have Charlie in your life.”
I tried to slow my breathing.
Alice held out her hand. There was a small white box on her palm. “These will irritate your eyes—they won’t hurt, but they’ll cloud your vision. It’s annoying. They also won’t match your old color, but it’s still better than bright red, right?”
She flipped the contact box into the air and I caught it. “When did you—”
“Before you left on the honeymoon. I was prepared for several possible futures.”
I nodded and opened the container. I’d never worn contacts before, but it couldn’t be that hard. I took the little brown quarter-sphere and pressed it, concave side in, to my eye.
I blinked, and a film interrupted my sight. I could see through it, of course, but I could also see the texture of the thin screen. My eye kept focusing on the microscopic scratches and warped sections.
“I see what you mean,” I murmured as I stuck the other one in. I tried to not blink this time. My eye automatically wanted to dislodge the obstruction.
“How do I look?”
Edward smiled. “Gorgeous. Of course—”
“Yes, yes, she always looks gorgeous,” Alice finished his thought impatiently. “It’s better than red, but that’s the highest commendation I can give. Muddy brown.
Your brown was much prettier. Keep in mind that those won’t last forever—the venom in your eyes will dissolve them in a few hours. So if Charlie stays longer than that, you’ll have to excuse yourself to replace them. Which is a good idea anyway, because humans need bathroom breaks.” She shook her head. “Esme, give her a few pointers on acting human while I stock the powder room with contacts.”
“How long do I have?”
“Charlie will be here in five minutes. Keep it simple.”
Esme nodded once and came to take my hand. “The main thing is not to sit too still or move too fast,” she told me.
“Sit down if he does,” Emmett interjected. “Humans don’t like to just stand there.”
“Let your eyes wander every thirty seconds or so,” Jasper added. “Humans don’t stare at one thing for too long.”
“Cross your legs for about five minutes, then switch to crossing your ankles for the next five,” Rosalie said.
I nodded once at each suggestion. I’d noticed them doing some of these things yesterday. I thought I could mimic their actions.
“And blink at least three times a minute,” Emmett said. He frowned, then darted to where the television remote sat on the end table. He flipped the TV on to a college football game and nodded to himself.
“Move your hands, too. Brush your hair back or pretend to scratch something,” Jasper said.
“I said Esme,” Alice complained as she returned. “You’ll overwhelm her.” “No, I think I got it all,” I said. “Sit, look around, blink, fidget.”
“Right,” Esme approved. She hugged my shoulders.
Jasper frowned. “You’ll be holding your breath as much as possible, but you need to move your shoulders a little to make it look like you’re breathing.”
I inhaled once and then nodded again.
Edward hugged me on my free side. “You can do this,” he repeated, murmuring the encouragement in my ear.
“Two minutes,” Alice said. “Maybe you should start out already on the couch. You’ve been sick, after all. That way he won’t have to see you move right at first.”
Alice pulled me to the sofa. I tried to move slowly, to make my limbs more clumsy. She rolled her eyes, so I must not have been doing a good job.
“Jacob, I need Renesmee,” I said. Jacob frowned, unmoving.
Alice shook her head. “Bella, that doesn’t help me see.”
“But I need her. She keeps me calm.” The edge of panic in my voice was unmistakable.
“Fine,” Alice groaned. “Hold her as still as you can and I’ll try to see around her.” She sighed wearily, like she’d been asked to work overtime on a holiday. Jacob sighed, too, but brought Renesmee to me, and then retreated quickly from Alice’s glare.
Edward took a seat beside me and put his arms around Renesmee and me. He leaned forward and looked Renesmee very seriously in the eyes.
“Renesmee, someone special is coming to see you and your mother,” he said in a solemn voice, as if he expected her to understand every word. Did she? She looked back at him with clear, grave eyes. “But he’s not like us, or even like Jacob.
We have to be very careful with him. You shouldn’t tell him things the way you tell us.”
Renesmee touched his face.
“Exactly,” he said. “And he’s going to make you thirsty. But you mustn’t bite him. He won’t heal like Jacob.”
“Can she understand you?” I whispered.
“She understands. You’ll be careful, won’t you, Renesmee? You’ll help us?” Renesmee touched him again.
“No, I don’t care if you bite Jacob. That’s fine.” Jacob chuckled.
“Maybe you should leave, Jacob,” Edward said coldly, glaring in his direction. Edward hadn’t forgiven Jacob, because he knew that no matter what happened now, I was going to be hurting. But I’d take the burn happily if that were the worst thing I’d face tonight.
“I told Charlie I’d be here,” Jacob said. “He needs the moral support.”
“Moral support,” Edward scoffed. “As far as Charlie knows, you’re the most repulsive monster of us all.”
“Repulsive?” Jake protested, and then he laughed quietly to himself.
I heard the tires turn off the highway onto the quiet, damp earth of the Cullens’ drive, and my breathing spiked again. My heart ought to have been hammering. It made me anxious that my body didn’t have the right reactions.
I concentrated on the steady thrumming of Renesmee’s heart to calm myself. It worked pretty quickly.
“Well done, Bella,” Jasper whispered in approval. Edward tightened his arm over my shoulders. “You’re sure?” I asked him.
“Positive. You can do anything.” He smiled and kissed me.
It wasn’t precisely a peck on the lips, and my wild vampiric reactions took me off guard yet again. Edward’s lips were like a shot of some addictive chemical
straight into my nervous system. I was instantly craving more. It took all my concentration to remember the baby in my arms.
Jasper felt my mood change. “Er, Edward, you might not want to distract her like that right now. She needs to be able to focus.”
Edward pulled away. “Oops,” he said.
I laughed. That had been my line from the very beginning, from the very first kiss.
“Later,” I said, and anticipation curled my stomach into a ball. “Focus, Bella,” Jasper urged.
“Right.” I pushed the trembly feelings away. Charlie, that was the main thing now. Keep Charlie safe today. We would have all night. . . .
“Bella.”
“Sorry, Jasper.” Emmett laughed.
The sound of Charlie’s cruiser got closer and closer. The second of levity passed, and everyone was still. I crossed my legs and practiced my blinks.
The car pulled in front of the house and idled for a few seconds. I wondered if Charlie was as nervous as I was. Then the engine cut off, and a door slammed. Three steps across the grass, and then eight echoing thuds against the wooden stairs. Four more echoing footsteps across the porch. Then silence. Charlie took two deep breaths.
Knock, knock, knock.
I inhaled for what might be the last time. Renesmee nestled deeper into my arms, hiding her face in my hair.
Carlisle answered the door. His stressed expression changed to one of welcome, like switching the channel on the TV.
“Hello, Charlie,” he said, looking appropriately abashed. After all, we were supposed to be in Atlanta at the Center for Disease Control. Charlie knew he’d been lied to.
“Carlisle,” Charlie greeted him stiffly. “Where’s Bella?”
“Right here, Dad.”
Ugh! My voice was so wrong. Plus, I’d used up some of my air supply. I gulped in a quick refill, glad that Charlie’s scent had not saturated the room yet.
Charlie’s blank expression told me how off my voice was. His eyes zeroed in on me and widened.
I read the emotions as they scrolled across his face.
Shock. Disbelief. Pain. Loss. Fear. Anger. Suspicion. More pain.
I bit my lip. It felt funny. My new teeth were sharper against my granite skin than my human teeth had been against my soft human lips.
“Is that you, Bella?” he whispered.
“Yep.” I winced at my wind-chime voice. “Hi, Dad.” He took a deep breath to steady himself.
“Hey, Charlie,” Jacob greeted him from the corner. “How’re things?”
Charlie glowered at Jacob once, shuddered at a memory, and then stared at me again.
Slowly, Charlie walked across the room until he was a few feet away from me. He darted an accusing glare at Edward, and then his eyes flickered back to me. The warmth of his body heat beat against me with each pulse of his heart.
“Bella?” he asked again.
I spoke in a lower voice, trying to keep the ring out of it. “It’s really me.” His jaw locked.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said.
“Are you okay?” he demanded.
“Really and truly great,” I promised. “Healthy as a horse.” That was it for my oxygen.
“Jake told me this was… necessary. That you were dying.” He said the words like he didn’t believe them one bit.
I steeled myself, focused on Renesmee’s warm weight, leaned into Edward for support, and took a deep breath.
Charlie’s scent was a fistful of flames, punching straight down my throat. But it was so much more than pain. It was a hot stabbing of desire, too. Charlie smelled more delicious than anything I’d ever imagined. As appealing as the anonymous hikers had been on the hunt, Charlie was doubly tempting. And he was just a few feet away, leaking mouthwatering heat and moisture into the dry air.
But I wasn’t hunting now. And this was my father.
Edward squeezed my shoulders sympathetically, and Jacob shot an apologetic glance at me across the room.
I tried to collect myself and ignore the pain and longing of the thirst. Charlie was waiting for my answer.
“Jacob was telling you the truth.”
“That makes one of you,” Charlie growled.
I hoped Charlie could see past the changes in my new face to read the remorse there.
Under my hair, Renesmee sniffed as Charlie’s scent registered with her, too. I tightened my grip on her.
Charlie saw my anxious glance down and followed it. “Oh,” he said, and all the anger fell off his face, leaving only shock behind. “This is her. The orphan Jacob said you’re adopting.”
“My niece,” Edward lied smoothly. He must have decided that the resemblance between Renesmee and him was too pronounced to be ignored. Best to claim they were related from the beginning.
“I thought you’d lost your family,” Charlie said, accusation returning to his voice.
“I lost my parents. My older brother was adopted, like me. I never saw him after that. But the courts located me when he and his wife died in a car accident, leaving their only child without any other family.”
Edward was so good at this. His voice was even, with just the right amount of innocence. I needed practice so that I could do that.
Renesmee peeked out from under my hair, sniffing again. She glanced shyly at Charlie from under her long lashes, then hid again.
“She’s… she’s, well, she’s a beauty.” “Yes,” Edward agreed.
“Kind of a big responsibility, though. You two are just getting started.”
“What else could we do?” Edward brushed his fingers lightly over her cheek. I saw him touch her lips for just a moment—a reminder. “Would you have refused her?”
“Hmph. Well.” He shook his head absently. “Jake says you call her Nessie?”
“No, we don’t,” I said, my voice too sharp and piercing. “Her name is Renesmee.”
Charlie refocused on me. “How do you feel about this? Maybe Carlisle and Esme could—”
“She’s mine,” I interrupted. “I want her.”
Charlie frowned. “You gonna make me a grandpa so young?” Edward smiled. “Carlisle is a grandfather, too.”
Charlie shot an incredulous glance at Carlisle, still standing by the front door; he looked like Zeus’s younger, better-looking brother.
Charlie snorted and then laughed. “I guess that does sort of make me feel better.” His eyes strayed back to Renesmee. “She sure is something to look at.” His warm breath blew lightly across the space between us.
Renesmee leaned toward the smell, shaking off my hair and looking him full in the face for the first time. Charlie gasped.
I knew what he was seeing. My eyes—his eyes—copied exactly into her perfect face.
Charlie started hyperventilating. His lips trembled, and I could read the numbers he mouthed. He was counting backward, trying to fit nine months into one.
Trying to put it together but not able to force the evidence right in front of him to make any sense.
Jacob got up and came over to pat Charlie on the back. He leaned in to whisper something in Charlie’s ear; only Charlie didn’t know we could all hear.
“Need to know, Charlie. It’s okay. I promise.”
Charlie swallowed and nodded. And then his eyes blazed as he took a step closer to Edward with his fists tightly clenched.
“I don’t want to know everything, but I’m done with the lies!”
“I’m sorry,” Edward said calmly, “but you need to know the public story more than you need to know the truth. If you’re going to be part of this secret, the public story is the one that counts. It’s to protect Bella and Renesmee as well as the rest of us. Can you go along with the lies for them?”
The room was full of statues. I crossed my ankles.
Charlie huffed once and then turned his glare on me. “You might’ve given me some warning, kid.”
“Would it really have made this any easier?”
He frowned, and then he knelt on the floor in front of me. I could see the movement of the blood in his neck under his skin. I could feel the warm vibration of it.
So could Renesmee. She smiled and reached one pink palm out to him. I held her back. She pushed her other hand against my neck, thirst, curiosity, and Charlie’s face in her thoughts. There was a subtle edge to the message that made me think that she’d understood Edward’s words perfectly; she acknowledged thirst, but overrode it in the same thought.
“Whoa,” Charlie gasped, his eyes on her perfect teeth. “How old is she?” “Um . . .”
“Three months,” Edward said, and then added slowly, “rather, she’s the size of a three-month-old, more or less. She’s younger in some ways, more mature in others.”
Very deliberately, Renesmee waved at him. Charlie blinked spastically.
Jacob elbowed him. “Told you she was special, didn’t I?” Charlie cringed away from the contact.
“Oh, c’mon, Charlie,” Jacob groaned. “I’m the same person I’ve always been. Just pretend this afternoon didn’t happen.”
The reminder made Charlie’s lips go white, but he nodded once. “Just what is your part in all this, Jake?” he asked. “How much does Billy know? Why are you here?” He looked at Jacob’s face, which was glowing as he stared at Renesmee.
“Well, I could tell you all about it—Billy knows absolutely everything—but it involves a lot of stuff about werewo—”
“Ungh!” Charlie protested, covering his ears. “Never mind.”
Jacob grinned. “Everything’s going to be great, Charlie. Just try to not believe anything you see.”
My dad mumbled something unintelligible.
“Woo!” Emmett suddenly boomed in his deep bass. “Go Gators!” Jacob and Charlie jumped. The rest of us froze.
Charlie recovered, then looked at Emmett over his shoulder. “Florida winning?”
“Just scored the first touchdown,” Emmett confirmed. He shot a look in my direction, wagging his eyebrows like a villain in vaudeville. “’Bout time somebody scored around here.”
I fought back a hiss. In front of Charlie? That was over the line.
But Charlie was beyond noticing innuendos. He took yet another deep breath, sucking the air in like he was trying to pull it down to his toes. I envied him. He lurched to his feet, stepped around Jacob, and half-fell into an open chair. “Well,” he sighed, “I guess we should see if they can hold on to the lead.”
26. SHINY
“I don’t know how much we should tell Renée about this,” Charlie said, hesitating with one foot out the door. He stretched, and then his stomach growled.
I nodded. “I know. I don’t want to freak her out. Better to protect her. This stuff isn’t for the fainthearted.”
His lips twisted up to the side ruefully. “I would have tried to protect you, too, if I’d known how. But I guess you’ve never fit into the fainthearted category, have you?”
I smiled back, pulling a blazing breath in through my teeth.
Charlie patted his stomach absently. “I’ll think of something. We’ve got time to discuss this, right?”
“Right,” I promised him.
It had been a long day in some ways, and so short in others. Charlie was late for dinner—Sue Clearwater was cooking for him and Billy. That was going to be an awkward evening, but at least he’d be eating real food; I was glad someone was trying to keep him from starving due to his lack of cooking ability.
All day the tension had made the minutes pass slowly; Charlie had never relaxed the stiff set of his shoulders. But he’d been in no hurry to leave, either. He’d watched two whole games—thankfully so absorbed in his thoughts that he was totally oblivious to Emmett’s suggestive jokes that got more pointed and less football-related with each aside—and the after-game commentaries, and then the news, not moving until Seth had reminded him of the time.
“You gonna stand Billy and my mom up, Charlie? C’mon. Bella and Nessie’ll be here tomorrow. Let’s get some grub, eh?”
It had been clear in Charlie’s eyes that he hadn’t trusted Seth’s assessment, but he’d let Seth lead the way out. The doubt was still there as he paused now. The clouds were thinning, the rain gone. The sun might even make an appearance just in time to set.
“Jake says you guys were going to take off on me,” he muttered to me now.
“I didn’t want to do that if there was any way at all around it. That’s why we’re still here.”
“He said you could stay for a while, but only if I’m tough enough, and if I can keep my mouth shut.”
“Yes… but I can’t promise that we’ll never leave, Dad. It’s pretty complicated ”
“Need to know,” he reminded me. “Right.”
“You’ll visit, though, if you have to go?”
“I promise, Dad. Now that you know just enough, I think this can work. I’ll keep as close as you want.”
He chewed on his lip for half a second, then leaned slowly toward me with his arms cautiously extended. I shifted Renesmee—napping now—to my left arm, locked my teeth, held my breath, and wrapped my right arm very lightly around his warm, soft waist.
“Keep real close, Bells,” he mumbled. “Real close.” “Love you, Dad,” I whispered through my teeth.
He shivered and pulled away. I dropped my arm.
“Love you, too, kid. Whatever else has changed, that hasn’t.” He touched one finger to Renesmee’s pink cheek. “She sure looks a lot like you.”
I kept my expression casual, though I felt anything but. “More like Edward, I think.” I hesitated, and then added, “She has your curls.”
Charlie started, then snorted. “Huh. Guess she does. Huh. Grandpa.” He shook his head doubtfully. “Do I ever get to hold her?”
I blinked in shock and then composed myself. After considering for a half second and judging Renesmee’s appearance—she looked completely out—I decided that I might as well push my luck to the limit, since things were going so well today. . . .
“Here,” I said, holding her out to him. He automatically made an awkward cradle with his arms, and I tucked Renesmee into it. His skin wasn’t quite as hot as hers, but it made my throat tickle to feel the warmth flowing under the thin membrane. Where my white skin brushed him it left goose bumps. I wasn’t sure if this was a reaction to my new temperature or totally psychological.
Charlie grunted quietly as he felt her weight. “She’s… sturdy.”
I frowned. She felt feather-light to me. Maybe my measure was off. “Sturdy is good,” Charlie said, seeing my expression. Then he muttered to
himself, “She’ll need to be tough, surrounded by all this craziness.” He bounced
his arms gently, swaying a little from side to side. “Prettiest baby I ever saw, including you, kid. Sorry, but it’s true.”
“I know it is.”
“Pretty baby,” he said again, but it was closer to a coo this time.
I could see it in his face—I could watch it growing there. Charlie was just as helpless against her magic as the rest of us. Two seconds in his arms, and already she owned him.
“Can I come back tomorrow?”
“Sure, Dad. Of course. We’ll be here.”
“You’d better be,” he said sternly, but his face was soft, still gazing at Renesmee. “See you tomorrow, Nessie.”
“Not you, too!”
“Huh?”
“Her name is Renesmee. Like Renée and Esme, put together. No variations.” I struggled to calm myself without the deep breath this time. “Do you want to hear her middle name?”
“Sure.”
“Carlie. With a C. Like Carlisle and Charlie put together.”
Charlie’s eye-creasing grin lit up his face, taking me off guard. “Thanks, Bells.”
“Thank you, Dad. So much has changed so quickly. My head hasn’t stopped spinning. If I didn’t have you now, I don’t know how I’d keep my grip on—on reality.” I’d been about to say my grip on who I was. That was probably more than he needed.
Charlie’s stomach growled.
“Go eat, Dad. We will be here.” I remembered how it felt, that first uncomfortable immersion in fantasy—the sensation that everything would disappear in the light of the rising sun.
Charlie nodded and then reluctantly returned Renesmee to me. He glanced past me into the house; his eyes were a little wild for a minute as he stared around the big bright room. Everyone was still there, besides Jacob, who I could hear raiding the refrigerator in the kitchen; Alice was lounging on the bottom step of the
staircase with Jasper’s head in her lap; Carlisle had his head bent over a fat book in his lap; Esme was humming to herself, sketching on a notepad, while Rosalie and Emmett laid out the foundation for a monumental house of cards under the stairs; Edward had drifted to his piano and was playing very softly to himself.
There was no evidence that the day was coming to a close, that it might be time to eat or shift activities in preparation for evening. Something intangible had changed in the atmosphere. The Cullens weren’t trying as hard as they usually did—the human charade had slipped ever so slightly, enough for Charlie to feel the difference.
He shuddered, shook his head, and sighed. “See you tomorrow, Bella.” He frowned and then added, “I mean, it’s not like you don’t look… good. I’ll get used to it.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Charlie nodded and walked thoughtfully toward his car. I watched him drive away; it wasn’t until I heard his tires hit the freeway that I realized I’d done it. I’d actually made it through the whole day without hurting Charlie. All by myself. I must have a superpower!
It seemed too good to be true. Could I really have both my new family and some of my old as well? And I’d thought that yesterday had been perfect.
“Wow,” I whispered. I blinked and felt the third set of contact lenses disintegrate.
The sound of the piano cut off, and Edward’s arms were around my waist, his chin resting on my shoulder.
“You took the word right out of my mouth.” “Edward, I did it!”
“You did. You were unbelievable. All that worrying over being a newborn, and then you skip it altogether.” He laughed quietly.
“I’m not even sure she’s really a vampire, let alone a newborn,” Emmett called from under the stairs. “She’s too tame.”
All the embarrassing comments he’d made in front of my father sounded in my ears again, and it was probably a good thing I was holding Renesmee. Unable to help my reaction entirely, I snarled under my breath.
“Oooo, scary,” Emmett laughed.
I hissed, and Renesmee stirred in my arms. She blinked a few times, then looked around, her expression confused. She sniffed, then reached for my face.
“Charlie will be back tomorrow,” I assured her.
“Excellent,” Emmett said. Rosalie laughed with him this time.
“Not brilliant, Emmett,” Edward said scornfully, holding out his hands to take Renesmee from me. He winked when I hesitated, and so, a little confused, I gave her to him.
“What do you mean?” Emmett demanded.
“It’s a little dense, don’t you think, to antagonize the strongest vampire in the house?”
Emmett threw his head back and snorted. “Please!”
“Bella,” Edward murmured to me while Emmett listened closely, “do you remember a few months ago, I asked you to do me a favor once you were immortal?”
That rang a dim bell. I sifted through the blurry human conversations. After a moment, I remembered and I gasped, “Oh!”
Alice trilled a long, pealing laugh. Jacob poked his head around the corner, his mouth stuffed with food.
“What?” Emmett growled. “Really?” I asked Edward. “Trust me,” he said.
I took a deep breath. “Emmett, how do you feel about a little bet?” He was on his feet at once. “Awesome. Bring it.”
I bit my lip for a second. He was just so huge. “Unless you’re too afraid… ?” Emmett suggested.
I squared my shoulders. “You. Me. Arm-wrestling. Dining room table. Now.” Emmett’s grin stretched across his face.
“Er, Bella,” Alice said quickly, “I think Esme is fairly fond of that table. It’s an antique.”
“Thanks,” Esme mouthed at her.
“No problem,” Emmett said with a gleaming smile. “Right this way, Bella.”
I followed him out the back, toward the garage; I could hear all the others trailing behind. There was a largish granite boulder standing up out of a tumble of rocks near the river, obviously Emmett’s goal. Though the big rock was a little rounded and irregular, it would do the job.
Emmett placed his elbow on the rock and waved me forward.
I was nervous again as I watched the thick muscles in Emmett’s arm roll, but I kept my face smooth. Edward had promised I would be stronger than anyone for a while. He seemed very confident about this, and I felt strong. That strong? I wondered, looking at Emmett’s biceps. I wasn’t even two days old, though, and that ought to count for something. Unless nothing was normal about me. Maybe I wasn’t as strong as a normal newborn. Maybe that’s why control was so easy for me.
I tried to look unconcerned as I set my elbow against the stone.
“Okay, Emmett. I win, and you cannot say one more word about my sex life to anyone, not even Rose. No allusions, no innuendos—no nothing.”
His eyes narrowed. “Deal. I win, and it’s going to get a lot worse.”
He heard my breath stop and grinned evilly. There was no hint of bluff in his eyes.
“You gonna back down so easy, little sister?” Emmett taunted. “Not much wild about you, is there? I bet that cottage doesn’t have a scratch.” He laughed. “Did Edward tell you how many houses Rose and I smashed?”
I gritted my teeth and grabbed his big hand. “One, two—” “Three,” he grunted, and shoved against my hand.
Nothing happened.
Oh, I could feel the force he was exerting. My new mind seemed pretty good at all kinds of calculations, and so I could tell that if he wasn’t meeting any resistance, his hand would have pounded right through the rock without difficulty. The pressure increased, and I wondered randomly if a cement truck doing forty miles an hour down a sharp decline would have similar power. Fifty miles an hour?
Sixty? Probably more.
It wasn’t enough to move me. His hand shoved against mine with crushing force, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It felt kind of good in a weird way. I’d been so very careful since the last time I woke up, trying so hard not to break things. It was a
strange relief to use my muscles. To let the strength flow rather than struggling to restrain it.
Emmett grunted; his forehead creased and his whole body strained in one rigid line toward the obstacle of my unmoving hand. I let him sweat—figuratively—for a moment while I enjoyed the sensation of the crazy force running through my arm.
A few seconds, though, and I was a little bored with it. I flexed; Emmett lost an inch.
I laughed. Emmett snarled harshly through his teeth.
“Just keep your mouth shut,” I reminded him, and then I smashed his hand into the boulder. A deafening crack echoed off the trees. The rock shuddered, and a piece—about an eighth of the mass—broke off at an invisible fault line and crashed to the ground. It fell on Emmett’s foot, and I snickered. I could hear Jacob’s and Edward’s muffled laughter.
Emmett kicked the rock fragment across the river. It sliced a young maple in half before thudding into the base of a big fir, which swayed and then fell into another tree.
“Rematch. Tomorrow.”
“It’s not going to wear off that fast,” I told him. “Maybe you ought to give it a month.”
Emmett growled, flashing his teeth. “Tomorrow.” “Hey, whatever makes you happy, big brother.”
As he turned to stalk away, Emmett punched the granite, shattering off an avalanche of shards and powder. It was kind of neat, in a childish way.
Fascinated by the undeniable proof that I was stronger than the strongest vampire I’d ever known, I placed my hand, fingers spread wide, against the rock. Then I dug my fingers slowly into the stone, crushing rather than digging; the consistency reminded me of hard cheese. I ended up with a handful of gravel.
“Cool,” I mumbled.
With a grin stretching my face, I whirled in a sudden circle and karate-chopped the rock with the side of my hand. The stone shrieked and groaned and—with a big poof of dust—split in two.
I started giggling.
I didn’t pay much attention to the chuckles behind me while I punched and kicked the rest of the boulder into fragments. I was having too much fun, snickering away the whole time. It wasn’t until I heard a new little giggle, a high- pitched peal of bells, that I turned away from my silly game.
“Did she just laugh?”
Everyone was staring at Renesmee with the same dumbstruck expression that must have been on my face.
“Yes,” Edward said.
“Who wasn’t laughing?” Jake muttered, rolling his eyes.
“Tell me you didn’t let go a bit on your first run, dog,” Edward teased, no antagonism in his voice at all.
“That’s different,” Jacob said, and I watched in surprise as he mock-punched Edward’s shoulder. “Bella’s supposed to be a grown-up. Married and a mom and all that. Shouldn’t there be more dignity?”
Renesmee frowned, and touched Edward’s face. “What does she want?” I asked.
“Less dignity,” Edward said with a grin. “She was having almost as much fun watching you enjoy yourself as I was.”
“Am I funny?” I asked Renesmee, darting back and reaching for her at the same time that she reached for me. I took her out of Edward’s arms and offered her the shard of rock in my hand. “You want to try?”
She smiled her glittering smile and took the stone in both hands. She squeezed, a little dent forming between her eyebrows as she concentrated.
There was a tiny grinding sound, and a bit of dust. She frowned, and held the chunk up to me.
“I’ll get it,” I said, pinching the stone into sand.
She clapped and laughed; the delicious sound of it made us all join in.
The sun suddenly burst through the clouds, shooting long beams of ruby and gold across the ten of us, and I was immediately lost in the beauty of my skin in the light of the sunset. Dazed by it.
Renesmee stroked the smooth diamond-bright facets, then laid her arm next to mine. Her skin had just a faint luminosity, subtle and mysterious. Nothing that would keep her inside on a sunny day like my glowing sparkle. She touched my face, thinking of the difference and feeling disgruntled.
“You’re the prettiest,” I assured her.
“I’m not sure I can agree to that,” Edward said, and when I turned to answer him, the sunlight on his face stunned me into silence.
Jacob had his hand in front of his face, pretending to shield his eyes from the glare. “Freaky Bella,” he commented.
“What an amazing creature she is,” Edward murmured, almost in agreement, as if Jacob’s comment was meant as a compliment. He was both dazzling and dazzled.
It was a strange feeling—not surprising, I supposed, since everything felt strange now—this being a natural at something. As a human, I’d never been best at anything. I was okay at dealing with Renée, but probably lots of people could have done better; Phil seemed to be holding his own. I was a good student, but never the top of the class. Obviously, I could be counted out of anything athletic. Not artistic or musical, no particular talents to brag of. Nobody ever gave away a trophy for reading books. After eighteen years of mediocrity, I was pretty used to being average. I realized now that I’d long ago given up any aspirations of shining at anything. I just did the best with what I had, never quite fitting into my world.
So this was really different. I was amazing now—to them and to myself. It was like I had been born to be a vampire. The idea made me want to laugh, but it also made me want to sing. I had found my true place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined.
27. TRAVEL PLANS
I took mythology a lot more seriously since I’d become a vampire.
Often, when I looked back over my first three months as an immortal, I imagined how the thread of my life might look in the Fates’ loom—who knew but that it actually existed? I was sure my thread must have changed color; I thought it had probably started out as a nice beige, something supportive and non- confrontational, something that would look good in the background. Now it felt like it must be bright crimson, or maybe glistening gold.
The tapestry of family and friends that wove together around me was a beautiful, glowing thing, full of their bright, complementary colors.
I was surprised by some of the threads I got to include in my life. The werewolves, with their deep, woodsy colors, were not something I’d expected; Jacob, of course, and Seth, too. But my old friends Quil and Embry became part of the fabric as they joined Jacob’s pack, and even Sam and Emily were cordial. The tensions between our families eased, mostly due to Renesmee. She was easy to love.
Sue and Leah Clearwater were interlaced into our life, too—two more I had not anticipated.
Sue seemed to have taken it on herself to smooth Charlie’s transition into the world of make-believe. She came with him to the Cullens’ most days, though she never seemed truly comfortable here the way her son and most of Jake’s pack did. She did not speak often; she just hovered protectively near Charlie. She was always the first person he looked to when Renesmee did something disturbingly advanced—which was often. In answer, Sue would eye Seth meaningfully as if to say, Yeah, tell me about it.
Leah was even less comfortable than Sue and was the only part of our recently extended family who was openly hostile to the merger. However, she and Jacob had a new camaraderie that kept her close to us all. I asked him about it once— hesitantly; I didn’t want to pry, but the relationship was so different from the way it used to be that it made me curious. He shrugged and told me it was a pack thing. She was his second-in-command now, his “beta,” as I’d called it once long ago.
“I figured as long as I was going to do this Alpha thing for real,” Jacob explained, “I’d better nail down the formalities.”
The new responsibility made Leah feel the need to check in with him often, and since he was always with Renesmee…
Leah was not happy to be near us, but she was the exception. Happiness was the main component in my life now, the dominant pattern in the tapestry. So much so that my relationship with Jasper was now much closer than I’d ever dreamed it would be.
At first I was really annoyed, though.
“Yeesh!” I complained to Edward one night after we’d put Renesmee in her wrought-iron crib. “If I haven’t killed Charlie or Sue yet, it’s probably not going to happen. I wish Jasper would stop hovering all the time!”
“No one doubts you, Bella, not in the slightest,” he assured me. “You know how Jasper is—he can’t resist a good emotional climate. You’re so happy all the time, love, he gravitates toward you without thinking.”
And then Edward hugged me tightly, because nothing pleased him more than my overwhelming ecstasy in this new life.
And I was euphoric the vast majority of the time. The days were not long enough for me to get my fill of adoring my daughter; the nights did not have enough hours to satisfy my need for Edward.
There was a flipside to the joy, though. If you turned the fabric of our lives over, I imagined the design on the backside would be woven in the bleak grays of doubt and fear.
Renesmee spoke her first word when she was exactly one week old. The word was Momma, which would have made my day, except that I was so frightened by her progress I could barely force my frozen face to smile back at her. It didn’t help that she continued from her first word to her first sentence in the same breath. “Momma, where is Grandpa?” she’d asked in a clear, high soprano, only bothering to speak aloud because I was across the room from her. She’d already asked Rosalie, using her normal (or seriously abnormal, from another point of view) means of communication. Rosalie hadn’t known the answer, so Renesmee had turned to me.
When she walked for the first time, fewer than three weeks later, it was similar. She’d simply stared at Alice for a long moment, watching intently as her aunt arranged bouquets in the vases scattered around the room, dancing back and forth across the floor with her arms full of flowers. Renesmee got to her feet, not in the least bit shaky, and crossed the floor almost as gracefully.
Jacob had burst into applause, because that was clearly the response Renesmee wanted. The way he was tied to her made his own reactions secondary; his first reflex was always to give Renesmee whatever she needed. But our eyes met, and I saw all the panic in mine echoed in his. I made my hands clap together, too,
trying to hide my fear from her. Edward applauded quietly at my side, and we didn’t need to speak our thoughts to know they were the same.
Edward and Carlisle threw themselves into research, looking for any answers, anything to expect. There was very little to be found, and none of it verifiable.
Alice and Rosalie usually began our day with a fashion show. Renesmee never wore the same clothes twice, partly because she outgrew her clothes almost immediately and partly because Alice and Rosalie were trying to create a baby album that appeared to span years rather than weeks. They took thousands of pictures, documenting every phase of her accelerated childhood.
At three months, Renesmee could have been a big one-year-old, or a small two- year-old. She wasn’t shaped exactly like a toddler; she was leaner and more graceful, her proportions were more even, like an adult’s. Her bronze ringlets hung to her waist; I couldn’t bear to cut them, even if Alice would have allowed it. Renesmee could speak with flawless grammar and articulation, but she rarely bothered, preferring to simply show people what she wanted. She could not only walk but run and dance. She could even read.
I’d been reading Tennyson to her one night, because the flow and rhythm of his poetry seemed restful. (I had to search constantly for new material; Renesmee didn’t like repetition in her bedtime stories as other children supposedly did, and she had no patience for picture books.) She reached up to touch my cheek, the image in her mind one of us, only with her holding the book. I gave it to her, smiling.
“ ‘There is sweet music here,’” she read without hesitation, “‘that softer falls than petals from blown roses on the grass, or night-dews on still waters between walls of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass—’ ”
My hand was robotic as I took the book back.
“If you read, how will you fall asleep?” I asked in a voice that had barely escaped shaking.
By Carlisle’s calculations, the growth of her body was gradually slowing; her mind continued to race on ahead. Even if the rate of decrease held steady, she’d still be an adult in no more than four years.
Four years. And an old woman by fifteen. Just fifteen years of life.
But she was so healthy. Vital, bright, glowing, and happy. Her conspicuous well- being made it easy for me to be happy with her in the moment and leave the future for tomorrow.
Carlisle and Edward discussed our options for the future from every angle in low voices that I tried not to hear. They never had these discussions when Jacob was around, because there was one sure way to halt aging, and that wasn’t something Jacob was likely to be excited about. I wasn’t. Too dangerous! my instincts screamed at me. Jacob and Renesmee seemed alike in so many ways, both half- and-half beings, two things at the same time. And all the werewolf lore insisted that vampire venom was a death sentence rather than a course to immortality. . . .
Carlisle and Edward had exhausted the research they could do from a distance, and now we were preparing to follow old legends at their source. We were going back to Brazil, starting there. The Ticunas had legends about children like Renesmee.… If other children like her had ever existed, perhaps some tale of the life span of half-mortal children still lingered. . . .
The only real question left was exactly when we would go.
I was the holdup. A small part of it was that I wanted to stay near Forks until after the holidays, for Charlie’s sake. But more than that, there was a different journey that I knew had to come first—that was the clear priority. Also, it had to be a solo trip.
This was the only argument that Edward and I had gotten in since I’d become a vampire. The main point of contention was the “solo” part. But the facts were what they were, and my plan was the only one that made rational sense. I had to go see the Volturi, and I had to do it absolutely alone.
Even freed from old nightmares, from any dreams at all, it was impossible to forget the Volturi. Nor did they leave us without reminders.
Until the day that Aro’s present showed up, I didn’t know that Alice had sent a wedding announcement to the Volturi leaders; we’d been far away on Esme’s island when she’d seen a vision of Volturi soldiers—Jane and Alec, the devastatingly powerful twins, among them. Caius was planning to send a hunting party to see if I was still human, against their edict (because I knew about the secret vampire world, I either must join it or be silenced… permanently). So Alice had mailed the announcement, seeing that this would delay them as they deciphered the meaning behind it. But they would come eventually. That was certain.
The present itself was not overtly threatening. Extravagant, yes, almost frightening in that very extravagance. The threat was in the parting line of Aro’s congratulatory note, written in black ink on a square of heavy, plain white paper in Aro’s own hand:
I so look forward to seeing the new Mrs. Cullen in person.
The gift was presented in an ornately carved, ancient wooden box inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, ornamented with a rainbow of gemstones. Alice said the box itself was a priceless treasure, that it would have outshone just about any piece of jewelry besides the one inside it.
“I always wondered where the crown jewels disappeared to after John of England pawned them in the thirteenth century,” Carlisle said. “I suppose it doesn’t surprise me that the Volturi have their share.”
The necklace was simple—gold woven into a thick rope of a chain, almost scaled, like a smooth snake that would curl close around the throat. One jewel hung suspended from the rope: a white diamond the size of a golf ball.
The unsubtle reminder in Aro’s note interested me more than the jewel. The Volturi needed to see that I was immortal, that the Cullens had been obedient to the Volturi’s orders, and they needed to see this soon. They could not be allowed near Forks. There was only one way to keep our life here safe.
“You’re not going alone,” Edward had insisted through his teeth, his hands clenching into fists.
“They won’t hurt me,” I’d said as soothingly as I could manage, forcing my voice to sound sure. “They have no reason to. I’m a vampire. Case closed.”
“No. Absolutely no.”
“Edward, it’s the only way to protect her.”
And he hadn’t been able to argue with that. My logic was watertight.
Even in the short time I’d known Aro, I’d been able to see that he was a collector—and his most prized treasures were his living pieces. He coveted beauty, talent, and rarity in his immortal followers more than any jewel locked in his vaults. It was unfortunate enough that he’d begun to covet Alice’s and Edward’s abilities. I would give him no more reason to be jealous of Carlisle’s family. Renesmee was beautiful and gifted and unique—she was one of a kind. He could not be allowed to see her, not even through someone’s thoughts.
And I was the only one whose thoughts he could not hear. Of course I would go alone.
Alice did not see any trouble with my trip, but she was worried by the indistinct quality of her visions. She said they were sometimes similarly hazy when there were outside decisions that might conflict but that had not been solidly resolved. This uncertainty made Edward, already hesitant, extremely opposed to what I had to do. He wanted to come with me as far as my connection in London, but I wouldn’t leave Renesmee without both her parents. Carlisle was coming instead.
It made both Edward and me a little more relaxed, knowing that Carlisle would be only a few hours away from me.
Alice kept searching for the future, but the things she found were unrelated to what she was looking for. A new trend in the stock market; a possible visit of reconciliation from Irina, though her decision was not firm; a snowstorm that wouldn’t hit for another six weeks; a call from Renée (I was practicing my “rough” voice, and getting better at it every day—to Renée’s knowledge, I was still sick, but mending).
We bought the tickets for Italy the day after Renesmee turned three months. I planned for it to be a very short trip, so I hadn’t told Charlie about it. Jacob knew, and he took Edward’s view on things. However, today the argument was about Brazil. Jacob was determined to come with us.
The three of us, Jacob, Renesmee, and I, were hunting together. The diet of animal blood wasn’t Renesmee’s favorite thing—and that was why Jacob was allowed to come along. Jacob had made it a contest between them, and that made her more willing than anything else.
Renesmee was quite clear on the whole good vs. bad as it applied to hunting humans; she just thought that donated blood made a nice compromise. Human food filled her and it seemed compatible with her system, but she reacted to all varieties of solid food with the same martyred endurance I had once given cauliflower and lima beans. Animal blood was better than that, at least. She had a competitive nature, and the challenge of beating Jacob made her excited to hunt.
“Jacob,” I said, trying to reason with him again while Renesmee danced ahead of us into the long clearing, searching for a scent she liked. “You’ve got obligations here. Seth, Leah—”
He snorted. “I’m not my pack’s nanny. They’ve all got responsibilities in La Push anyway.”
“Sort of like you? Are you officially dropping out of high school, then? If you’re going to keep up with Renesmee, you’re going to have to study a lot harder.”
“It’s just a sabbatical. I’ll get back to school when things… slow down.”
I lost my concentration on my side of the disagreement when he said that, and we both automatically looked at Renesmee. She was staring at the snowflakes fluttering high above her head, melting before they could stick to the yellowed grass in the long arrowhead-shaped meadow that we were standing in. Her ruffled ivory dress was just a shade darker than the snow, and her reddish-brown curls managed to shimmer, though the sun was buried deeply behind the clouds.
As we watched, she crouched for an instant and then sprang fifteen feet up into the air. Her little hands closed around a flake, and she dropped lightly to her feet.
She turned to us with her shocking smile—truly, it wasn’t something you could get used to—and opened her hands to show us the perfectly formed eight-pointed ice star in her palm before it melted.
“Pretty,” Jacob called to her appreciatively. “But I think you’re stalling, Nessie.”
She bounded back to Jacob; he held his arms out at exactly the moment she leaped into them. They had the move perfectly synchronized. She did this when she had something to say. She still preferred not to speak aloud.
Renesmee touched his face, scowling adorably as we all listened to the sound of a small herd of elk moving farther into the wood.
“Suuuure you’re not thirsty, Nessie,” Jacob answered a little sarcastically, but more indulgently than anything else. “You’re just afraid I’ll catch the biggest one again!”
She flipped backward out of Jacob’s arms, landing lightly on her feet, and rolled her eyes—she looked so much like Edward when she did that. Then she darted off toward the trees.
“Got it,” Jacob said when I leaned as if to follow. He yanked his t-shirt off as he charged after her into the forest, already trembling. “It doesn’t count if you cheat,” he called to Renesmee.
I smiled at the leaves they left fluttering behind them, shaking my head. Jacob was more a child than Renesmee sometimes.
I paused, giving my hunters a few minutes’ head start. It would be beyond simple to track them, and Renesmee would love to surprise me with the size of her prey. I smiled again.
The narrow meadow was very still, very empty. The fluttering snow was thinning above me, almost gone. Alice had seen that it wouldn’t stick for many weeks.
Usually Edward and I came together on these hunting trips. But Edward was with Carlisle today, planning the trip to Rio, talking behind Jacob’s back.… I frowned. When I returned, I would take Jacob’s side. He should come with us. He had as big a stake in this as any of us—his entire life was at stake, just like mine.
While my thoughts were lost in the near future, my eyes swept the mountainside routinely, searching for prey, searching for danger. I didn’t think about it; the urge was an automatic thing.
Or perhaps there was a reason for my scanning, some tiny trigger that my razor- sharp senses had caught before I realized it consciously.
As my eyes flitted across the edge of a distant cliff, standing out starkly blue-gray against the green-black forest, a glint of silver—or was it gold?—gripped my attention.
My gaze zeroed in on the color that shouldn’t have been there, so far away in the haze that an eagle wouldn’t have been able to make it out. I stared.
She stared back.
That she was a vampire was obvious. Her skin was marble white, the texture a million times smoother than human skin. Even under the clouds, she glistened ever so slightly. If her skin had not given her away, her stillness would have. Only vampires and statues could be so perfectly motionless.
Her hair was pale, pale blond, almost silver. This was the gleam that had caught my eye. It hung straight as a ruler to a blunt edge at her chin, parted evenly down the center.
She was a stranger to me. I was absolutely certain I’d never seen her before, even as a human. None of the faces in my muddy memory were the same as this one. But I knew her at once from her dark golden eyes.
Irina had decided to come after all.
For one moment I stared at her, and she stared back. I wondered if she would guess immediately who I was as well. I half-raised my hand, about to wave, but her lip twisted the tiniest bit, making her face suddenly hostile.
I heard Renesmee’s cry of victory from the forest, heard Jacob’s echoing howl, and saw Irina’s face jerk reflexively to the sound when it echoed to her a few seconds later. Her gaze cut slightly to the right, and I knew what she was seeing. An enormous russet werewolf, perhaps the very one who had killed her Laurent. How long had she been watching us? Long enough to see our affectionate exchange before, I was sure.
Her face spasmed in pain.
Instinctually, I opened my hands in front of me in an apologetic gesture. She turned back to me, and her lip curled back over her teeth. Her jaw unlocked as she growled.
When the faint sound reached me, she had already turned and disappeared into the forest.
“Crap!” I groaned.
I sprinted into the forest after Renesmee and Jacob, unwilling to have them out of my sight. I didn’t know which direction Irina had taken, or exactly how furious she was right now. Vengeance was a common obsession for vampires, one that was not easy to suppress.
Running at full speed, it only took me two seconds to reach them.
“Mine is bigger,” I heard Renesmee insist as I burst through the thick thornbushes to the small open space where they stood.
Jacob’s ears flattened as he took in my expression; he crouched forward, baring his teeth—his muzzle was streaked with blood from his kill. His eyes raked the forest. I could hear the growl building in his throat.
Renesmee was every bit as alert as Jacob. Abandoning the dead stag at her feet, she leaped into my waiting arms, pressing her curious hands against my cheeks.
“I’m overreacting,” I assured them quickly. “It’s okay, I think. Hold on.”
I pulled out my cell phone and hit the speed dial. Edward answered on the first ring. Jacob and Renesmee listened intently to my side as I filled Edward in.
“Come, bring Carlisle,” I trilled so fast I wondered if Jacob could keep up. “I saw Irina, and she saw me, but then she saw Jacob and she got mad and ran away, I think. She hasn’t shown up here—yet, anyway—but she looked pretty upset so maybe she will. If she doesn’t, you and Carlisle have to go after her and talk to her. I feel so bad.”
Jacob rumbled.
“We’ll be there in half a minute,” Edward assured me, and I could hear the whoosh of the wind his running made.
We darted back to the long meadow and then waited silently as Jacob and I listened carefully for the sound of an approach we did not recognize.
When the sound came, though, it was very familiar. And then Edward was at my side, Carlisle a few seconds behind. I was surprised to hear the heavy pad of big paws following behind Carlisle. I supposed I shouldn’t have been shocked. With Renesmee in even a hint of danger, of course Jacob would call in reinforcements.
“She was up on that ridge,” I told them at once, pointing out the spot. If Irina was fleeing, she already had quite a head start. Would she stop and listen to Carlisle? Her expression before made me think not. “Maybe you should call Emmett and
Jasper and have them come with you. She looked… really upset. She growled at me.”
“What?” Edward said angrily.
Carlisle put a hand on his arm. “She’s grieving. I’ll go after her.” “I’m coming with you,” Edward insisted.
They exchanged a long glance—perhaps Carlisle was measuring Edward’s irritation with Irina against his helpfulness as a mind reader. Finally, Carlisle nodded, and they took off to find the trail without calling for Jasper or Emmett.
Jacob huffed impatiently and poked my back with his nose. He must want Renesmee back at the safety of the house, just in case. I agreed with him on that, and we hurried home with Seth and Leah running at our flanks.
Renesmee was complacent in my arms, one hand still resting on my face. Since the hunting trip had been aborted, she would just have to make do with donated blood. Her thoughts were a little smug.
28. THE FUTURE
Carlisle and Edward had not been able to catch up with Irina before her trail disappeared into the sound. They’d swum to the other bank to see if her trail had picked up in a straight line, but there was no trace of her for miles in either direction on the eastern shore.
It was all my fault. She had come, as Alice had seen, to make peace with the Cullens, only to be angered by my camaraderie with Jacob. I wished I’d noticed her earlier, before Jacob had phased. I wished we’d gone hunting somewhere else.
There wasn’t much to be done. Carlisle had called Tanya with the disappointing news. Tanya and Kate hadn’t seen Irina since they’d decided to come to my wedding, and they were distraught that Irina had come so close and yet not returned home; it wasn’t easy for them to lose their sister, however temporary the separation might be. I wondered if this brought back hard memories of losing their mother so many centuries ago.
Alice was able to catch a few glimpses of Irina’s immediate future, nothing too concrete. She wasn’t going back to Denali, as far as Alice could tell. The picture was hazy. All Alice could see was that Irina was visibly upset; she wandered in the snow-swathed wilderness—to the north? To the east?—with a devastated expression. She made no decisions for a new course beyond her directionless grieving.
Days passed and, though of course I forgot nothing, Irina and her pain moved to the back of my mind. There were more important things to think of now. I would leave for Italy in just a few days. When I got back, we’d all be off to South America.
Every detail had been gone over a hundred times already. We would start with the Ticunas, tracing their legends as well as we could at the source. Now that it was accepted that Jacob would come with us, he figured prominently in the plans—it was unlikely that the people who believed in vampires would speak to any of us about their stories. If we dead-ended with the Ticunas, there were many closely related tribes in the area to research. Carlisle had some old friends in the Amazon; if we could find them, they might have information for us, too. Or at least a suggestion as to where else we might go for answers. It was unlikely that the three Amazon vampires had anything to do with the legends of vampire hybrids themselves, as they were all female. There was no way to know how long our search would take.
I hadn’t told Charlie about the longer trip yet, and I stewed about what to say to him while Edward and Carlisle’s discussion went on. How to break the news to him just right?
I stared at Renesmee while I debated internally. She was curled up on the sofa now, her breathing slow with heavy sleep, her tangled curls splayed wildly around her face. Usually, Edward and I took her back to our cottage to put her to bed, but tonight we lingered with the family, he and Carlisle deep in their planning session.
Meanwhile, Emmett and Jasper were more excited about planning the hunting possibilities. The Amazon offered a change from our normal quarry. Jaguars and panthers, for example. Emmett had a whim to wrestle with an anaconda. Esme and Rosalie were planning what they would pack. Jacob was off with Sam’s pack, setting things up for his own absence.
Alice moved slowly—for her—around the big room, unnecessarily tidying the already immaculate space, straightening Esme’s perfectly hung garlands. She was re-centering Esme’s vases on the console at the moment. I could see from the way her face fluctuated—aware, then blank, then aware again—that she was searching the future. I assumed she was trying to see through the blind spots that Jacob and Renesmee made in her visions as to what was waiting for us in South America until Jasper said, “Let it go, Alice; she’s not our concern,” and a cloud of serenity stole silently and invisibly through the room. Alice must have been worrying about Irina again.
She stuck her tongue out at Jasper and then lifted one crystal vase that was filled with white and red roses and turned toward the kitchen. There was just the barest hint of wilt to one of the white flowers, but Alice seemed intent on utter perfection as a distraction to her lack of vision tonight.
Staring at Renesmee again, I didn’t see it when the vase slipped from Alice’s fingers. I only heard the whoosh of the air whistling past the crystal, and my eyes flickered up in time to see the vase shatter into ten thousand diamond shards against the edge of the kitchen’s marble floor.
We were perfectly still as the fragmented crystal bounced and skittered in every direction with an unmusical tinkling, all eyes on Alice’s back.
My first illogical thought was that Alice was playing some joke on us. Because there was no way that Alice could have dropped the vase by accident. I could have darted across the room to catch the vase in plenty of time myself, if I hadn’t assumed she would get it. And how would it fall through her fingers in the first place? Her perfectly sure fingers…
I had never seen a vampire drop anything by accident. Ever.
And then Alice was facing us, twisting in a move so fast it didn’t exist.
Her eyes were halfway here and halfway locked on the future, wide, staring, filling her thin face till they seemed to overflow it. Looking into her eyes was like
looking out of a grave from the inside; I was buried in the terror and despair and agony of her gaze.
I heard Edward gasp; it was a broken, half-choked sound.
“What?” Jasper growled, leaping to her side in a blurred rush of movement, crushing the broken crystal under his feet. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her sharply. She seemed to rattle silently in his hands. “What, Alice?”
Emmett moved into my peripheral vision, his teeth bared while his eyes darted toward the window, anticipating an attack.
There was only silence from Esme, Carlisle, and Rose, who were frozen just as I was.
Jasper shook Alice again. “What is it?”
“They’re coming for us,” Alice and Edward whispered together, perfectly synchronized. “All of them.”
Silence.
For once, I was the quickest to understand—because something in their words triggered my own vision. It was only the distant memory of a dream—faint, transparent, indistinct as if I were peering through thick gauze.… In my head, I saw a line of black advancing on me, the ghost of my half-forgotten human nightmare. I could not see the glint of their ruby eyes in the shrouded image, or the shine of their sharp wet teeth, but I knew where the gleam should be. . . .
Stronger than the memory of the sight came the memory of the feel—the wrenching need to protect the precious thing behind me.
I wanted to snatch Renesmee up into my arms, to hide her behind my skin and hair, to make her invisible. But I couldn’t even turn to look at her. I felt not like stone but ice. For the first time since I’d been reborn a vampire, I felt cold.
I barely heard the confirmation of my fears. I didn’t need it. I already knew. “The Volturi,” Alice moaned.
“All of them,” Edward groaned at the same time. “Why?” Alice whispered to herself. “How?” “When?” Edward whispered.
“Why?” Esme echoed.
“When?” Jasper repeated in a voice like splintering ice.
Alice’s eyes didn’t blink, but it was as if a veil covered them; they became perfectly blank. Only her mouth held on to her expression of horror.
“Not long,” she and Edward said together. Then she spoke alone. “There’s snow on the forest, snow on the town. Little more than a month.”
“Why?” Carlisle was the one to ask this time.
Esme answered. “They must have a reason. Maybe to see . . .”
“This isn’t about Bella,” Alice said hollowly. “They’re all coming—Aro, Caius, Marcus, every member of the guard, even the wives.”
“The wives never leave the tower,” Jasper contradicted her in a flat voice. “Never. Not during the southern rebellion. Not when the Romanians tried to overthrow them. Not even when they were hunting the immortal children. Never.”
“They’re coming now,” Edward whispered.
“But why?” Carlisle said again. “We’ve done nothing! And if we had, what could we possibly do that would bring this down on us?”
“There are so many of us,” Edward answered dully. “They must want to make sure that . . .” He didn’t finish.
“That doesn’t answer the crucial question! Why?”
I felt I knew the answer to Carlisle’s question, and yet at the same time I didn’t. Renesmee was the reason why, I was sure. Somehow I’d known from the very beginning that they would come for her. My subconscious had warned me before I’d known I was carrying her. It felt oddly expected now. As if I’d somehow always known that the Volturi would come to take my happiness from me.
But that still didn’t answer the question.
“Go back, Alice,” Jasper pleaded. “Look for the trigger. Search.”
Alice shook her head slowly, her shoulders sagging. “It came out of nowhere, Jazz. I wasn’t looking for them, or even for us. I was just looking for Irina. She wasn’t where I expected her to be ” Alice trailed off, her eyes drifting again.
She stared at nothing for a long second.
And then her head jerked up, her eyes hard as flint. I heard Edward catch his breath.
“She decided to go to them,” Alice said. “Irina decided to go to the Volturi. And then they will decide.… It’s as if they’re waiting for her. Like their decision was already made, and just waiting on her ”
It was silent again as we digested this. What would Irina tell the Volturi that would result in Alice’s appalling vision?
“Can we stop her?” Jasper asked. “There’s no way. She’s almost there.”
“What is she doing?” Carlisle was asking, but I wasn’t paying attention to the discussion now. All my focus was on the picture that was painstakingly coming together in my head.
I pictured Irina poised on the cliff, watching. What had she seen? A vampire and a werewolf who were best friends. I’d been focused on that image, one that would obviously explain her reaction. But that was not all that she’d seen.
She’d also seen a child. An exquisitely beautiful child, showing off in the falling snow, clearly more than human…
Irina… the orphaned sisters… Carlisle had said that losing their mother to the Volturi’s justice had made Tanya, Kate, and Irina purists when it came to the law.
Just half a minute ago, Jasper had said the words himself: Not even when they were hunting the immortal children.… The immortal children—the unmentionable bane, the appalling taboo…
With Irina’s past, how could she apply any other reading to what she’d seen that day in the narrow field? She had not been close enough to hear Renesmee’s heart, to feel the heat radiating from her body. Renesmee’s rosy cheeks could have been a trick on our part for all she knew.
After all, the Cullens were in league with werewolves. From Irina’s point of view, maybe this meant nothing was beyond us.…
Irina, wringing her hands in the snowy wilderness—not mourning Laurent, after all, but knowing it was her duty to turn the Cullens in, knowing what would happen to them if she did. Apparently her conscience had won out over the centuries of friendship.
And the Volturi’s response to this kind of infraction was so automatic, it was already decided.
I turned and draped myself over Renesmee’s sleeping body, covering her with my hair, burying my face in her curls.
“Think of what she saw that afternoon,” I said in a low voice, interrupting whatever Emmett was beginning to say. “To someone who’d lost a mother because of the immortal children, what would Renesmee look like?”
Everything was silent again as the others caught up to where I was already. “An immortal child,” Carlisle whispered.
I felt Edward kneel beside me, wrap his arms over us both.
“But she’s wrong,” I went on. “Renesmee isn’t like those other children. They were frozen, but she grows so much every day. They were out of control, but she never hurts Charlie or Sue or even shows them things that would upset them. She can control herself. She’s already smarter than most adults. There would be no reason ”
I babbled on, waiting for someone to exhale with relief, waiting for the icy tension in the room to relax as they realized I was right. The room just seemed to get colder. Eventually my small voice trailed off into silence.
No one spoke for a long time.
Then Edward whispered into my hair. “It’s not the kind of crime they hold a trial for, love,” he said quietly. “Aro’s seen Irina’s proof in her thoughts. They come to destroy, not to be reasoned with.”
“But they’re wrong,” I said stubbornly. “They won’t wait for us to show them that.”
His voice was still quiet, gentle, velvet… and yet the pain and desolation in the sound was unavoidable. His voice was like Alice’s eyes before—like the inside of a tomb.
“What can we do?” I demanded.
Renesmee was so warm and perfect in my arms, dreaming peacefully. I’d worried so much about Renesmee’s speeding age—worried that she would only have little over a decade of life.… That terror seemed ironic now.
Little over a month…
Was this the limit, then? I’d had more happiness than most people ever experienced. Was there some natural law that demanded equal shares of happiness and misery in the world? Was my joy overthrowing the balance? Was four months all I could have?
It was Emmett who answered my rhetorical question. “We fight,” he said calmly.
“We can’t win,” Jasper growled. I could imagine how his face would look, how his body would curve protectively over Alice’s.
“Well, we can’t run. Not with Demetri around.” Emmett made a disgusted noise, and I knew instinctively that he was not upset by the idea of the Volturi’s tracker but by the idea of running away. “And I don’t know that we can’t win,” he said. “There are a few options to consider. We don’t have to fight alone.”
My head snapped up at that. “We don’t have to sentence the Quileutes to death, either, Emmett!”
“Chill, Bella.” His expression was no different from when he was contemplating fighting anacondas. Even the threat of annihilation couldn’t change Emmett’s perspective, his ability to thrill to a challenge. “I didn’t mean the pack. Be realistic, though—do you think Jacob or Sam is going to ignore an invasion? Even if it wasn’t about Nessie? Not to mention that, thanks to Irina, Aro knows about our alliance with the pack now, too. But I was thinking of our other friends.”
Carlisle echoed me in a whisper. “Other friends we don’t have to sentence to death.”
“Hey, we’ll let them decide,” Emmett said in a placating tone. “I’m not saying they have to fight with us.” I could see the plan refining itself in his head as he spoke. “If they’d just stand beside us, just long enough to make the Volturi hesitate.
Bella’s right, after all. If we could force them to stop and listen. Though that might take away any reason for a fight ”
There was a hint of a smile on Emmett’s face now. I was surprised no one had hit him yet. I wanted to.
“Yes,” Esme said eagerly. “That makes sense, Emmett. All we need is for the Volturi to pause for one moment. Just long enough to listen.”
“We’d need quite a show of witnesses,” Rosalie said harshly, her voice brittle as glass.
Esme nodded in agreement, as if she hadn’t heard the sarcasm in Rosalie’s tone. “We can ask that much of our friends. Just to witness.”
“We’d do it for them,” Emmett said.
“We’ll have to ask them just right,” Alice murmured. I looked to see her eyes were a dark void again. “They’ll have to be shown very carefully.”
“Shown?” Jasper asked.
Alice and Edward both looked down at Renesmee. Then Alice’s eyes glazed over.
“Tanya’s family,” she said. “Siobhan’s coven. Amun’s. Some of the nomads— Garrett and Mary for certain. Maybe Alistair.”
“What about Peter and Charlotte?” Jasper asked half fearfully, as if he hoped the answer was no, and his old brother could be spared from the coming carnage.
“Maybe.”
“The Amazons?” Carlisle asked. “Kachiri, Zafrina, and Senna?”
Alice seemed too deep into her vision to answer at first; finally she shuddered, and her eyes flickered back to the present. She met Carlisle’s gaze for the tiniest part of a second, and then looked down.
“I can’t see.”
“What was that?” Edward asked, his whisper a demand. “That part in the jungle. Are we going to look for them?”
“I can’t see,” Alice repeated, not meeting his eyes. A flash of confusion crossed Edward’s face. “We’ll have to split up and hurry—before the snow sticks to the ground. We have to round up whomever we can and get them here to show them.” She zoned again. “Ask Eleazar. There is more to this than just an immortal child.”
The silence was ominous for another long moment while Alice was in her trance. She blinked slowly when it was over, her eyes peculiarly opaque despite the fact that she was clearly in the present.
“There is so much. We have to hurry,” she whispered.
“Alice?” Edward asked. “That was too fast—I didn’t understand. What was—?” “I can’t see!” she exploded back at him. “Jacob’s almost here!”
Rosalie took a step toward the front door. “I’ll deal with—”
“No, let him come,” Alice said quickly, her voice straining higher with each word. She grabbed Jasper’s hand and began pulling him toward the back door. “I’ll see better away from Nessie, too. I need to go. I need to really concentrate. I need to see everything I can. I have to go. Come on, Jasper, there’s no time to waste!”
We all could hear Jacob on the stairs. Alice yanked, impatient, on Jasper’s hand. He followed quickly, confusion in his eyes just like Edward’s. They darted out the door into the silver night.
“Hurry!” she called back to us. “You have to find them all!”
“Find what?” Jacob asked, shutting the front door behind himself. “Where’d Alice go?”
No one answered; we all just stared.
Jacob shook the wet from his hair and pulled his arms through the sleeves of his t-shirt, his eyes on Renesmee. “Hey, Bells! I thought you guys would’ve gone home by now ”
He looked up to me finally, blinked, and then stared. I watched his expression as the room’s atmosphere finally touched him. He glanced down, eyes wide, at the wet spot on the floor, the scattered roses, the fragments of crystal. His fingers quivered.
“What?” he asked flatly. “What happened?”
I couldn’t think where to begin. No one else found the words, either.
Jacob crossed the room in three long strides and dropped to his knees beside Renesmee and me. I could feel the heat shaking off his body as tremors rolled down his arms to his shaking hands.
“Is she okay?” he demanded, touching her forehead, tilting his head as he listened to her heart. “Don’t mess with me, Bella, please!”
“Nothing’s wrong with Renesmee,” I choked out, the words breaking in strange places.
“Then who?”
“All of us, Jacob,” I whispered. And it was there in my voice, too—the sound of the inside of a grave. “It’s over. We’ve all been sentenced to die.”
29. DEFECTION
We sat there all night long, statues of horror and grief, and Alice never came back.
We were all at our limits—frenzied into absolute stillness. Carlisle had barely been able to move his lips to explain it all to Jacob. The retelling seemed to make it worse; even Emmett stood silent and still from then on.
It wasn’t until the sun rose and I knew that Renesmee would soon be stirring under my hands that I wondered for the first time what could possibly be taking Alice so long. I’d hoped to know more before I was faced with my daughter’s curiosity. To have some answers. Some tiny, tiny portion of hope so that I could smile and keep the truth from terrifying her, too.
My face felt permanently set into the fixed mask it had worn all night. I wasn’t sure I had the ability to smile anymore.
Jacob was snoring in the corner, a mountain of fur on the floor, twitching anxiously in his sleep. Sam knew everything—the wolves were readying themselves for what was coming. Not that this preparation would do anything but get them killed with the rest of my family.
The sunlight broke through the back windows, sparkling on Edward’s skin. My eyes had not moved from his since Alice’s departure. We’d stared at each other all night, staring at what neither of us could live through losing: the other. I saw my reflection glimmer in his agonized eyes as the sun touched my own skin.
His eyebrows moved an infinitesimal bit, then his lips. “Alice,” he said.
The sound of his voice was like ice cracking as it melted. All of us fractured a little, softened a little. Moved again.
“She’s been gone a long time,” Rosalie murmured, surprised.
“Where could she be?” Emmett wondered, taking a step toward the door. Esme put a hand on her arm. “We don’t want to disturb . . .”
“She’s never taken so long before,” Edward said. New worry splintered the mask his face had become. His features were alive again, his eyes suddenly wide with fresh fear, extra panic. “Carlisle, you don’t think—something preemptive? Would Alice have had time to see if they sent someone for her?”
Aro’s translucent-skinned face filled my head. Aro, who had seen into all the corners of Alice’s mind, who knew everything she was capable of—
Emmett cussed loud enough that Jacob lurched to his feet with a growl. In the yard, his growl was echoed by his pack. My family was already a blur of action.
“Stay with Renesmee!” I all but shrieked at Jacob as I sprinted through the door.
I was still stronger than the rest of them, and I used that strength to push myself forward. I overtook Esme in a few bounds, and Rosalie in just a few strides more. I raced through the thick forest until I was right behind Edward and Carlisle.
“Would they have been able to surprise her?” Carlisle asked, his voice as even as if he were standing motionless rather than running at full speed.
“I don’t see how,” Edward answered. “But Aro knows her better than anyone else. Better than I do.”
“Is this a trap?” Emmett called from behind us.
“Maybe,” Edward said. “There’s no scent but Alice and Jasper. Where were they going?”
Alice and Jasper’s trail was curling into a wide arc; it stretched first east of the house, but headed north on the other side of the river, and then back west again after a few miles. We recrossed the river, all six jumping within a second of each other. Edward ran in the lead, his concentration total.
“Did you catch that scent?” Esme called ahead a few moments after we’d leaped the river for the second time. She was the farthest back, on the far left edge of our hunting party. She gestured to the southeast.
“Keep to the main trail—we’re almost to the Quileute border,” Edward ordered tersely. “Stay together. See if they turned north or south.”
I was not as familiar with the treaty line as the rest of them, but I could smell the hint of wolf in the breeze blowing from the east. Edward and Carlisle slowed a little out of habit, and I could see their heads sweep from side to side, waiting for the trail to turn.
Then the wolf smell was suddenly stronger, and Edward’s head snapped up. He came to a sudden stop. The rest of us froze, too.
“Sam?” Edward asked in a flat voice. “What is this?”
Sam came through the trees a few hundred yards away, walking quickly toward us in his human form, flanked by two big wolves—Paul and Jared. It took Sam a
while to reach us; his human pace made me impatient. I didn’t want time to think about what was happening. I wanted to be in motion, to be doing something. I wanted to have my arms around Alice, to know beyond a doubt that she was safe.
I watched Edward’s face go absolutely white as he read what Sam was thinking. Sam ignored him, looking straight at Carlisle as he stopped walking and began to speak.
“Right after midnight, Alice and Jasper came to this place and asked permission to cross our land to the ocean. I granted them that and escorted them to the coast myself. They went immediately into the water and did not return. As we journeyed, Alice told me it was of the utmost importance that I say nothing to Jacob about seeing her until I spoke to you. I was to wait here for you to come looking for her and then give you this note. She told me to obey her as if all our lives depended on it.”
Sam’s face was grim as he held out a folded sheet of paper, printed all over with small black text. It was a page out of a book; my sharp eyes read the printed words as Carlisle unfolded it to see the other side. The side facing me was the copyright page from The Merchant of Venice. A hint of my own scent blew off of it as Carlisle shook the paper flat. I realized it was a page torn from one of my books. I’d brought a few things from Charlie’s house to the cottage; a few sets of normal clothes, all the letters from my mother, and my favorite books. My tattered collection of Shakespeare paperbacks had been on the bookshelf in the cottage’s little living room yesterday morning.…
“Alice has decided to leave us,” Carlisle whispered. “What?” Rosalie cried.
Carlisle turned the page around so that we all could read.
Don’t look for us. There isn’t time to waste. Remember: Tanya, Siobhan, Amun, Alistair, all the nomads you can find. We’ll seek out Peter and Charlotte on our way. We’re so sorry that we have to leave you this way, with no goodbyes or explanations. It’s the only way for us. We love you.
We stood frozen again, the silence total but for the sound of the wolves’ heartbeats, their breathing. Their thoughts must have been loud, too. Edward was first to move again, speaking in response to what he heard in Sam’s head.
“Yes, things are that dangerous.”
“Enough that you would abandon your family?” Sam asked out loud, censure in his tone. It was clear that he had not read the note before giving it to Carlisle. He was upset now, looking as if he regretted listening to Alice.
Edward’s expression was stiff—to Sam it probably looked angry or arrogant, but I could see the shape of pain in the hard planes of his face.
“We don’t know what she saw,” Edward said. “Alice is neither unfeeling nor a coward. She just has more information than we do.”
“We would not—,” Sam began.
“You are bound differently than we are,” Edward snapped. “We each still have our free will.”
Sam’s chin jerked up, and his eyes looked suddenly flat black.
“But you should heed the warning,” Edward went on. “This is not something you want to involve yourselves in. You can still avoid what Alice saw.”
Sam smiled grimly. “We don’t run away.” Behind him, Paul snorted. “Don’t get your family slaughtered for pride,” Carlisle interjected quietly.
Sam looked at Carlisle with a softer expression. “As Edward pointed out, we don’t have the same kind of freedom that you have. Renesmee is as much as part of our family now as she is yours. Jacob cannot abandon her, and we cannot abandon him.” His eyes flickered to Alice’s note, and his lips pressed into a thin line.
“You don’t know her,” Edward said. “Do you?” Sam asked bluntly.
Carlisle put a hand on Edward’s shoulder. “We have much to do, son. Whatever Alice’s decision, we would be foolish not to follow her advice now. Let’s go home and get to work.”
Edward nodded, his face still rigid with pain. Behind me, I could hear Esme’s quiet, tearless sobs.
I didn’t know how to cry in this body; I couldn’t do anything but stare. There was no feeling yet. Everything seemed unreal, like I was dreaming again after all these months. Having a nightmare.
“Thank you, Sam,” Carlisle said.
“I’m sorry,” Sam answered. “We shouldn’t have let her through.”
“You did the right thing,” Carlisle told him. “Alice is free to do what she will. I wouldn’t deny her that liberty.”
I’d always thought of the Cullens as a whole, an indivisible unit. Suddenly, I remembered that it had not always been so. Carlisle had created Edward, Esme, Rosalie and Emmett; Edward had created me. We were physically linked by blood and venom. I never thought of Alice and Jasper as separate—as adopted into the family. But in truth, Alice had adopted the Cullens. She had shown up with her unconnected past, bringing Jasper with his, and fit herself into the family that was already there. Both she and Jasper had known another life outside the Cullen family. Had she really chosen to lead another new life after she’d seen that life with the Cullens was over?
We were doomed, then, weren’t we? There was no hope at all. Not one ray, one flicker that might have convinced Alice she had a chance at our side.
The bright morning air seemed thicker suddenly, blacker, as if physically darkened by my despair.
“I’m not going down without a fight,” Emmett snarled low under his breath. “Alice told us what to do. Let’s get it done.”
The others nodded with determined expressions, and I realized that they were banking on whatever chance Alice had given us. That they were not going to give in to hopelessness and wait to die.
Yes, we all would fight. What else was there? And apparently we would involve others, because Alice had said so before she’d left us. How could we not follow Alice’s last warning? The wolves, too, would fight with us for Renesmee.
We would fight, they would fight, and we all would die.
I didn’t feel the same resolve the others seemed to feel. Alice knew the odds. She was giving us the only chance she could see, but the chance was too slim for her to bet on it.
I felt already beaten as I turned my back on Sam’s critical face and followed Carlisle toward home.
We ran automatically now, not the same panicked hurry as before. As we neared the river, Esme’s head lifted.
“There was that other trail. It was fresh.”
She nodded forward, toward where she had called Edward’s attention on the way here. While we were racing to save Alice…
“It has to be from earlier in the day. It was just Alice, without Jasper,” Edward said lifelessly.
Esme’s face puckered, and she nodded.
I drifted to the right, falling a little behind. I was sure Edward was right, but at the same time… After all, how had Alice’s note ended up on a page from my book?
“Bella?” Edward asked in an emotionless voice as I hesitated.
“I want to follow the trail,” I told him, smelling the light scent of Alice that led away from her earlier flight path. I was new to this, but it smelled exactly the same to me, just minus the scent of Jasper.
Edward’s golden eyes were empty. “It probably just leads back to the house.” “Then I’ll meet you there.”
At first I thought he would let me go alone, but then, as I moved a few steps away, his blank eyes flickered to life.
“I’ll come with you,” he said quietly. “We’ll meet you at home, Carlisle.”
Carlisle nodded, and the others left. I waited until they were out of sight, and then I looked at Edward questioningly.
“I couldn’t let you walk away from me,” he explained in a low voice. “It hurt just to imagine it.”
I understood without more explanation than that. I thought of being divided from him now and realized I would have felt the same pain, no matter how short the separation.
There was so little time left to be together. I held my hand out to him, and he took it.
“Let’s hurry,” he said. “Renesmee will be awake.” I nodded, and we were running again.
It was probably a silly thing, to waste the time away from Renesmee just for curiosity’s sake. But the note bothered me. Alice could have carved the note into a boulder or tree trunk if she lacked writing utensils. She could have stolen a pad of Post-its from any of the houses by the highway. Why my book? When did she get it?
Sure enough, the trail led back to the cottage by a circuitous route that stayed far clear of the Cullens’ house and the wolves in the nearby woods. Edward’s brows tightened in confusion as it became obvious where the trail led.
He tried to reason it out. “She left Jasper to wait for her and came here?”
We were almost to the cottage now, and I felt uneasy. I was glad to have Edward’s hand in mine, but I also felt as if I should be here alone. Tearing out the page and carrying it back to Jasper was such an odd thing for Alice to do. It felt like there was a message in her action—one I didn’t understand at all. But it was my book, so the message must be for me. If it were something she wanted Edward to know, wouldn’t she have pulled a page from one of his books… ?
“Give me just a minute,” I said, pulling my hand free as we got to the door. His forehead creased. “Bella?”
“Please? Thirty seconds.”
I didn’t wait for him to answer. I darted through the door, pulling it shut behind me. I went straight to the bookshelf. Alice’s scent was fresh—less than a day old. A fire that I had not set burned low but hot in the fireplace. I yanked The Merchant of Venice off the shelf and flipped it open to the title page.
There, next to the feathered edge left by the torn page, under the words The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, was a note.
Destroy this.
Below that was a name and an address in Seattle.
When Edward came through the door after only thirteen seconds rather than thirty, I was watching the book burn.
“What’s going on, Bella?”
“She was here. She ripped a page out of my book to write her note on.” “Why?”
“I don’t know why.”
“Why are you burning it?”
“I—I—” I frowned, letting all my frustration and pain show on my face. I did not know what Alice was trying to tell me, only that she’d gone to great lengths to
keep it from anyone but me. The one person whose mind Edward could not read. So she must want to keep him in the dark, and it was probably for a good reason. “It seemed appropriate.”
“We don’t know what she’s doing,” he said quietly.
I stared into the flames. I was the only person in the world who could lie to Edward. Was that what Alice wanted from me? Her last request?
“When we were on the plane to Italy,” I whispered—this was not a lie, except perhaps in context—“on our way to rescue you… she lied to Jasper so that he wouldn’t come after us. She knew that if he faced the Volturi, he would die. She was willing to die herself rather than put him in danger. Willing for me to die, too. Willing for you to die.”
Edward didn’t answer.
“She has her priorities,” I said. It made my still heart ache to realize that my explanation did not feel like a lie in any way.
“I don’t believe it,” Edward said. He didn’t say it like he was arguing with me—he said it like he was arguing with himself. “Maybe it was just Jasper in danger. Her plan would work for the rest of us, but he’d be lost if he stayed. Maybe . . .”
“She could have told us that. Sent him away.”
“But would Jasper have gone? Maybe she’s lying to him again.” “Maybe,” I pretended to agree. “We should go home. There’s no time.” Edward took my hand, and we ran.
Alice’s note did not make me hopeful. If there were any way to avoid the coming slaughter, Alice would have stayed. I couldn’t see another possibility. So it was something else she was giving me. Not a way to escape. But what else would she think that I wanted? Maybe a way to salvage something? Was there anything I could still save?
Carlisle and the others had not been idle in our absence. We’d been separated from them for all of five minutes, and they were already prepared to leave. In the corner, Jacob was human again, with Renesmee on his lap, both of them watching us with wide eyes.
Rosalie had traded her silk wrap dress for a sturdy-looking pair of jeans, running shoes, and a button-down shirt made of the thick weave that backpackers used for long trips. Esme was dressed similarly. There was a globe on the coffee table, but they were done looking at it, just waiting for us.
The atmosphere was more positive now than before; it felt good to them to be in action. Their hopes were pinned on Alice’s instructions.
I looked at the globe and wondered where we were headed first.
“We’re to stay here?” Edward asked, looking at Carlisle. He didn’t sound happy.
“Alice said that we would have to show people Renesmee, and we would have to be careful about it,” Carlisle said. “We’ll send whomever we can find back here to you—Edward, you’ll be the best at fielding that particular minefield.”
Edward gave one sharp nod, still not happy. “There’s a lot of ground to cover.” “We’re splitting up,” Emmett answered. “Rose and I are hunting for nomads.”
“You’ll have your hands full here,” Carlisle said. “Tanya’s family will be here in the morning, and they have no idea why. First, you have to persuade them not to react the way Irina did. Second, you’ve got to find out what Alice meant about Eleazar. Then, after all that, will they stay to witness for us? It will start again as the others come—if we can persuade anyone to come in the first place.” Carlisle sighed. “Your job may well be the hardest. We’ll be back to help as soon as we can.”
Carlisle put his hand on Edward’s shoulder for a second and then kissed my forehead. Esme hugged us both, and Emmett punched us both on the arm. Rosalie forced a hard smile for Edward and me, blew a kiss to Renesmee, and then gave Jacob a parting grimace.
“Good luck,” Edward told them.
“And to you,” Carlisle said. “We’ll all need it.”
I watched them leave, wishing I could feel whatever hope bolstered them, and wishing I could be alone with the computer for just a few seconds. I had to figure out who this J. Jenks person was and why Alice had gone to such lengths to give his name to only me.
Renesmee twisted in Jacob’s arms to touch his cheek.
“I don’t know if Carlisle’s friends will come. I hope so. Sounds like we’re a little outnumbered right now,” Jacob murmured to Renesmee.
So she knew. Renesmee already understood only too clearly what was going on. The whole imprinted-werewolf-gives-the-object-of-his-imprinting-whatever-she- wants thing was getting old pretty fast. Wasn’t shielding her more important than answering her questions?
I looked carefully at her face. She did not look frightened, only anxious and very serious as she conversed with Jacob in her silent way.
“No, we can’t help; we’ve got to stay here,” he went on. “People are coming to see
you, not the scenery.” Renesmee frowned at him.
“No, I don’t have to go anywhere,” he said to her. Then he looked at Edward, his face stunned by the realization that he might be wrong. “Do I?”
Edward hesitated.
“Spit it out,” Jacob said, his voice raw with tension. He was right at his breaking point, just like the rest of us.
“The vampires who are coming to help us are not the same as we are,” Edward said. “Tanya’s family is the only one besides ours with a reverence for human life, and even they don’t think much of werewolves. I think it might be safer—”
“I can take care of myself,” Jacob interrupted.
“Safer for Renesmee,” Edward continued, “if the choice to believe our story about her is not tainted by an association with werewolves.”
“Some friends. They’d turn on you just because of who you hang out with now?”
“I think they would mostly be tolerant under normal circumstances. But you need to understand—accepting Nessie will not be a simple thing for any of them. Why make it even the slightest bit harder?”
Carlisle had explained the laws about immortal children to Jacob last night. “The immortal children were really that bad?” he asked.
“You can’t imagine the depth of the scars they’ve left in the collective vampire psyche.”
“Edward . . .” It was still odd to hear Jacob use Edward’s name without bitterness.
“I know, Jake. I know how hard it is to be away from her. We’ll play it by ear— see how they react to her. In any case, Nessie is going to have to be incognito off and on in the next few weeks. She’ll need to stay at the cottage until the right moment for us to introduce her. As long as you keep a safe distance from the main house .
. .”
“I can do that. Company in the morning, huh?”
“Yes. The closest of our friends. In this particular case, it’s probably better if we get things out in the open as soon as possible. You can stay here. Tanya knows about you. She’s even met Seth.”
“Right.”
“You should tell Sam what’s going on. There might be strangers in the woods soon.”
“Good point. Though I owe him some silence after last night.” “Listening to Alice is usually the right thing.”
Jacob’s teeth ground together, and I could see that he shared Sam’s feelings about what Alice and Jasper had done.
While they were talking, I wandered toward the back windows, trying to look distracted and anxious. Not a difficult thing to do. I leaned my head against the wall that curved away from the living room toward the dining room, right next to one of the computer desks. I ran my fingers against the keys while staring into the forest, trying to make it look like an absentminded thing. Did vampires ever do things absentmindedly? I didn’t think anyone was paying particular attention to me, but I didn’t turn to make sure. The monitor glowed to life. I stroked my fingers across the keys again. Then I drummed them very quietly on the wooden desktop, just to make it seem random. Another stroke across the keys.
I scanned the screen in my peripheral vision.
No J. Jenks, but there was a Jason Jenks. A lawyer. I brushed the keyboard, trying to keep a rhythm, like the preoccupied stroking of a cat you’d all but forgotten on your lap. Jason Jenks had a fancy website for his firm, but the address on the homepage was wrong. In Seattle, but in a different zip code. I noted the phone number and then stroked the keyboard in rhythm. This time I searched the address, but nothing at all came up, as if the address didn’t exist. I wanted to look at a map, but I decided I was pushing my luck. One more brush, to delete the history. . . .
I continued staring out the window and brushed the wood a few times. I heard light footsteps crossing the floor to me, and I turned with what I hoped was the same expression as before.
Renesmee reached for me, and I held my arms open. She launched herself into them, smelling strongly of werewolf, and nestled her head against my neck.
I didn’t know if I could stand this. As much as I feared for my life, for Edward’s, for the rest of my family’s, it was not the same as the gut-wrenching terror I felt
for my daughter. There had to be a way to save her, even if that was the only thing I could do.
Suddenly, I knew that this was all I wanted anymore. The rest I would bear if I had to, but not her life being forfeited. Not that.
She was the one thing I simply had to save. Would Alice have known how I would feel? Renesmee’s hand touched my cheek lightly.
She showed me my own face, Edward’s, Jacob’s, Rosalie’s, Esme’s, Carlisle’s, Alice’s, Jasper’s, flipping through all our family’s faces faster and faster. Seth and Leah. Charlie, Sue, and Billy. Over and over again. Worrying, like the rest of us were. She was only worrying, though. Jake had kept the worst from her as far as I could tell. The part about how we had no hope, how we all were going to die in a month’s time.
She settled on Alice’s face, longing and confused. Where was Alice?
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But she’s Alice. She’s doing the right thing, like always.”
The right thing for Alice, anyway. I hated thinking of her that way, but how else could the situation be understood?
Renesmee sighed, and the longing intensified. “I miss her, too.”
I felt my face working, trying to find the expression that went with the grief inside. My eyes felt strange and dry; they blinked against the uncomfortable feeling. I bit my lip. When I took my next breath, the air hitched in my throat, like I was choking on it.
Renesmee pulled back to look at me, and I saw my face mirrored in her thoughts and in her eyes. I looked like Esme had this morning.
So this was what it felt like to cry.
Renesmee’s eyes glistened wetly as she watched my face. She stroked my face, showing me nothing, just trying to soothe me.
I’d never thought to see the mother-daughter bond reversed between us, the way it had always been for Renée and me. But I hadn’t had a very clear view of the future.
A tear welled up on the edge of Renesmee’s eye. I wiped it away with a kiss. She touched her eye in amazement and then looked at the wetness on her fingertip.
“Don’t cry,” I told her. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be fine. I will find you a way through this.”
If there was nothing else I could do, I would still save my Renesmee. I was more positive than ever that this was what Alice would give me. She would know. She would have left me a way.
30. IRRESISTIBLE
There was so much to think about.
How was I going to find time alone to hunt down J. Jenks, and why did Alice want me to know about him?
If Alice’s clue had nothing to do with Renesmee, what could I do to save my daughter?
How were Edward and I going to explain things to Tanya’s family in the morning? What if they reacted like Irina? What if it turned into a fight?
I didn’t know how to fight. How was I going to learn in just a month? Was there any chance at all that I could be taught fast enough that I might be a danger to any one member of the Volturi? Or was I doomed to be totally useless? Just another easily dispatched newborn?
So many answers I needed, but I did not get the chance to ask my questions.
Wanting some normality for Renesmee, I’d insisted on taking her home to our cottage at bedtime. Jacob was more comfortable in his wolf form at the moment; the stress was easier dealt with when he felt ready for a fight. I wished that I could feel the same, could feel ready. He ran in the woods, on guard again.
After she was deeply under, I put Renesmee in her bed and then went to the front room to ask my questions of Edward. The ones I was able to ask, at any rate; one of the most difficult of problems was the idea of trying to hide anything from him, even with the advantage of my silent thoughts.
He stood with his back to me, staring into the fire. “Edward, I—”
He spun and was across the room in what seemed like no time at all, not even the smallest part of a second. I only had time to register the ferocious expression on his face before his lips were crushing against mine and his arms were locked around me like steel girders.
I didn’t think of my questions again for the rest of that night. It didn’t take long for me to grasp the reason for his mood, and even less time to feel exactly the same way.
I’d been planning on needing years just to somewhat organize the overwhelming passion I felt for him physically. And then centuries after that to enjoy it. If we had only a month left together… Well, I didn’t see how I could stand to have this
end. For the moment I couldn’t help but be selfish. All I wanted was to love him as much as possible in the limited time given to me.
It was hard to pull myself away from him when the sun came up, but we had our job to do, a job that might be more difficult than all the rest of our family’s searches put together. As soon as I let myself think of what was coming, I was all tension; it felt like my nerves were being stretched on a rack, thinner and thinner.
“I wish there was a way to get the information we need from Eleazar before we tell them about Nessie,” Edward muttered as we hurriedly dressed in the huge closet that was more reminder of Alice than I wanted at the moment. “Just in case.”
“But he wouldn’t understand the question to answer it,” I agreed. “Do you think they’ll let us explain?”
“I don’t know.”
I pulled Renesmee, still sleeping, from her bed and held her close so that her curls were pressed against my face; her sweet scent, so close, overpowered every other smell.
I couldn’t waste one second of time today. There were answers I needed, and wasn’t sure how much time Edward and I would have alone today. If all went well with Tanya’s family, hopefully we would have company for an extended period.
“Edward, will you teach me how to fight?” I asked him, tensed for his reaction, as he held the door for me.
It was what I expected. He froze, and then his eyes swept over me with a deep significance, like he was looking at me for the first or last time. His eyes lingered on our daughter sleeping in my arms.
“If it comes to a fight, there won’t be much any of us can do,” he hedged. I kept my voice even. “Would you leave me unable to defend myself?”
He swallowed convulsively, and the door shuddered, hinges protesting, as his hand tightened. Then he nodded. “When you put it that way… I suppose we should get to work as soon as we can.”
I nodded, too, and we started toward the big house. We didn’t hurry.
I wondered what I could do that would have any hope of making a difference. I was a tiny bit special, in my own way—if a having a supernaturally thick skull could really be considered special. Was there any use that I could put that toward?
“What would you say their biggest advantage is? Do they even have a weakness?” Edward didn’t have to ask to know I meant the Volturi.
“Alec and Jane are their greatest offense,” he said emotionlessly, like we were talking of a basketball team. “Their defensive players rarely see any real action.”
“Because Jane can burn you where you stand—mentally at least. What does Alec do? Didn’t you once say he was even more dangerous than Jane?”
“Yes. In a way, he is the antidote to Jane. She makes you feel the worst pain imaginable. Alec, on the other hand, makes you feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sometimes, when the Volturi are feeling kind, they have Alec anesthetize someone before he is executed. If he has surrendered or pleased them in some other way.”
“Anesthetic? But how is that more dangerous than Jane?”
“Because he cuts off your senses altogether. No pain, but also no sight or sound or smell. Total sensory deprivation. You are utterly alone in the blackness. You don’t even feel it when they burn you.”
I shivered. Was this the best we could hope for? To not see or feel death when it came?
“That would make him only equally as dangerous as Jane,” Edward went on in the same detached voice, “in that they both can incapacitate you, make you into a helpless target. The difference between them is like the difference between Aro and me. Aro hears the mind of only one person at a time. Jane can only hurt the one object of her focus. I can hear everyone at the same time.”
I felt cold as I saw where he was going. “And Alec can incapacitate us all at the same time?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said. “If he uses his gift against us, we will all stand blind and deaf until they get around to killing us—maybe they’ll simply burn us without bothering to tear us apart first. Oh, we could try to fight, but we’ll be more likely to hurt one another than we would be to hurt one of them.”
We walked in silence for a few seconds.
An idea was shaping itself in my head. Not very promising, but better than nothing.
“Do you think Alec is a very good fighter?” I asked. “Aside from what he can do, I mean. If he had to fight without his gift. I wonder if he’s ever even tried ”
Edward glanced at me sharply. “What are you thinking?”
I looked straight ahead. “Well, he probably can’t do that to me, can he? If what he does is like Aro and Jane and you. Maybe… if he’s never really had to defend himself… and I learned a few tricks—”
“He’s been with the Volturi for centuries,” Edward cut me off, his voice abruptly panicked. He was probably seeing the same image in his head that I was: the Cullens standing helpless, senseless pillars on the killing field—all but me. I’d be the only one who could fight. “Yes, you’re surely immune to his power, but you are still a newborn, Bella. I can’t make you that strong a fighter in a few weeks. I’m sure he’s had training.”
“Maybe, maybe not. It’s the one thing I can do that no one else can. Even if I can just distract him for a while—” Could I last long enough to give the others a chance?
“Please, Bella,” Edward said through his teeth. “Let’s not talk about this.” “Be reasonable.”
“I will try to teach you what I can, but please don’t make me think about you sacrificing yourself as a diversion—” He choked, and didn’t finish.
I nodded. I would keep my plans to myself, then. First Alec and then, if I was miraculously lucky enough to win, Jane. If I could only even things out—remove the Volturi’s overwhelming offensive advantage. Maybe then there was a chance.… My mind raced ahead. What if I was able to distract or even take them out? Honestly, why would either Jane or Alec ever have needed to learn battle skills? I couldn’t imagine petulant little Jane surrendering her advantage, even to learn.
If I was able to kill them, what a difference that would make.
“I have to learn everything. As much as you can possibly cram into my head in the next month,” I murmured.
He acted as if I hadn’t spoken.
Who next, then? I might as well have my plans in order so that, if I did live past attacking Alec, there would be no hesitation in my strike. I tried to think of another situation where my thick skull would give me an advantage. I didn’t know enough about what the others did. Obviously, fighters like the huge Felix were beyond me. I could only try to give Emmett his fair fight there. I didn’t know much about the rest of the Volturi guard, besides Demetri. . . .
My face was perfectly smooth as I considered Demetri. Without a doubt, he would be a fighter. There was no other way he could have survived so long, always at the spear point of any attack. And he must always lead, because he was their tracker—the best tracker in the world, no doubt. If there had been one better, the Volturi would have traded up. Aro didn’t surround himself with second best.
If Demetri didn’t exist, then we could run. Whoever was left of us, in any case. My daughter, warm in my arms… Someone could run with her. Jacob or Rosalie, whoever was left.
And… if Demetri didn’t exist, then Alice and Jasper could be safe forever. Is that what Alice had seen? That part of our family could continue? The two of them, at the very least.
Could I begrudge her that? “Demetri…,” I said.
“Demetri is mine,” Edward said in a hard, tight voice. I looked at him quickly and saw that his expression had turned violent.
“Why?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer at first. We were to the river when he finally murmured, “For Alice. It’s the only thanks I can give her now for the last fifty years.”
So his thoughts were in line with mine.
I heard Jacob’s heavy paws thudding against the frozen ground. In seconds, he was pacing beside me, his dark eyes focused on Renesmee.
I nodded to him once, then returned to my questions. There was so little time.
“Edward, why do you think Alice told us to ask Eleazar about the Volturi? Has he been in Italy recently or something? What could he know?”
“Eleazar knows everything when it comes to the Volturi. I forgot you didn’t know. He used to be one of them.”
I hissed involuntarily. Jacob growled beside me.
“What?” I demanded, in my head picturing the beautiful dark-haired man at our wedding wrapped in a long, ashy cloak.
Edward’s face was softer now—he smiled a little. “Eleazar is a very gentle person. He wasn’t entirely happy with the Volturi, but he respected the law and its need
to be upheld. He felt he was working toward the greater good. He doesn’t regret his time with them. But when he found Carmen, he found his place in this world. They are very similar people, both very compassionate for vampires.” He smiled again. “They met Tanya and her sisters, and they never looked back. They are well suited to this lifestyle. If they’d never found Tanya, I imagine they would have eventually discovered a way to live without human blood on their own.”
The pictures in my head were jarring. I couldn’t make them match up. A compassionate Volturi soldier?
Edward glanced at Jacob and answered a silent question. “No, he wasn’t one of their warriors, so to speak. He had a gift they found convenient.”
Jacob must have asked the obvious follow-up question.
“He has an instinctive feel for the gifts of others—the extra abilities that some vampires have,” Edward told him. “He could give Aro a general idea of what any given vampire was capable of just by being in proximity with him or her. This was helpful when the Volturi went into battle. He could warn them if someone in the opposing coven had a skill that might give them some trouble. That was rare; it takes quite a skill to even inconvenience the Volturi for a moment. More often, the warning would give Aro the chance to save someone who might be useful to him. Eleazar’s gift works even with humans, to an extent. He has to really concentrate with humans, though, because the latent ability is so nebulous. Aro would have him test the people who wanted to join, to see if they had any potential. Aro was sorry to see him go.”
“They let him go?” I asked. “Just like that?”
His smile was darker now, a little twisted. “The Volturi aren’t supposed to be the villains, the way they seem to you. They are the foundation of our peace and civilization. Each member of the guard chooses to serve them. It’s quite prestigious; they all are proud to be there, not forced to be there.”
I scowled at the ground.
“They’re only alleged to be heinous and evil by the criminals, Bella.” “We’re not criminals.”
Jacob huffed in agreement. “They don’t know that.”
“Do you really think we can make them stop and listen?”
Edward hesitated just the tiniest moment and then shrugged. “If we find enough friends to stand beside us. Maybe.”
If. I suddenly felt the urgency of what we had before us today. Edward and I both started to move faster, breaking into a run. Jacob caught up quickly.
“Tanya shouldn’t be too much longer,” Edward said. “We need to be ready.”
How to be ready, though? We arranged and rearranged, thought and rethought. Renesmee in full view? Or hidden at first? Jacob in the room? Or outside? He’d told his pack to stay close but invisible. Should he do the same?
In the end, Renesmee, Jacob—in his human form again—and I waited around the corner from the front door in the dining room, sitting at the big polished table.
Jacob let me hold Renesmee; he wanted space in case he had to phase quickly.
Though I was glad to have her in my arms, it made me feel useless. It reminded me that in a fight with mature vampires, I was no more than an easy target; I didn’t need my hands free.
I tried to remember Tanya, Kate, Carmen, and Eleazar from the wedding. Their faces were murky in my ill-lit memories. I only knew they were beautiful, two blondes and two brunettes. I couldn’t remember if there was any kindness in their eyes.
Edward leaned motionlessly against the back window wall, staring toward the front door. It didn’t look like he was seeing the room in front of him.
We listened to the cars zooming past out on the freeway, none of them slowing.
Renesmee nestled into my neck, her hand against my cheek but no images in my head. She didn’t have pictures for her feelings now.
“What if they don’t like me?” she whispered, and all our eyes flashed to her face. “Of course they’ll—,” Jacob started to say, but I silenced him with a look.
“They don’t understand you, Renesmee, because they’ve never met anyone like you,” I told her, not wanting to lie to her with promises that might not come true. “Getting them to understand is the problem.”
She sighed, and in my head flashed pictures of all of us in one quick burst. Vampire, human, werewolf. She fit nowhere.
“You’re special, that’s not a bad thing.”
She shook her head in disagreement. She thought of our strained faces and said, “This is my fault.”
“No,” Jacob, Edward, and I all said at exactly the same time, but before we could argue further, we heard the sound we’d been waiting for: the slowing of an engine on the freeway, the tires moving from pavement to soft dirt.
Edward darted around the corner to stand waiting by the door. Renesmee hid in my hair. Jacob and I stared at each other across the table, desperation on our faces.
The car moved quickly through the woods, faster than Charlie or Sue drove. We heard it pull into the meadow and stop by the front porch. Four doors opened and closed. They didn’t speak as they approached the door. Edward opened it before they could knock.
“Edward!” a female voice enthused. “Hello, Tanya. Kate, Eleazar, Carmen.” Three murmured hellos.
“Carlisle said he needed to talk to us right away,” the first voice said, Tanya. I could hear that they all were still outside. I imagined Edward in the doorway, blocking their entrance. “What’s the problem? Trouble with the werewolves?”
Jacob rolled his eyes.
“No,” Edward said. “Our truce with the werewolves is stronger than ever.” A woman chuckled.
“Aren’t you going to invite us in?” Tanya asked. And then she continued without waiting for an answer. “Where’s Carlisle?”
“Carlisle had to leave.” There was a short silence.
“What’s going on, Edward?” Tanya demanded.
“If you could give me the benefit of the doubt for just a few minutes,” he answered. “I have something difficult to explain, and I’ll need you to be open- minded until you understand.”
“Is Carlisle all right?” a male voice asked anxiously. Eleazar.
“None of us is all right, Eleazar,” Edward said, and then he patted something, maybe Eleazar’s shoulder. “But physically, Carlisle is fine.”
“Physically?” Tanya asked sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that my entire family is in very grave danger. But before I explain, I ask for your promise. Listen to everything I say before you react. I am begging you to hear me out.”
A longer silence greeted his request. Through the strained hush, Jacob and I stared wordlessly at each other. His russet lips paled.
“We’re listening,” Tanya finally said. “We will hear it all before we judge.”
“Thank you, Tanya,” Edward said fervently. “We wouldn’t involve you in this if we had any other choice.”
Edward moved. We heard four sets of footsteps walk through the doorway. Someone sniffed. “I knew those werewolves were involved,” Tanya muttered. “Yes, and they’re on our side. Again.”
The reminder silenced Tanya.
“Where’s your Bella?” one of the other female voices asked. “How is she?”
“She’ll join us shortly. She’s well, thank you. She’s taken to immortality with amazing finesse.”
“Tell us about the danger, Edward,” Tanya said quietly. “We’ll listen, and we’ll be on your side, where we belong.”
Edward took a deep breath. “I’d like you to witness for yourselves first. Listen—in the other room. What do you hear?”
It was quiet, and then there was movement. “Just listen first, please,” Edward said.
“A werewolf, I assume. I can hear his heart,” Tanya said. “What else?” Edward asked.
There was a pause.
“What is that thrumming?” Kate or Carmen asked. “Is that… some kind of a bird?”
“No, but remember what you’re hearing. Now, what do you smell? Besides the werewolf.”
“Is there a human here?” Eleazar whispered.
“No,” Tanya disagreed. “It’s not human… but… closer to human than the rest of the scents here. What is that, Edward? I don’t think I’ve ever smelled that fragrance before.”
“You most certainly have not, Tanya. Please, please remember that this is something entirely new to you. Throw away your preconceived notions.”
“I promised you I would listen, Edward.”
“All right, then. Bella? Bring out Renesmee, please.”
My legs felt strangely numb, but I knew that feeling was all in my head. I forced myself not to hold back, not to move sluggishly, as I got to my feet and walked the few short feet to the corner. The heat from Jacob’s body flamed close behind me as he shadowed my steps.
I took one step into the bigger room and then froze, unable to force myself farther forward. Renesmee took a deep breath and then peeped out from under my hair, her little shoulders tight, expecting a rebuff.
I thought I’d prepared myself for their reaction. For accusations, for shouting, for the motionlessness of deep stress.
Tanya skittered back four steps, her strawberry curls quivering, like a human confronted by a venomous snake. Kate jumped back all the way to the front door and braced herself against the wall there. A shocked hiss came from between her clenched teeth. Eleazar threw himself in front of Carmen in a protective crouch.
“Oh please,” I heard Jacob complain under his breath.
Edward put his arm around Renesmee and me. “You promised to listen,” he reminded them.
“Some things cannot be heard!” Tanya exclaimed. “How could you, Edward? Do you not know what this means?”
“We have to get out of here,” Kate said anxiously, her hand on the doorknob. “Edward . . .” Eleazar seemed beyond words.
“Wait,” Edward said, his voice harder now. “Remember what you hear, what you smell. Renesmee is not what you think she is.”
“There are no exceptions to this rule, Edward,” Tanya snapped back.
“Tanya,” Edward said sharply, “you can hear her heartbeat! Stop and think about what that means.”
“Her heartbeat?” Carmen whispered, peering around Eleazar’s shoulder.
“She’s not a full vampire child,” Edward answered, directing his attention toward Carmen’s less hostile expression. “She is half-human.”
The four vampires stared at him like he was speaking a language none of them knew.
“Hear me.” Edward’s voice shifted into a smooth velvet tone of persuasion. “Renesmee is one of a kind. I am her father. Not her creator—her biological father.”
Tanya’s head was shaking, just a tiny movement. She didn’t seem aware of it. “Edward, you can’t expect us to—,” Eleazar started to say.
“Tell me another explanation that fits, Eleazar. You can feel the warmth of her body in the air. Blood runs in her veins, Eleazar. You can smell it.”
“How?” Kate breathed.
“Bella is her biological mother,” Edward told her. “She conceived, carried, and gave birth to Renesmee while she was still human. It nearly killed her. I was hard-pressed to get enough venom into her heart to save her.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Eleazar said. His shoulders were still stiff, his expression cold.
“Physical relationships between vampires and humans are not common,” Edward answered, a bit of dark humor in his tone now. “Human survivors of such trysts are even less common. Wouldn’t you agree, cousins?”
Both Kate and Tanya scowled at him.
“Come now, Eleazar. Surely you can see the resemblance.”
It was Carmen who responded to Edward’s words. She stepped around Eleazar, ignoring his half-articulated warning, and walked carefully to stand right in front of me. She leaned down slightly, looking carefully into Renesmee’s face.
“You seem to have your mother’s eyes,” she said in a low, calm voice, “but your father’s face.” And then, as if she could not help herself, she smiled at Renesmee.
Renesmee’s answering smile was dazzling. She touched my face without looking away from Carmen. She imagined touching Carmen’s face, wondering if that was okay.
“Do you mind if Renesmee tells you about it herself?” I asked Carmen. I was still too stressed to speak above a whisper. “She has a gift for explaining things.”
Carmen was still smiling at Renesmee. “Do you speak, little one?”
“Yes,” Renesmee answered in her trilling high soprano. All of Tanya’s family flinched at the sound of her voice except for Carmen. “But I can show you more than I can tell you.”
She placed her little dimpled hand on Carmen’s cheek.
Carmen stiffened like an electric shock had run through her. Eleazar was at her side in an instant, his hands on her shoulders as if to yank her away.
“Wait,” Carmen said breathlessly, her unblinking eyes locked on Renesmee’s.
Renesmee “showed” Carmen her explanation for a long time. Edward’s face was intent as he watched with Carmen, and I wished so much that I could hear what he heard, too. Jacob shifted his weight impatiently behind me, and I knew he was wishing the same.
“What’s Nessie showing her?” he grumbled under his breath. “Everything,” Edward murmured.
Another minute passed, and Renesmee dropped her hand from Carmen’s face. She smiled winningly at the stunned vampire.
“She really is your daughter, isn’t she?” Carmen breathed, switching her wide topaz eyes to Edward’s face. “Such a vivid gift! It could only have come from a very gifted father.”
“Do you believe what she showed you?” Edward asked, his expression intense. “Without a doubt,” Carmen said simply.
Eleazar’s face was rigid with distress. “Carmen!”
Carmen took his hands into her own and squeezed them. “Impossible as it seems, Edward has told you nothing but truth. Let the child show you.”
Carmen nudged Eleazar closer to me and then nodded at Renesmee. “Show him,
mi querida.”
Renesmee grinned, clearly delighted with Carmen’s acceptance, and touched Eleazar lightly on the forehead.
“Ay caray!” he spit, and jerked away from her.
“What did she do to you?” Tanya demanded, coming closer warily. Kate crept forward, too.
“She’s just trying to show you her side of the story,” Carmen told him in a soothing voice.
Renesmee frowned impatiently. “Watch, please,” she commanded Eleazar. She stretched her hand out to him and then left a few inches between her fingers and his face, waiting.
Eleazar eyed her suspiciously and then glanced at Carmen for help. She nodded encouragingly. Eleazar took a deep breath and then leaned closer until his forehead touched her hand again.
He shuddered when it began but held still this time, his eyes closed in concentration.
“Ahh,” he sighed when his eyes reopened a few minutes later. “I see.”
Renesmee smiled at him. He hesitated, then smiled a slightly unwilling smile in response.
“Eleazar?” Tanya asked.
“It’s all true, Tanya. This is no immortal child. She’s half-human. Come. See for yourself.”
In silence, Tanya took her turn standing warily before me, and then Kate, both showing shock as that first image hit them with Renesmee’s touch. But then, just like Carmen and Eleazar, they seemed completely won over as soon as it was done.
I shot a glance at Edward’s smooth face, wondering if it could really be so easy. His golden eyes were clear, unshadowed. There was no deception in this, then.
“Thank you for listening,” he said quietly.
“But there is the grave danger you warned us of,” Tanya said. “Not directly from this child, I see, but surely from the Volturi, then. How did they find out about her? When are they coming?”
I was not surprised at her quick understanding. After all, what could possibly be a threat to a family as strong as mine? Only the Volturi.
“When Bella saw Irina that day in the mountains,” Edward explained, “she had Renesmee with her.”
Kate hissed, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Irina did this? To you? To Carlisle?
Irina?”
“No,” Tanya whispered. “Someone else . . .”
“Alice saw her go to them,” Edward said. I wondered if the others noticed the way he winced just slightly when he spoke Alice’s name.
“How could she do this thing?” Eleazar asked of no one.
“Imagine if you had seen Renesmee only from a distance. If you had not waited for our explanation.”
Tanya’s eyes tightened. “No matter what she thought… You are our family.”
“There’s nothing we can do about Irina’s choice now. It’s too late. Alice gave us a month.”
Both Tanya’s and Eleazar’s heads cocked to one side. Kate’s brow furrowed. “So long?” Eleazar asked.
“They are all coming. That must take some preparation.” Eleazar gasped. “The entire guard?”
“Not just the guard,” Edward said, his jaw straining tight. “Aro, Caius, Marcus. Even the wives.”
Shock glazed over all their eyes. “Impossible,” Eleazar said blankly.
“I would have said the same two days ago,” Edward said.
Eleazar scowled, and when he spoke it was nearly a growl. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would they put themselves and the wives in danger?”
“It doesn’t make sense from that angle. Alice said there was more to this than just punishment for what they think we’ve done. She thought you could help us.”
“More than punishment? But what else is there?” Eleazar started pacing, stalking toward the door and back again as if he were alone here, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the floor.
“Where are the others, Edward? Carlisle and Alice and the rest?” Tanya asked.
Edward’s hesitation was almost unnoticeable. He answered only part of her question. “Looking for friends who might help us.”
Tanya leaned toward him, holding her hands out in front of her. “Edward, no matter how many friends you gather, we can’t help you win. We can only die with you. You must know that. Of course, perhaps the four of us deserve that after what Irina has done now, after how we’ve failed you in the past—for her sake that time as well.”
Edward shook his head quickly. “We’re not asking you to fight and die with us, Tanya. You know Carlisle would never ask for that.”
“Then what, Edward?”
“We’re just looking for witnesses. If we can make them pause, just for a moment. If they would let us explain . . .” He touched Renesmee’s cheek; she grabbed his hand and held it pressed against her skin. “It’s difficult to doubt our story when you see it for yourself.”
Tanya nodded slowly. “Do you think her past will matter to them so much?”
“Only as it foreshadows her future. The point of the restriction was to protect us from exposure, from the excesses of children who could not be tamed.”
“I’m not dangerous at all,” Renesmee interjected. I listened to her high, clear voice with new ears, imagining how she sounded to the others. “I never hurt Grandpa or Sue or Billy. I love humans. And wolf-people like my Jacob.” She dropped Edward’s hand to reach back and pat Jacob’s arm.
Tanya and Kate exchanged a quick glance.
“If Irina had not come so soon,” Edward mused, “we could have avoided all of this. Renesmee grows at an unprecedented rate. By the time the month is past, she’ll have gained another half year of development.”
“Well, that is something we can certainly witness,” Carmen said in a decided tone. “We’ll be able to promise that we’ve seen her mature ourselves. How could the Volturi ignore such evidence?”
Eleazar mumbled, “How, indeed?” but he did not look up, and he continued pacing as if he were paying no attention at all.
“Yes, we can witness for you,” Tanya said. “Certainly that much. We will consider what more we might do.”
“Tanya,” Edward protested, hearing more in her thoughts than there was in her words, “we don’t expect you to fight with us.”
“If the Volturi won’t pause to listen to our witness, we cannot simply stand by,” Tanya insisted. “Of course, I should only speak for myself.”
Kate snorted. “Do you really doubt me so much, sister?” Tanya smiled widely at her. “It is a suicide mission, after all.”
Kate flashed a grin back and then shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m in.”
“I, too, will do what I can to protect the child,” Carmen agreed. Then, as if she couldn’t resist, she held her arms out toward Renesmee. “May I hold you, bebé linda?”
Renesmee reached eagerly toward Carmen, delighted with her new friend. Carmen hugged her close, murmuring to her in Spanish.
It was like it had been with Charlie, and before that with all the Cullens. Renesmee was irresistible. What was it about her that drew everyone to her, that made them willing even to pledge their lives in her defense?
For a moment I thought that maybe what we were attempting might be possible. Maybe Renesmee could do the impossible and win over our enemies as she had our friends.
And then I remembered that Alice had left us, and my hope vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
31. TALENTED
“What is the werewolves’ part in this?” Tanya asked then, eyeing Jacob.
Jacob spoke before Edward could answer. “If the Volturi won’t stop to listen about Nessie, I mean Renesmee,” he corrected himself, remembering that Tanya would not understand his stupid nickname, “we will stop them.”
“Very brave, child, but that would be impossible for more experienced fighters than you are.”
“You don’t know what we can do.”
Tanya shrugged. “It is your own life, certainly, to spend as you choose.”
Jacob’s eyes flickered to Renesmee—still in Carmen’s arms with Kate hovering over them—and it was easy to read the longing in them.
“She is special, that little one,” Tanya mused. “Hard to resist.”
“A very talented family,” Eleazar murmured as he paced. His tempo was increasing; he flashed from the door to Carmen and back again every second. “A mind reader for a father, a shield for a mother, and then whatever magic this extraordinary child has bewitched us with. I wonder if there is a name for what she does, or if it is the norm for a vampire hybrid. As if such a thing could ever be considered normal! A vampire hybrid, indeed!”
“Excuse me,” Edward said in a stunned voice. He reached out and caught Eleazar’s shoulder as he was about to turn again for the door. “What did you just call my wife?”
Eleazar looked at Edward curiously, his manic pacing forgotten for the moment. “A shield, I think. She’s blocking me now, so I can’t be sure.”
I stared at Eleazar, my brows furrowing in confusion. Shield? What did he mean about my blocking him? I was standing right here beside him, not defensive in any way.
“A shield?” Edward repeated, bewildered.
“Come now, Edward! If I can’t get a read on her, I doubt you can, either. Can you hear her thoughts right now?” Eleazar asked.
“No,” Edward murmured. “But I’ve never been able to do that. Even when she was human.”
“Never?” Eleazar blinked. “Interesting. That would indicate a rather powerful latent talent, if it was manifesting so clearly even before the transformation. I can’t feel a way through her shield to get a sense of it at all. Yet she must be raw still—she’s only a few months old.” The look he gave Edward now was almost exasperated. “And apparently completely unaware of what she’s doing. Totally unconscious. Ironic. Aro sent me all over the world searching for such anomalies, and you simply stumble across it by accident and don’t even realize what you have.” Eleazar shook his head in disbelief.
I frowned. “What are you talking about? How can I be a shield? What does that even mean?” All I could picture in my head was a ridiculous medieval suit of armor.
Eleazar leaned his head to one side as he examined me. “I suppose we were overly formal about it in the guard. In truth, categorizing talents is a subjective, haphazard business; every talent is unique, never exactly the same thing twice.
But you, Bella, are fairly easy to classify. Talents that are purely defensive, that protect some aspect of the bearer, are always called shields. Have you ever tested your abilities? Blocked anyone besides me and your mate?”
It took me few seconds, despite how quickly my new brain worked, to organize my answer.
“It only works with certain things,” I told him. “My head is sort of… private. But it doesn’t stop Jasper from being able to mess with my mood or Alice from seeing my future.”
“Purely a mental defense.” Eleazar nodded to himself. “Limited, but strong.”
“Aro couldn’t hear her,” Edward interjected. “Though she was human when they met.”
Eleazar’s eyes widened.
“Jane tried to hurt me, but she couldn’t,” I said. “Edward thinks Demetri can’t find me, and that Alec can’t bother me, either. Is that good?”
Eleazar, still gaping, nodded. “Quite.”
“A shield!” Edward said, deep satisfaction saturating his tone. “I never thought of it that way. The only one I’ve ever met before was Renata, and what she did was so different.”
Eleazar had recovered slightly. “Yes, no talent ever manifests in precisely the same way, because no one ever thinks in exactly the same way.”
“Who’s Renata? What does she do?” I asked. Renesmee was interested, too, leaning away from Carmen so that she could see around Kate.
“Renata is Aro’s personal bodyguard,” Eleazar told me. “A very practical kind of shield, and a very strong one.”
I vaguely remembered a small crowd of vampires hovering close to Aro in his macabre tower, some male, some female. I couldn’t remember the women’s faces in the uncomfortable, terrifying memory. One must have been Renata.
“I wonder…,” Eleazar mused. “You see, Renata is a powerful shield against a physical attack. If someone approaches her—or Aro, as she is always close beside him in a hostile situation—they find themselves… diverted. There’s a force around her that repels, though it’s almost unnoticeable. You simply find yourself going a different direction than you planned, with a confused memory as to why you wanted to go that other way in the first place. She can project her shield several meters out from herself. She also protects Caius and Marcus, too, when they have a need, but Aro is her priority.
“What she does isn’t actually physical, though. Like the vast majority of our gifts, it takes place inside the mind. If she tried to keep you back, I wonder who would win?” He shook his head. “I’ve never heard of Aro’s or Jane’s gifts being thwarted.”
“Momma, you’re special,” Renesmee told me without any surprise, like she was commenting on the color of my clothes.
I felt disoriented. Didn’t I already know my gift? I had my super-self-control that had allowed me to skip right over the horrifying newborn year. Vampires only had one extra ability at most, right?
Or had Edward been correct in the beginning? Before Carlisle had suggested that my self-control could be something beyond the natural, Edward had thought my restraint was just a product of good preparation—focus and attitude, he’d declared.
Which one had been right? Was there more I could do? A name and a category for what I was?
“Can you project?” Kate asked interestedly. “Project?” I asked.
“Push it out from yourself,” Kate explained. “Shield someone besides yourself.” “I don’t know. I’ve never tried. I didn’t know I should do that.”
“Oh, you might not be able to,” Kate said quickly. “Heavens knows I’ve been working on it for centuries and the best I can do is run a current over my skin.”
I stared at her, mystified.
“Kate’s got an offensive skill,” Edward said. “Sort of like Jane.” I flinched away from Kate automatically, and she laughed.
“I’m not sadistic about it,” she assured me. “It’s just something that comes in handy during a fight.”
Kate’s words were sinking in, beginning to make connections in my mind. Shield someone besides yourself, she’d said. As if there were some way for me to include another person in my strange, quirky silent head.
I remembered Edward cringing on the ancient stones of the Volturi castle turret. Though this was a human memory, it was sharper, more painful than most of the others—like it had been branded into the tissues of my brain.
What if I could stop that from happening ever again? What if I could protect him? Protect Renesmee? What if there was even the faintest glimmer of a possibility that I could shield them, too?
“You have to teach me what to do!” I insisted, unthinkingly grabbing Kate’s arm. “You have to show me how!”
Kate winced at my grip. “Maybe—if you stop trying to crush my radius.” “Oops! Sorry!”
“You’re shielding, all right,” Kate said. “That move should have about shocked your arm off. You didn’t feel anything just now?”
“That wasn’t really necessary, Kate. She didn’t mean any harm,” Edward muttered under his breath. Neither of us paid attention to him.
“No, I didn’t feel anything. Were you doing your electric current thing?”
“I was. Hmm. I’ve never met anyone who couldn’t feel it, immortal or otherwise.” “You said you project it? On your skin?”
Kate nodded. “It used to be just in my palms. Kind of like Aro.” “Or Renesmee,” Edward interjected.
“But after a lot of practice, I can radiate the current all over my body. It’s a good defense. Anyone who tries to touch me drops like a human that’s been Tasered. It only downs him for a second, but that’s long enough.”
I was only half-listening to Kate, my thoughts racing around the idea that I might be able to protect my little family if I could just learn fast enough. I wished fervently that I might be good at this projecting thing, too, like I was somehow mysteriously good at all the other aspects of being a vampire. My human life had not prepared me for things that came naturally, and I couldn’t make myself trust this aptitude to last.
It felt like I had never wanted anything so badly before this: to be able to protect what I loved.
Because I was so preoccupied, I didn’t notice the silent exchange going on between Edward and Eleazar until it became a spoken conversation.
“Can you think of even one exception, though?” Edward asked.
I looked over to make sense of his comment and realized that everyone else was already staring at the two men. They were leaning toward each other intently, Edward’s expression tight with suspicion, Eleazar’s unhappy and reluctant.
“I don’t want to think of them that way,” Eleazar said through his teeth. I was surprised at the sudden change in the atmosphere.
“If you’re right—,” Eleazar began again.
Edward cut him off. “The thought was yours, not mine.”
“If I’m right… I can’t even grasp what that would mean. It would change everything about the world we’ve created. It would change the meaning of my life. What I have been a part of.”
“Your intentions were always the best, Eleazar.”
“Would that even matter? What have I done? How many lives . . .”
Tanya put her hand on Eleazar’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. “What did we miss, my friend? I want to know so that I can argue with these thoughts. You’ve never done anything worth castigating yourself this way.”
“Oh, haven’t I?” Eleazar muttered. Then he shrugged out from under her hand and began his pacing again, faster even than before.
Tanya watched him for half a second and then focused on Edward. “Explain.”
Edward nodded, his tense eyes following Eleazar as he spoke. “He was trying to understand why so many of the Volturi would come to punish us. It’s not the way they do things. Certainly, we are the biggest mature coven they’ve dealt with, but in the past other covens have joined to protect themselves, and they never presented much of a challenge despite their numbers. We are more closely bonded, and that’s a factor, but not a huge one.
“He was remembering other times that covens have been punished, for one thing or the other, and a pattern occurred to him. It was a pattern that the rest of the guard would never have noticed, since Eleazar was the one passing the pertinent intelligence privately to Aro. A pattern that only repeated every other century or so.”
“What was this pattern?” Carmen asked, watching Eleazar as Edward was.
“Aro does not often personally attend a punishing expedition,” Edward said. “But in the past, when Aro wanted something in particular, it was never long before evidence turned up proving that this coven or that coven had committed some unpardonable crime. The ancients would decide to go along to watch the guard administer justice. And then, once the coven was all but destroyed, Aro would grant a pardon to one member whose thoughts, he would claim, were particularly repentant. Always, it would turn out that this vampire had the gift Aro had admired. Always, this person was given a place with the guard. The gifted vampire was won over quickly, always so grateful for the honor. There were no exceptions.”
“It must be a heady thing to be chosen,” Kate suggested. “Ha!” Eleazar snarled, still in motion.
“There is one among the guard,” Edward said, explaining Eleazar’s angry reaction. “Her name is Chelsea. She has influence over the emotional ties between people. She can both loosen and secure these ties. She could make someone feel bonded to the Volturi, to want to belong, to want to please them. . .
.”
Eleazar came to an abrupt halt. “We all understood why Chelsea was important. In a fight, if we could separate allegiances between allied covens, we could defeat them that much more easily. If we could distance the innocent members of a coven emotionally from the guilty, justice could be done without unnecessary brutality—the guilty could be punished without interference, and the innocent could be spared. Otherwise, it was impossible to keep the coven from fighting as a whole. So Chelsea would break the ties that bound them together. It seemed a great kindness to me, evidence of Aro’s mercy. I did suspect that Chelsea kept our own band more tightly knit, but that, too, was a good thing. It made us more effective. It helped us coexist more easily.”
This clarified old memories for me. It had not made sense to me before how the guard obeyed their masters so gladly, with almost lover-like devotion.
“How strong is her gift?” Tanya asked with an edge to her voice. Her gaze quickly touched on each member of her family.
Eleazar shrugged. “I was able to leave with Carmen.” And then he shook his head. “But anything weaker than the bond between partners is in danger. In a normal coven, at least. Those are weaker bonds than those in our family, though.
Abstaining from human blood makes us more civilized—lets us form true bonds of love. I doubt she could turn our allegiances, Tanya.”
Tanya nodded, seeming reassured, while Eleazar continued with his analysis.
“I could only think that the reason Aro had decided to come himself, to bring so many with him, is because his goal is not punishment but acquisition,” Eleazar said. “He needs to be there to control the situation. But he needs the entire guard for protection from such a large, gifted coven. On the other hand, that leaves the other ancients unprotected in Volterra. Too risky—someone might try to take advantage. So they all come together. How else could he be sure to preserve the gifts that he wants? He must want them very badly,” Eleazar mused.
Edward’s voice was low as a breath. “From what I saw of his thoughts last spring, Aro’s never wanted anything more than he wants Alice.”
I felt my mouth fall open, remembering the nightmarish pictures I had imagined long ago: Edward and Alice in black cloaks with bloodred eyes, their faces cold and remote as they stood close as shadows, Aro’s hands on theirs.… Had Alice seen this more recently? Had she seen Chelsea trying to strip away her love for us, to bind her to Aro and Caius and Marcus?
“Is that why Alice left?” I asked, my voice breaking on her name.
Edward put his hand against my cheek. “I think it must be. To keep Aro from gaining the thing he wants most of all. To keep her power out of his hands.”
I heard Tanya and Kate murmuring in disturbed voices and remembered that they hadn’t known about Alice.
“He wants you, too,” I whispered.
Edward shrugged, his face suddenly a little too composed. “Not nearly as much. I can’t really give him anything more than he already has. And of course that’s dependent on his finding a way to force me to do his will. He knows me, and he knows how unlikely that is.” He raised one eyebrow sardonically.
Eleazar frowned at Edward’s nonchalance. “He also knows your weaknesses,” Eleazar pointed out, and then he looked at me.
“It’s nothing we need to discuss now,” Edward said quickly.
Eleazar ignored the hint and continued. “He probably wants your mate, too, regardless. He must have been intrigued by a talent that could defy him in its human incarnation.”
Edward was uncomfortable with this topic. I didn’t like it, either. If Aro wanted me to do something—anything—all he had to do was threaten Edward and I would comply. And vice versa.
Was death the lesser concern? Was it really capture we should fear?
Edward changed the subject. “I think the Volturi were waiting for this—for some pretext. They couldn’t know what form their excuse would come in, but the plan was already in place for when it did come. That’s why Alice saw their decision before Irina triggered it. The decision was already made, just waiting for the pretense of a justification.”
“If the Volturi are abusing the trust all immortals have placed in them…,” Carmen murmured.
“Does it matter?” Eleazar asked. “Who would believe it? And even if others could be convinced that the Volturi are exploiting their power, how would it make any difference? No one can stand against them.”
“Though some of us are apparently insane enough to try,” Kate muttered.
Edward shook his head. “You’re only here to witness, Kate. Whatever Aro’s goal, I don’t think he’s ready to tarnish the Volturi’s reputation for it. If we can take away his argument against us, he’ll be forced to leave us in peace.”
“Of course,” Tanya murmured.
No one looked convinced. For a few long minutes, nobody said anything.
Then I heard the sound of tires turning off the highway pavement onto the Cullens’ dirt drive.
“Oh crap, Charlie,” I muttered. “Maybe the Denalis could hang out upstairs until—”
“No,” Edward said in a distant voice. His eyes were far away, staring blankly at the door. “It’s not your father.” His gaze focused on me. “Alice sent Peter and Charlotte, after all. Time to get ready for the next round.”
32. COMPANY
The Cullens’ enormous house was more crowded with guests than anyone would assume could possibly be comfortable. It only worked out because none of the visitors slept. Mealtimes were dicey, though. Our company cooperated as best they could. They gave Forks and La Push a wide berth, only hunting out of state; Edward was a gracious host, lending out his cars as needed without so much as a wince. The compromise made me very uncomfortable, though I tried to tell myself that they’d all be hunting somewhere in the world, regardless.
Jacob was even more upset. The werewolves existed to prevent the loss of human life, and here was rampant murder being condoned barely outside the packs’ borders. But under these circumstances, with Renesmee in acute danger, he kept his mouth shut and glared at the floor rather than the vampires.
I was amazed at the easy acceptance the visiting vampires had for Jacob; the problems Edward had anticipated had never materialized. Jacob seemed more or less invisible to them, not quite a person, but also not food, either. They treated him the way people who are not animal-lovers treat the pets of their friends.
Leah, Seth, Quil, and Embry were assigned to run with Sam for now, and Jacob would have happily joined them, except that he couldn’t stand to be away from Renesmee, and Renesmee was busy fascinating the strange collection of Carlisle’s friends.
We’d replayed the scene of Renesmee’s introduction to the Denali coven a half dozen times. First for Peter and Charlotte, whom Alice and Jasper had sent our way without giving them any explanation at all; like most people who knew Alice, they trusted her instructions despite the lack of information. Alice had told them nothing about which direction she and Jasper were heading. She’d made no promise to ever see them again in the future.
Neither Peter nor Charlotte had ever seen an immortal child. Though they knew the rule, their negative reaction was not as powerful as the Denali vampires’ had been at first. Curiosity had driven them to allow Renesmee’s “explanation.” And that was it. Now they were as committed to witnessing as Tanya’s family.
Carlisle had sent friends from Ireland and Egypt.
The Irish clan arrived first, and they were surprisingly easy to convince. Siobhan—a woman of immense presence whose huge body was both beautiful and mesmerizing as it moved in smooth undulations—was the leader, but she and her hard-faced mate, Liam, were long used to trusting the judgment of their newest coven member. Little Maggie, with her bouncy red curls, was not physically imposing like the other two, but she had a gift for knowing when she was being lied to, and her verdicts were never contested. Maggie declared that
Edward spoke the truth, and so Siobhan and Liam accepted our story absolutely before even touching Renesmee.
Amun and the other Egyptian vampires were another story. Even after two younger members of his coven, Benjamin and Tia, had been convinced by Renesmee’s explanation, Amun refused to touch her and ordered his coven to leave. Benjamin—an oddly cheerful vampire who looked barely older than a boy and seemed both utterly confident and utterly careless at the same time— persuaded Amun to stay with a few subtle threats about disbanding their alliance. Amun stayed, but continued to refuse to touch Renesmee, and would not allow his mate, Kebi, to touch her, either. It seemed an unlikely grouping—though the Egyptians all looked so alike, with their midnight hair and olive-toned pallor, that they easily could have passed for a biological family. Amun was the senior member and the outspoken leader. Kebi never strayed farther away from Amun than his shadow, and I never heard her speak a single word. Tia, Benjamin’s mate, was a quiet woman as well, though when she did speak there was great insight and gravity to everything she said. Still, it was Benjamin whom they all seemed to revolve around, as if he had some invisible magnetism the others depended upon for their balance. I saw Eleazar staring at the boy with wide eyes and assumed Benjamin had a talent that drew the others to him.
“It’s not that,” Edward told me when we were alone that night. “His gift is so singular that Amun is terrified of losing him. Much like we had planned to keep Renesmee from Aro’s knowledge”—he sighed—“Amun has been keeping Benjamin from Aro’s attention. Amun created Benjamin, knowing he would be special.”
“What can he do?”
“Something Eleazar’s never seen before. Something I’ve never heard of. Something that even your shield would do nothing against.” He grinned his crooked smile at me. “He can actually influence the elements—earth, wind, water, and fire. True physical manipulation, no illusion of the mind. Benjamin’s still experimenting with it, and Amun tries to mold him into a weapon. But you see how independent Benjamin is. He won’t be used.”
“You like him,” I surmised from the tone of his voice.
“He has a very clear sense of right and wrong. I like his attitude.”
Amun’s attitude was something else, and he and Kebi kept to themselves, though Benjamin and Tia were well on their way to being fast friends with both the Denali and the Irish covens. We hoped that Carlisle’s return would ease the remaining tension with Amun.
Emmett and Rose sent individuals—any nomad friends of Carlisle’s that they could track down.
Garrett came first—a tall, rangy vampire with eager ruby eyes and long sandy hair he kept tied back with a leather thong—and it was apparent immediately that he was an adventurer. I imagined that we could have presented him with any challenge and he would have accepted, just to test himself. He fell in quickly with the Denali sisters, asking endless questions about their unusual lifestyle. I wondered if vegetarianism was another challenge he would try, just to see if he could do it.
Mary and Randall also came—friends already, though they did not travel together. They listened to Renesmee’s story and stayed to witness like the others. Like the Denalis, they considered what they would do if the Volturi did not pause for explanations. All three of the nomads toyed with the idea of standing with us.
Of course, Jacob got more surly with each new addition. He kept his distance when he could, and when he couldn’t he grumbled to Renesmee that someone was going to have to provide an index if anyone expected him to keep all the new bloodsuckers’ names straight.*
Carlisle and Esme returned a week after they had gone, Emmett and Rosalie just a few days later, and all of us felt better when they were home. Carlisle brought one more friend home with him, though friend might have been the wrong term. Alistair was a misanthropic English vampire who counted Carlisle as his closest acquaintance, though he could hardly stand a visit more than once a century.
Alistair very much preferred to wander alone, and Carlisle had called in a lot of favors to get him here. He shunned all company, and it was clear he didn’t have any admirers in the gathered covens.
The brooding dark-haired vampire took Carlisle at his word about Renesmee’s origins, refusing, like Amun, to touch her. Edward told Carlisle, Esme, and me that Alistair was afraid to be here, but more afraid of not knowing the outcome. He was deeply suspicious of all authority, and therefore naturally suspicious of the Volturi. What was happening now seemed to confirm all his fears.
“Of course, now they’ll know I was here,” we heard him grumble to himself in the attic—his preferred spot to sulk. “No way to keep it from Aro at this point.
Centuries on the run, that’s what this will mean. Everyone Carlisle’s talked to in the last decade will be on their list. I can’t believe I got myself sucked into this mess. What a fine way to treat your friends.”
But if he was right about having to run from the Volturi, at least he had more hope of doing that than the rest of us. Alistair was a tracker, though not nearly as precise and efficient as Demetri. Alistair just felt an elusive pull toward whatever he was seeking. But that pull would be enough to tell him which direction to run—the opposite direction from Demetri.
And then another pair of unexpected friends arrived—unexpected, because neither Carlisle nor Rosalie had been able to contact the Amazons.
“Carlisle,” the taller of the two very tall feline women greeted him when they arrived. Both of them seemed as if they’d been stretched—long arms and legs, long fingers, long black braids, and long faces with long noses. They wore nothing but animal skins—hide vests and tight-fitting pants that laced on the sides with leather ties. It wasn’t just their eccentric clothes that made them seem wild but everything about them, from their restless crimson eyes to their sudden, darting movements. I’d never met any vampires less civilized.
But Alice had sent them, and that was interesting news, to put it mildly. Why was Alice in South America? Just because she’d seen that no one else would be able to get in touch with the Amazons?
“Zafrina and Senna! But where’s Kachiri?” Carlisle asked. “I’ve never seen you three apart.”
“Alice told us we needed to separate,” Zafrina answered in the rough, deep voice that matched her wild appearance. “It’s uncomfortable to be away from each other, but Alice assured us that you needed us here, while she very much needed Kachiri somewhere else. That’s all she would tell us, except that there was a great hurry… ?” Zafrina’s statement trailed off into a question, and—with the tremor of nerves that never went away no matter how often I did this—I brought Renesmee out to meet them.
Despite their fierce appearance, they listened very calmly to our story, and then allowed Renesmee to prove the point. They were every bit as taken with Renesmee as any of the other vampires, but I couldn’t help worrying as I watched their swift, jerky movements so close beside her. Senna was always near Zafrina, never speaking, but it wasn’t the same as Amun and Kebi. Kebi’s manner seemed obedient; Senna and Zafrina were more like two limbs of one organism—Zafrina just happened to be the mouthpiece.
The news about Alice was oddly comforting. Clearly, she was on some obscure mission of her own as she avoided whatever Aro had planned for her.
Edward was thrilled to have the Amazons with us, because Zafrina was enormously talented; her gift could make a very dangerous offensive weapon. Not that Edward was asking for Zafrina to side with us in the battle, but if the Volturi did not pause when they saw our witnesses, perhaps they would pause for a different kind of scene.
“It’s a very straightforward illusion,” Edward explained when it turned out that I couldn’t see anything, as usual. Zafrina was intrigued and amused by my immunity—something she’d never encountered before—and she hovered restlessly while Edward described what I was missing. Edward’s eyes unfocused slightly as he continued. “She can make most people see whatever she wants them to see—see that, and nothing else. For example, right now I would appear to
be alone in the middle of a rain forest. It’s so clear I might possibly believe it, except for the fact that I can still feel you in my arms.”
Zafrina’s lips twitched into her hard version of a smile. A second later, Edward’s eyes focused again, and he grinned back.
“Impressive,” he said.
Renesmee was fascinated with the conversation, and she reached out fearlessly toward Zafrina.
“Can I see?” she asked.
“What would you like to see?” Zafrina asked. “What you showed Daddy.”
Zafrina nodded, and I watched anxiously as Renesmee’s eyes stared blankly into space. A second later, Renesmee’s dazzling smile lit up her face.
“More,” she commanded.
After that, it was hard to keep Renesmee away from Zafrina and her pretty pictures. I worried, because I was quite sure that Zafrina was able to create images that were not pretty at all. But through Renesmee’s thoughts I could see Zafrina’s visions for myself—they were as clear as any of Renesmee’s own memories, like they were real—and thus judge for myself whether they were appropriate or not.
Though I didn’t give her up easily, I had to admit it was a good thing Zafrina was keeping Renesmee entertained. I needed my hands. I had so much to learn, both physically and mentally, and the time was so short.
My first attempt at learning to fight did not go well.
Edward had me pinned in about two seconds. But instead of letting me wrestle my way free—which I absolutely could have—he’d leaped up and away from me. I knew immediately that something was wrong; he was still as stone, staring across the meadow we were practicing in.
“I’m sorry, Bella,” he said.
“No, I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s go again.” “I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? We just started.”
He didn’t answer.
“Look, I know I’m no good at this, but I can’t get better if you don’t help me.”
He said nothing. Playfully, I sprang at him. He made no defense at all, and we both fell to the ground. He was motionless as I pressed my lips to his jugular.
“I win,” I announced.
His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
“Edward? What’s wrong? Why won’t you teach me?” A full minute passed before he spoke again.
“I just can’t… bear it. Emmett and Rosalie know as much as I do. Tanya and Eleazar probably know more. Ask someone else.”
“That’s not fair! You’re good at this. You helped Jasper before—you fought with him and all the others, too. Why not me? What did I do wrong?”
He sighed, exasperated. His eyes were dark, barely any gold to lighten the black.
“Looking at you that way, analyzing you as a target. Seeing all the ways I can kill you . . .” He flinched. “It just makes it too real for me. We don’t have so much time that it will really make a difference who your teacher is. Anyone can teach you the fundamentals.”
I scowled.
He touched my pouting lower lip and smiled. “Besides, it’s unnecessary. The Volturi will stop. They will be made to understand.”
“But if they don’t! I need to learn this.” “Find another teacher.”
That was not our last conversation on the subject, but I never swayed him an inch from his decision.
Emmett was more than willing to help, though his teaching felt to me a lot like revenge for all the lost arm-wrestling matches. If I could still bruise, I would have been purple from head to toe. Rose, Tanya, and Eleazar all were patient and supportive. Their lessons reminded me of Jasper’s fighting instructions to the others last June, though those memories were fuzzy and indistinct. Some of the visitors found my education entertaining, and some even offered assistance. The nomad Garrett took a few turns—he was a surprisingly good teacher; he
interacted so easily with others in general that I wondered how he’d never found a coven. I even fought once with Zafrina while Renesmee watched from Jacob’s arms. I learned several tricks, but I never asked for her help again. In truth, though I liked Zafrina very much and I knew she wouldn’t really hurt me, the wild woman scared me to death.
I learned many things from my teachers, but I had the sense that my knowledge was still impossibly basic. I had no idea how many seconds I would last against Alec and Jane. I only prayed that it would be long enough to help.
Every minute of the day that I wasn’t with Renesmee or learning to fight, I was in the backyard working with Kate, trying to push my internal shield outside of my own brain to protect someone else. Edward encouraged me in this training. I knew he hoped I would find a way of contributing that satisfied me while also keeping me out of the line of fire.
It was just so hard. There was nothing to get a hold of, nothing solid to work with. I had only my raging desire to be of use, to be able to keep Edward, Renesmee, and as much of my family as possible safe with me. Over and over I tried to force the nebulous shield outside of myself, with only faint, sporadic success. It felt like I was wrestling to stretch an invisible rubber band—a band that would change from concrete tangibility into insubstantial smoke at any random moment.
Only Edward was willing to be our guinea pig—to receive shock after shock from Kate while I grappled incompetently with the insides of my head. We worked for hours at a time, and I felt like I should be covered in sweat from the exertion, but of course my perfect body didn’t betray me that way. My weariness was all mental.
It killed me that it was Edward who had to suffer, my arms wrapped uselessly around him while he winced over and over from Kate’s “low” setting. I tried as hard as I could to push my shield around us both; every now and then I would get it, and then it would slip away again.
I hated this practice, and I wished that Zafrina would help instead of Kate. Then all Edward would have to do was look at Zafrina’s illusions until I could stop him from seeing them. But Kate insisted that I needed better motivation—by which she meant my hatred of watching Edward’s pain. I was beginning to doubt her assertion from the first day we’d met—that she wasn’t sadistic about the use of her gift. She seemed to be enjoying herself to me.
“Hey,” Edward said cheerfully, trying to hide any evidence of distress in his voice. Anything to keep me from fighting practice. “That one barely stung. Good job, Bella.”
I took a deep breath, trying to grasp exactly what I’d done right. I tested the elastic band, struggling to force it to remain solid as I stretched it away from me.
“Again, Kate,” I grunted through my clenched teeth. Kate pressed her palm to Edward’s shoulder.
He sighed in relief. “Nothing that time.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That wasn’t low, either.” “Good,” I huffed.
“Get ready,” she told me, and reached out to Edward again.
This time he shuddered, and a low breath hissed between his teeth.
“Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” I chanted, biting my lip. Why couldn’t I get this right?
“You’re doing an amazing job, Bella,” Edward said, pulling me tight against him. “You’ve really only been working at this for a few days and you’re already projecting sporadically. Kate, tell her how well she’s doing.”
Kate pursed her lips. “I don’t know. She’s obviously got tremendous ability, and we’re only beginning to touch it. She can do better, I’m sure. She’s just lacking incentive.”
I stared at her in disbelief, my lips automatically curling back from my teeth. How could she think I lacked motivation with her shocking Edward right here in front of me?
I heard murmurs from the audience that had grown steadily as I practiced—only Eleazar, Carmen, and Tanya at first, but then Garrett had wandered over, then Benjamin and Tia, Siobhan and Maggie, and now even Alistair was peering down from a window on the third story. The spectators agreed with Edward; they thought I was already doing well.
“Kate…,” Edward said in a warning voice as some new course of action occurred to her, but she was already in motion. She darted along the curve of the river to where Zafrina, Senna, and Renesmee were walking slowly, Renesmee’s hand in Zafrina’s as they traded pictures back and forth. Jacob shadowed them from a few feet behind.
“Nessie,” Kate said—the newcomers had quickly picked up the irritating nickname, “would you like to come help your mother?”
“No,” I half-snarled.
Edward hugged me reassuringly. I shook him off just as Renesmee flitted across the yard to me, with Kate, Zafrina, and Senna right behind her.
“Absolutely not, Kate,” I hissed.
Renesmee reached for me, and I opened my arms automatically. She curled into me, pressing her head into the hollow beneath my shoulder.
“But Momma, I want to help,” she said in a determined voice. Her hand rested against my neck, reinforcing her desire with images of the two of us together, a team.
“No,” I said, quickly backing away. Kate had taken a deliberate step in my direction, her hand stretched toward us.
“Stay away from us, Kate,” I warned her.
“No.” She began stalking forward. She smiled like a hunter cornering her prey.
I shifted Renesmee so that she was clinging to my back, still backing away at a pace that matched Kate’s. Now my hands were free, and if Kate wanted to keep her hands attached to her wrists, she’d better keep her distance.
Kate probably didn’t understand, never having known for herself the passion of a mother for her child. She must not have realized just how far past too far she’d already gone. I was so furious that my vision took on a strange reddish tint, and my tongue tasted like burning metal. The strength I usually worked to keep restrained flowed through my muscles, and I knew I could crush her into diamond-hard rubble if she pushed me to it.
The rage brought every aspect of my being into sharper focus. I could even feel the elasticity of my shield more exactly now—feel that it was not a band so much as a layer, a thin film that covered me from head to toe. With the anger rippling through my body, I had a better sense of it, a tighter hold on it. I stretched it around myself, out from myself, swaddling Renesmee completely inside it, just in case Kate got past my guard.
Kate took another calculated step forward, and a vicious snarl ripped up my throat and through my clenched teeth.
“Be careful, Kate,” Edward cautioned.
Kate took another step, and then made a mistake even someone as inexpert as I could recognize. Just a short leap away from me, she looked away, turning her attention from me to Edward.
Renesmee was secure on my back; I coiled to spring.
“Can you hear anything from Nessie?” Kate asked him, her voice calm and easy.
Edward darted into the space between us, blocking my line to Kate.
“No, nothing at all,” he answered. “Now give Bella some space to calm down, Kate. You shouldn’t goad her like that. I know she doesn’t seem her age, but she’s only a few months old.”
“We don’t have time to do this gently, Edward. We’re going to have to push her. We only have a few weeks, and she’s got the potential to—”
“Back off for a minute, Kate.”
Kate frowned but took Edward’s warning more seriously than she’d taken mine.
Renesmee’s hand was on my neck; she was remembering Kate’s attack, showing me that no harm was meant, that Daddy was in on it.…
This did not pacify me. The spectrum of light I saw still seemed tainted with crimson. But I was in better control of myself, and I could see the wisdom of Kate’s words. The anger helped me. I would learn faster under pressure.
That didn’t mean I liked it.
“Kate,” I growled. I rested my hand on the small of Edward’s back. I could still feel my shield like a strong, flexible sheet around Renesmee and me. I pushed it farther, forcing it around Edward. There was no sign of a flaw in the stretchy fabric, no threat of a tear. I panted with the effort, and my words came out sounding breathless rather than furious. “Again,” I said to Kate. “Edward only.”
She rolled her eyes but flitted forward and pressed her palm to Edward’s shoulder.
“Nothing,” Edward said. I heard the smile in his voice. “And now?” Kate asked.
“Still nothing.”
“And now?” This time, there was the sound of strain in her voice. “Nothing at all.”
Kate grunted and stepped away.
“Can you see this?” Zafrina asked in her deep, wild voice, staring intently at the three of us. Her English was strangely accented, her words pulling up in unexpected places.
“I don’t see anything I shouldn’t,” Edward said. “And you, Renesmee?” Zafrina asked.
Renesmee smiled at Zafrina and shook her head.
My fury had almost entirely ebbed, and I clenched my teeth together, panting faster as I pushed out against the elastic shield; it felt like it was getting heavier the longer I held it. It pulled back, dragging inward.
“No one panic,” Zafrina warned the little group watching me. “I want to see how far she can extend.”
There was a shocked gasp from everyone there—Eleazar, Carmen, Tanya, Garrett, Benjamin, Tia, Siobhan, Maggie—everyone but Senna, who seemed prepared for whatever Zafrina was doing. The others’ eyes were blank, their expressions anxious.
“Raise your hand when you get your sight back,” Zafrina instructed. “Now, Bella. See how many you can shield.”
My breath came out in a huff. Kate was the closest person to me besides Edward and Renesmee, but even she was about ten feet away. I locked my jaw and shoved, trying to heave the resisting, resilient safeguard farther from myself. Inch by inch I drove it toward Kate, fighting the reaction that fought back with every fraction that I gained. I only watched Kate’s anxious expression while I worked, and I groaned quietly with relief when her eyes blinked and focused. She raised her hand.
“Fascinating!” Edward murmured under his breath. “It’s like one-way glass. I can read everything they’re thinking, but they can’t reach me behind it. And I can hear Renesmee, though I couldn’t when I was on the outside. I’ll bet Kate could shock me now, because she’s underneath the umbrella. I still can’t hear you… hmmm. How does that work? I wonder if . . .”
He continued to mumble to himself, but I couldn’t listen to the words. I ground my teeth together, struggling to force the shield out to Garrett, who was closest to Kate. His hand came up.
“Very good,” Zafrina complimented me. “Now—”
But she’d spoken too soon; with a sharp gasp, I felt my shield recoil like a rubber band stretched too far, snapping back into its original shape. Renesmee, experiencing for the first time the blindness Zafrina had conjured for the others, trembled against my back. Wearily, I fought back against the elastic pull, forcing the shield to include her again.
“Can I have a minute?” I panted. Since I’d become a vampire, I hadn’t felt the need to rest even once before this moment. It was unnerving to feel so drained and yet so strong at the same time.
“Of course,” Zafrina said, and the spectators relaxed as she let them see again.
“Kate,” Garrett called as the others murmured and drifted slightly away, disturbed by the moment of blindness; vampires were not used to feeling vulnerable. The tall, sandy-haired Garrett was the only non-gifted immortal who seemed drawn to my practice sessions. I wondered what the lure was for the adventurer.
“I wouldn’t, Garrett,” Edward cautioned.
Garrett continued toward Kate despite the warning, his lips pursed in speculation. “They say you can put a vampire flat on his back.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Then, with a sly smile, she wiggled her fingers playfully at him. “Curious?”
Garrett shrugged. “That’s something I’ve never seen. Seems like it might be a bit of an exaggeration ”
“Maybe,” Kate said, her face suddenly serious. “Maybe it only works on the weak or the young. I’m not sure. You look strong, though. Perhaps you could withstand my gift.” She stretched her hand out to him, palm up—a clear invitation. Her lips twitched, and I was pretty sure her grave expression was an attempt to hustle him.
Garrett grinned at the challenge. Very confidently, he touched her palm with his index finger.
And then, with a loud gasp, his knees buckled and he keeled over backward. His head hit a piece of granite with a sharp cracking noise. It was shocking to watch. My instincts recoiled against seeing an immortal incapacitated that way; it was profoundly wrong.
“I told you so,” Edward muttered.
Garrett’s eyelids trembled for a few seconds, and then his eyes opened wide. He stared up at the smirking Kate, and a wondering smile lit his face.
“Wow,” he said.
“Did you enjoy that?” she asked skeptically.
“I’m not crazy,” he laughed, shaking his head as he got slowly to his knees, “but that was sure something!”
“That’s what I hear.” Edward rolled his eyes.
And then there was a low commotion from the front yard. I heard Carlisle speaking over a babble of surprised voices.
“Did Alice send you?” he asked someone, his voice unsure, slightly upset. Another unexpected guest?
Edward darted into the house and most of the others imitated him. I followed more slowly, Renesmee still perched on my back. I would give Carlisle a moment. Let him warm up the new guest, prepare him or her or them for the idea of what was coming.
I pulled Renesmee into my arms as I walked cautiously around the house to enter through the kitchen door, listening to what I couldn’t see.
“No one sent us,” a deep whispery voice answered Carlisle’s question. I was immediately reminded of the ancient voices of Aro and Caius, and I froze just inside the kitchen.
I knew the front room was crowded—almost everyone had gone in to see the newest visitors—but there was barely any noise. Shallow breathing, that was all.
Carlisle’s voice was wary as he responded. “Then what brings you here now?”
“Word travels,” a different voice answered, just as feathery as the first. “We heard hints that Volturi were moving against you. There were whispers that you would not stand alone. Obviously, the whispers were true. This is an impressive gathering.”
“We are not challenging the Volturi,” Carlisle answered in a strained tone. “There has been a misunderstanding, that is all. A very serious misunderstanding, to be sure, but one we’re hoping to clear up. What you see are witnesses. We just need the Volturi to listen. We didn’t—”
“We don’t care what they say you did,” the first voice interrupted. “And we don’t care if you broke the law.”
“No matter how egregiously,” the second inserted.
“We’ve been waiting a millennium and a half for the Italian scum to be challenged,” said the first. “If there is any chance they will fall, we will be here to see it.”
“Or even to help defeat them,” the second added. They spoke in a smooth tandem, their voices so similar that less sensitive ears would assume there was only one speaker. “If we think you have a chance of success.”
“Bella?” Edward called to me in a hard voice. “Bring Renesmee here, please. Maybe we should test our Romanian visitors’ claims.”
It helped to know that probably half of the vampires in the other room would come to Renesmee’s defense if these Romanians were upset by her. I didn’t like the sound of their voices, or the dark menace in their words. As I walked into the room, I could see that I was not alone in that assessment. Most of the motionless vampires glared with hostile eyes, and a few—Carmen, Tanya, Zafrina, and Senna—repositioned themselves subtly into defensive poses between the newcomers and Renesmee.
The vampires at the door were both slight and short, one dark-haired and the other with hair so ashy blond that it looked pale gray. They had the same powdery look to their skin as the Volturi, though I thought it was not so pronounced. I couldn’t be sure about that, as I had never seen the Volturi except with human eyes; I could not make a perfect comparison. Their sharp, narrow eyes were dark burgundy, with no milky film. They wore very simple black clothes that could pass as modern but hinted at older designs.
The dark one grinned when I came into view. “Well, well, Carlisle. You have been naughty, haven’t you?”
“She’s not what you think, Stefan.”
“And we don’t care either way,” the blonde responded. “As we said before.”
“Then you’re welcome to observe, Vladimir, but it is definitely not our plan to challenge the Volturi, as we said before.”
“Then we’ll just cross our fingers,” Stefan began. “And hope we get lucky,” finished Vladimir.
In the end, we had pulled together seventeen witnesses—the Irish, Siobhan, Liam, and Maggie; the Egyptians, Amun, Kebi, Benjamin, and Tia; the Amazons, Zafrina and Senna; the Romanians, Vladimir and Stefan; and the nomads, Charlotte and Peter, Garrett, Alistair, Mary, and Randall—to supplement our family of eleven. Tanya, Kate, Eleazar, and Carmen insisted on being counted as part of our family.
Aside from the Volturi, it was probably the largest friendly gathering of mature vampires in immortal history.
We all were beginning to be a little bit hopeful. Even I couldn’t help it. Renesmee had won over so many in such a brief time. The Volturi only had to listen for just the tiniest second. . . .
The last two surviving Romanians—focused only on their bitter resentment of the ones who had overthrown their empire fifteen hundred years earlier—took everything in stride. They would not touch Renesmee, but they showed no aversion to her. They seemed mysteriously delighted by our alliance with the werewolves. They watched me practice my shield with Zafrina and Kate, watched Edward answer unspoken questions, watched Benjamin pull geysers of water from the river or sharp gusts of wind from the still air with just his mind, and their eyes glowed with their fierce hope that the Volturi had finally met their match.
We did not hope for the same things, but we all hoped.
33. FORGERY
“Charlie, we’ve still got that strictly need-to-know company situation going. I know it’s been more than a week since you saw Renesmee, but a visit is just not a good idea right now. How about I bring Renesmee over to see you?”
Charlie was quiet for so long that I wondered if he heard the strain beneath my façade.
But then he muttered, “Need to know, ugh,” and I realized it was just his wariness of the supernatural that made him slow to respond.
“Okay, kid,” Charlie said. “Can you bring her over this morning? Sue’s bringing me lunch. She’s just as horrified by my cooking as you were when you first showed up.”
Charlie laughed and then sighed for the old days.
“This morning will be perfect.” The sooner the better. I’d already put this off too long.
“Is Jake coming with you guys?”
Though Charlie didn’t know anything about werewolf imprinting, no one could be oblivious to the attachment between Jacob and Renesmee.
“Probably.” There was no way Jacob would voluntarily miss an afternoon with Renesmee sans bloodsuckers.
“Maybe I should invite Billy, too,” Charlie mused. “But… hmm. Maybe another time.”
I was only half paying attention to Charlie—enough to notice the strange reluctance in his voice when he spoke of Billy, but not enough to worry what that was about. Charlie and Billy were grown-ups; if there was something going on between them, they could figure it out for themselves. I had too many more important things to obsess over.
“See you in a few,” I told him, and hung up.
This trip was about more than protecting my father from the twenty-seven oddly matched vampires—who all had sworn not to kill anyone in a three-hundred-mile radius, but still… Obviously, no human being should get anywhere near this group. This was the excuse I’d given Edward: I was taking Renesmee to Charlie so that he wouldn’t decide to come here. It was a good reason for leaving the house, but not my real reason at all.
“Why can’t we take your Ferrari?” Jacob complained when he met me in the garage. I was already in Edward’s Volvo with Renesmee.
Edward had gotten around to revealing my after car; as he’d suspected, I had not been capable of showing the appropriate enthusiasm. Sure, it was pretty and fast, but I liked to run.
“Too conspicuous,” I answered. “We could go on foot, but that would freak Charlie out.”
Jacob grumbled but got into the front seat. Renesmee climbed from my lap to his. “How are you?” I asked him as I pulled out of the garage.
“How do you think?” Jacob asked bitingly. “I’m sick of all these reeking bloodsuckers.” He saw my expression and spoke before I could answer. “Yeah, I know, I know. They’re the good guys, they’re here to help, they’re going to save us all. Etcetera, etcetera. Say what you want, I still think Dracula One and Dracula Two are creep-tacular.”
I had to smile. The Romanians weren’t my favorite guests, either. “I don’t disagree with you there.”
Renesmee shook her head but said nothing; unlike the rest of us, she found the Romanians strangely fascinating. She’d made the effort to speak to them aloud since they would not let her touch them. Her question was about their unusual skin and, though I was afraid they might be offended, I was kind of glad she’d asked. I was curious, too.
They hadn’t seemed upset by her interest. Maybe a little rueful.
“We sat still for a very long time, child,” Vladimir had answered, with Stefan nodding along but not continuing Vladimir’s sentences as he often did. “Contemplating our own divinity. It was a sign of our power that everything came to us. Prey, diplomats, those seeking our favor. We sat on our thrones and thought ourselves gods. We didn’t notice for a long time that we were changing— almost petrifying. I suppose the Volturi did us one favor when they burned our castles. Stefan and I, at least, did not continue to petrify. Now the Volturi’s eyes are filmed with dusty scum, but ours are bright. I imagine that will give us an advantage when we gouge theirs from their sockets.”
I tried to keep Renesmee away from them after that.
“How long do we get to hang out with Charlie?” Jacob asked, interrupting my thoughts. He was visibly relaxing as we pulled away from the house and all its new inmates. It made me happy that I didn’t really count as a vampire to him. I was still just Bella.
“For quite a while, actually.”
The tone of my voice caught his attention.
“Is something going on here besides visiting your dad?”
“Jake, you know how you’re pretty good at controlling your thoughts around Edward?”
He raised one thick black brow. “Yeah?”
I just nodded, cutting my eyes to Renesmee. She was looking out the window, and I couldn’t tell how interested she was in our conversation, but I decided not to risk going any further.
Jacob waited for me to add something else, and then his lower lip pushed out while he thought about what little I’d said.
As we drove in silence, I squinted through the annoying contacts into the cold rain; it wasn’t quite cold enough for snow. My eyes were not as ghoulish as they had been in the beginning—definitely closer to a dull reddish orange than to bright crimson. Soon they’d be amber enough for me to quit the contacts. I hoped the change wouldn’t upset Charlie too much.
Jacob was still chewing over our truncated conversation when we got to Charlie’s. We didn’t talk as we walked at a quick human pace through the falling rain. My dad was waiting for us; he had the door open before I could knock.
“Hey, guys! It seems like it’s been years! Look at you, Nessie! Come to Grampa! I swear you’ve grown half a foot. And you look skinny, Ness.” He glared at me. “Aren’t they feeding you up there?”
“It’s just the growth spurt,” I muttered. “Hey, Sue,” I called over his shoulder. The smell of chicken, tomato, garlic, and cheese issued from the kitchen; it probably smelled good to everyone else. I could also smell fresh pine and packing dust.
Renesmee flashed her dimples. She never spoke in front of Charlie. “Well, come on in out of the cold, kids. Where’s my son-in-law?”
“Entertaining friends,” Jacob said, and then snorted. “You’re so lucky you’re out of the loop, Charlie. That’s all I’m going to say.”
I punched Jacob lightly in the kidney while Charlie cringed.
“Ow,” Jacob complained under his breath; well, I’d thought I’d punched lightly.
“Actually, Charlie, I have some errands to run.” Jacob shot a glance at me but said nothing.
“Behind on your Christmas shopping, Bells? You only have a few days, you know.”
“Yeah, Christmas shopping,” I said lamely. That explained the packing dust. Charlie must have put the old decorations up.
“Don’t worry, Nessie,” he whispered in her ear. “I got you covered if your mom drops the ball.”
I rolled my eyes at him, but in truth, I hadn’t thought about the holidays at all. “Lunch’s on the table,” Sue called from the kitchen. “C’mon, guys.”
“See you later, Dad,” I said, and exchanged a quick look with Jacob. Even if he couldn’t help but think about this near Edward, at least there wasn’t much for him to share. He had no idea what I was up to.
Of course, I thought to myself as I got into the car, it wasn’t like I had much idea, either.
The roads were slick and dark, but driving didn’t intimidate me anymore. My reflexes were well up to the job, and I barely paid attention to the road. The problem was keeping my speed from attracting attention when I had company. I wanted to be done with today’s mission, to have the mystery sorted out so that I could get back to the vital task of learning. Learning to protect some, learning to kill others.
I was getting better and better with my shield. Kate didn’t feel the need to motivate me anymore—it wasn’t hard to find reasons to feel angry, now that I knew that was the key—and so I mostly worked with Zafrina. She was pleased with my extension; I was able to cover almost a ten-foot area for more than a minute, though it exhausted me. This morning she’d been trying to find out if I could push the shield away from my mind altogether. I didn’t see what the use of that would be, but Zafrina thought it would help strengthen me, like exercising muscles in the stomach and back rather than just the arms. Eventually, you could lift more weight when all the muscles were stronger.
I wasn’t very good at it. I had only gotten one glimpse of the jungle river she was trying to show me.
But there were different ways to prepare for what was coming, and with only two weeks left, I worried that I might be neglecting the most important. Today I would rectify that oversight.
I’d memorized the appropriate maps, and I had no problem finding my way to the address that didn’t exist online, the one for J. Jenks. My next step would be Jason Jenks at the other address, the one Alice had not given me.
To say that it wasn’t a nice neighborhood would be an understatement. The most nondescript of all the Cullens’ cars was still outrageous on this street. My old Chevy would have looked healthy here. During my human years, I would have locked the doors and driven away as fast as I dared. As it was, I was a little fascinated. I tried to imagine Alice in this place for any reason, and failed.
The buildings—all three stories, all narrow, all leaning slightly as if bowed by the pounding rain—were mostly old houses divided up into multiple apartments. It was hard to tell what color the peeling paint was supposed to be. Everything had faded to shades of gray. A few of the buildings had businesses on the first floor: a dirty bar with the windows painted black, a psychic’s supply store with neon hands and tarot cards glowing fitfully on the door, a tattoo parlor, and a daycare with duct tape holding the broken front window together. There were no lamps on inside any of the rooms, though it was grim enough outside that the humans should have needed the light. I could hear the low mumbling of voices in the distance; it sounded like TV.
There were a few people about, two shuffling through the rain in opposite directions and one sitting on the shallow porch of a boarded-up cut-rate law office, reading a wet newspaper and whistling. The sound was much too cheerful for the setting.
I was so bemused by the carefree whistler, I didn’t realize at first that the abandoned building was right where the address I was looking for should exist. There were no numbers on the dilapidated place, but the tattoo parlor beside it was just two numbers off.
I pulled up to the curb and idled for a second. I was getting into that dump one way or another, but how to do so without the whistler noticing me? I could park the next street over and come through the back.… There might be more witnesses on that side. Maybe the rooftops? Was it dark enough for that kind of thing?
“Hey, lady,” the whistler called to me.
I rolled the passenger window down as if I couldn’t hear him.
The man laid his paper aside, and his clothes surprised me, now that I could see them. Under his long ragged duster, he was a little too well dressed. There was no breeze to give me the scent, but the sheen on his dark red shirt looked like silk.
His crinkly black hair was tangled and wild, but his dark skin was smooth and perfect, his teeth white and straight. A contradiction.
“Maybe you shouldn’t park that car there, lady,” he said. “It might not be here when you get back.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said.
I shut off the engine and got out. Perhaps my whistling friend could give me the answers I needed faster than breaking and entering. I opened my big gray umbrella—not that I cared, really, about protecting the long cashmere sweater- dress I wore. It was what a human would do.
The man squinted through the rain at my face, and then his eyes widened. He swallowed, and I heard his heart accelerate as I approached.
“I’m looking for someone,” I began.
“I’m someone,” he offered with a smile. “What can I do for you, beautiful?” “Are you J. Jenks?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, and his expression changed from anticipation to understanding. He got to his feet and examined me with narrowed eyes. “Why’re you looking for J?”
“That’s my business.” Besides, I didn’t have a clue. “Are you J?” “No.”
We faced each other for a long moment while his sharp eyes ran up and down the fitted pearl gray sheath I wore. His gaze finally made it to my face. “You don’t look like the usual customer.”
“I’m probably not the usual,” I admitted. “But I do need to see him as soon as possible.”
“I’m not sure what to do,” he admitted. “Why don’t you tell me your name?” He grinned. “Max.”
“Nice to meet you, Max. Now, why don’t you tell me what you do for the usual?”
His grin became a frown. “Well, J’s usual clients don’t look a thing like you. Your kind doesn’t bother with the downtown office. You just go straight up to his fancy office in the skyscraper.”
I repeated the other address I had, making the list of numbers a question.
“Yeah, that’s the place,” he said, suspicious again. “How come you didn’t go there?”
“This was the address I was given—by a very dependable source.” “If you were up to any good, you wouldn’t be here.”
I pursed my lips. I’d never been much good at bluffing, but Alice hadn’t left me a lot of alternatives. “Maybe I’m not up to any good.”
Max’s face turned apologetic. “Look, lady—” “Bella.”
“Right. Bella. See, I need this job. J pays me pretty good to mostly just hang out here all day. I want to help you, I do, but—and of course I’m speaking hypothetically, right? Or off the record, or whatever works for you—but if I pass somebody through that could get him in trouble, I’m out of work. Do you see my problem?”
I thought for a minute, chewing on my lip. “You’ve never seen anyone like me here before? Well, sort of like me. My sister is a lot shorter than me, and she has dark spiky black hair.”
“J knows your sister?” “I think so.”
Max pondered this for a moment. I smiled at him, and his breathing stuttered. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give J a call and describe you to him. Let him make the decision.”
What did J. Jenks know? Would my description mean something to him? That was a troubling thought.
“My last name is Cullen,” I told Max, wondering if that was too much information. I was starting to get irritated with Alice. Did I really have to be quite this blind? She could have given me one or two more words.…
“Cullen, got it.”
I watched as he dialed, easily picking out the number. Well, I could call J. Jenks myself if this didn’t work.
“Hey J, it’s Max. I know I’m never supposed to call you at this number except in an emergency ”
Is there an emergency? I heard faintly from the other end. “Well, not exactly. It’s this girl who wants to see you ”
I fail to see the emergency in that. Why didn’t you follow normal procedure?
“I didn’t follow normal procedure ’cause she don’t look like any kind of normal—”
Is she a badge?!
“No—”
You can’t be sure about that. Does she look like one of Kubarev’s—? “No—let me talk, okay? She says you know her sister or something.” Not likely. What does she look like?
“She looks like ” His eyes ran from my face to my shoes appreciatively. “Well,
she looks like a freaking supermodel, that’s what she looks like.” I smiled and he winked at me, then went on. “Rocking body, pale as a sheet, dark brown hair almost to her waist, needs a good night’s sleep—any of this sounding familiar?”
No, it doesn’t. I’m not happy that you let your weakness for pretty women interrupt—
“Yeah, so I’m a sucker for the pretty ones, what’s wrong with that? I’m sorry I bothered you, man. Just forget it.”
“Name,” I whispered.
“Oh right. Wait,” Max said. “She says her name is Bella Cullen. That help?”
There was a beat of dead silence, and then the voice on the other end was abruptly screaming, using a lot of words you didn’t often hear outside of truck stops. Max’s whole expression changed; all the joking vanished and his lips went pale.
“Because you didn’t ask!” Max yelled back, panicked. There was another pause while J collected himself.
Beautiful and pale? J asked, a tiny bit calmer. “I said that, didn’t I?”
Beautiful and pale? What did this man know about vampires? Was he one of us himself? I wasn’t prepared for that kind of confrontation. I gritted my teeth.
What had Alice gotten me into?
Max waited for a minute through another volley of shouted insults and instructions and then glanced at me with eyes that were almost frightened. “But you only meet downtown clients on Thursdays—okay, okay! On it.” He slid his phone shut.
“He wants to see me?” I asked brightly.
Max glowered. “You could have told me you were a priority client.” “I didn’t know I was.”
“I thought you might be a cop,” he admitted. “I mean, you don’t look like a cop. But you act kind of weird, beautiful.”
I shrugged.
“Drug cartel?” he guessed. “Who, me?” I asked.
“Yeah. Or your boyfriend or whatever.”
“Nope, sorry. I’m not really a fan of drugs, and neither is my husband. Just say no and all that.”
Max cussed under his breath. “Married. Can’t catch a break.” I smiled.
“Mafia?”
“Nope.”
“Diamond smuggling?”
“Please! Is that the kind of people you usually deal with, Max? Maybe you need a new job.”
I had to admit, I was enjoying myself a little. I hadn’t interacted with humans much besides Charlie and Sue. It was entertaining to watch him flounder. I was also pleased at how easy it was not to kill him.
“You’ve got to be involved in something big. And bad,” he mused.
“It’s not really like that.”
“That’s what they all say. But who else needs papers? Or can afford to pay J’s prices for them, I should say. None of my business, anyway,” he said, and then muttered the word married again.
He gave me an entirely new address with basic directions, and then watched me drive away with suspicious, regretful eyes.
At this point, I was ready for almost anything—some kind of James Bond villain’s high-tech lair seemed appropriate. So I thought Max must have given me the wrong address as a test. Or maybe the lair was subterranean, underneath this very commonplace strip mall nestled up against a wooded hill in a nice family neighborhood.
I pulled into an open spot and looked up at a tastefully subtle sign that read
JASON SCOTT, ATTORNEY AT LAW.
The office inside was beige with celery green accents, inoffensive and unremarkable. There was no scent of vampire here, and that helped me relax. Nothing but unfamiliar human. A fish tank was set into the wall, and a blandly pretty blond receptionist sat behind the desk.
“Hello,” she greeted me. “How can I help you?” “I’m here to see Mr. Scott.”
“Do you have an appointment?” “Not exactly.”
She smirked a little. “It could be a while, then. Why don’t you have a seat while I—”
April! a man’s demanding voice squawked from the phone on her desk. I’m expecting a Ms. Cullen shortly.
I smiled and pointed to myself.
Send her in immediately. Do you understand? I don’t care what it’s interrupting.
I could hear something else in his voice besides impatience. Stress. Nerves. “She’s just arrived,” April said as soon as she could speak.
What? Send her in! What are you waiting for?
“Right away, Mr. Scott!” She got to her feet, fluttering her hands as she led the way down a short hallway, offering me coffee or tea or anything else I might have wanted.
“Here you are,” she said as she ushered me through the door into a power office, complete with heavy wooden desk and vanity wall.
“Close the door behind you,” a raspy tenor voice ordered.
I examined the man behind the desk while April made a hasty retreat. He was short and balding, probably around fifty-five, with a paunch. He wore a red silk tie with a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and his navy blazer hung over the back of his chair. He was also trembling, blanched to a sickly paste color, with sweat beading on his forehead; I imagined an ulcer churning away under the spare tire.
J recovered himself and rose unsteadily from his chair. He reached his hand across the desk.
“Ms. Cullen. What an absolute delight.”
I crossed to him and shook his hand quickly once. He cringed slightly at my cold skin but did not seem particularly surprised by it.
“Mr. Jenks. Or do you prefer Scott?”
He winced again. “Whatever you wish, of course.” “How about you call me Bella, and I’ll call you J?”
“Like old friends,” he agreed, mopping a silk handkerchief across his forehead. He gestured for me to have a seat and took his own. “I must ask, am I finally meeting Mr. Jasper’s lovely wife?”
I weighed that for a second. So this man knew Jasper, not Alice. Knew him, and seemed afraid of him, too. “His sister-in-law, actually.”
He pursed his lips, as if he were grasping for meanings just as desperately as I was.
“I trust Mr. Jasper is in good health?” he asked carefully.
“I’m sure he is in excellent health. He’s on an extended vacation at the moment.”
This seemed to clear up some of J’s confusion. He nodded to himself and templed his fingers. “Just so. You should have come to the main office. My assistants there would have put you straight through to me—no need to go through less hospitable channels.”
I just nodded. I wasn’t sure why Alice had given me the ghetto address. “Ah, well, you’re here now. What can I do for you?”
“Papers,” I said, trying to make my voice sound like I knew what I was talking about.
“Certainly,” J agreed at once. “Are we talking birth certificates, death certificates, drivers’ licenses, passports, social security cards… ?”
I took a deep breath and smiled. I owed Max big time.
And then my smile faded. Alice had sent me here for a reason, and I was sure it was to protect Renesmee. Her last gift to me. The one thing she would know I needed.
The only reason Renesmee would need a forger was if she was running. And the only reason Renesmee would be running was if we had lost.
If Edward and I were running with her, she wouldn’t need these documents right away. I was sure IDs were something Edward knew how to get his hands on or make himself, and I was sure he knew ways to escape without them. We could run with her for thousands of miles. We could swim with her across an ocean.
If we were around to save her.
And all the secrecy to keep this out of Edward’s head. Because there was a good chance that everything he knew, Aro would know. If we lost, Aro would certainly get the information he craved before he destroyed Edward.
It was as I had suspected. We couldn’t win. But we must have a good shot at killing Demetri before we lost, giving Renesmee the chance to run.
My still heart felt like a boulder in my chest—a crushing weight. All my hope faded like fog in the sunshine. My eyes pricked.
Who would I put this on? Charlie? But he was so defenselessly human. And how would I get Renesmee to him? He was not going to be anywhere close to that fight. So that left one person. There really had never been anyone else.
I’d thought this through so quickly that J didn’t notice my pause.
“Two birth certificates, two passports, one driver’s license,” I said in a low, strained tone.
If he noticed the change in my expression, he pretended otherwise.
“The names?”
“Jacob… Wolfe. And… Vanessa Wolfe.” Nessie seemed like an okay nickname for Vanessa. Jacob would get a kick out of the Wolfe thing.
His pen scratched swiftly across a legal pad. “Middle names?” “Just put something generic in.”
“If you prefer. Ages?”
“Twenty-seven for the man, five for the girl.” Jacob could pull it off. He was a beast. And at the rate Renesmee was growing, I’d better estimate high. He could be her stepfather.…
“I’ll need pictures if you prefer finished documents,” J said, interrupting my thoughts. “Mr. Jasper usually liked to finish them himself.”
Well, that explained why J didn’t know what Alice looked like. “Hold on,” I said.
This was luck. I had several family pictures shoved in my wallet, and the perfect one—Jacob holding Renesmee on the front porch steps—was only a month old. Alice had given it to me just a few days before… Oh. Maybe there wasn’t that much luck involved after all. Alice knew I had this picture. Maybe she’d even had some dim flash that I would need it before she gave it to me.
“Here you go.”
J examined the picture for a moment. “Your daughter is very like you.” I tensed. “She’s more like her father.”
“Who is not this man.” He touched Jacob’s face.
My eyes narrowed, and new sweat beads popped out on J’s shiny head. “No. That is a very close friend of the family.”
“Forgive me,” he mumbled, and the pen began scratching again. “How soon will you need the documents?”
“Can I get them in a week?”
“That’s a rush order. It will cost twice as—but forgive me. I forgot with whom I was speaking.”
Clearly, he knew Jasper. “Just give me a number.”
He seemed hesitant to say it aloud, though I was sure, having dealt with Jasper, he must have known that price wasn’t really an object. Not even taking into consideration the bloated accounts that existed all over the world with the Cullens’ various names on them, there was enough cash stashed all over the house to keep a small country afloat for a decade; it reminded me of the way there were always a hundred fishhooks in the back of any drawer at Charlie’s house. I doubted anyone would even notice the small stack I’d removed in preparation for today.
J wrote the price down on the bottom of the legal pad.
I nodded calmly. I had more than that with me. I unclasped my bag again and counted out the right amount—I had it all paper-clipped into five-thousand- dollar increments, so it took no time at all.
“There.”
“Ah, Bella, you don’t really have to give me the entire sum now. It’s customary for you to save half to ensure delivery.”
I smiled wanly at the nervous man. “But I trust you, J. Besides, I’ll give you a bonus—the same again when I get the documents.”
“That’s not necessary, I assure you.”
“Don’t worry about it.” It wasn’t like I could take it with me. “So I’ll meet you here next week at the same time?”
He gave me a pained look. “Actually, I prefer to make such transactions in places unrelated to my various businesses.”
“Of course. I’m sure I’m not doing this the way you expect.”
“I’m used to having no expectations when it comes to the Cullen family.” He grimaced and then quickly composed his face again. “Shall we meet at eight o’clock a week from tonight at The Pacifico? It’s on Union Lake, and the food is exquisite.”
“Perfect.” Not that I would be joining him for dinner. He actually wouldn’t like it much if I did.
I rose and shook his hand again. This time he didn’t flinch. But he did seem to have some new worry on his mind. His mouth was pinched up, his back tense.
“Will you have trouble with that deadline?” I asked.
“What?” He looked up, taken off guard by my question. “The deadline? Oh, no. No worries at all. I will certainly have your documents done on time.”
It would have been nice to have Edward here, so that I would know what J’s real worries were. I sighed. Keeping secrets from Edward was bad enough; having to be away from him was almost too much.
“Then I’ll see you in one week.”
34. DECLARED
I heard the music before I was out of the car. Edward hadn’t touched his piano since the night Alice left. Now, as I shut the car door, I heard the song morph through a bridge and change into my lullaby. Edward was welcoming me home.
I moved slowly as I pulled Renesmee—fast asleep; we’d been gone all day—from the car. We’d left Jacob at Charlie’s—he’d said he was going to catch a ride home with Sue. I wondered if he was trying to fill his head with enough trivia to crowd out the image of the way my face had looked when I’d walked through Charlie’s door.
As I walked slowly to the Cullen house now, I recognized that the hope and uplift that seemed almost a visible aura around the big white house had been mine this morning, too. It felt alien to me now.
I wanted to cry again, hearing Edward play for me. But I pulled it together. I didn’t want him to be suspicious. I would leave no clues in his mind for Aro if I could help it.
Edward turned his head and smiled when I came in the door, but kept playing.
“Welcome home,” he said, as if this was just any normal day. As if there weren’t twelve other vampires in the room involved in various pursuits, and a dozen more scattered around somewhere. “Did you have a good time with Charlie today?”
“Yes. Sorry I was gone so long. I stepped out to do a little Christmas shopping for Renesmee. I know it won’t be much of an event, but . . .” I shrugged.
Edward’s lips turned down. He quit playing and spun around on the bench so that his whole body was facing me. He put one hand on my waist and pulled me closer. “I hadn’t thought much about it. If you want to make an event of it—”
“No,” I interrupted him. I flinched internally at the idea of trying to fake more enthusiasm than the bare minimum. “I just didn’t want to let it pass without giving her something.”
“Do I get to see?”
“If you want. It’s only a little thing.”
Renesmee was completely unconscious, snoring delicately against my neck. I envied her. It would have been nice to escape reality, even for just a few hours.
Carefully, I fished the little velvet jewelry bag from my clutch without opening the purse enough for Edward to see the cash I was still carrying.
“It caught my eye from the window of an antique store while I was driving by.”
I shook the little golden locket into his palm. It was round with a slender vine border carved around the outside edge of the circle. Edward popped the tiny catch and looked inside. There was space for a small picture and, on the opposite side, an inscription in French.
“Do you know what this says?” he asked in a different tone, more subdued than before.
“The shopkeeper told me it said something along the lines of ‘more than my own life.’ Is that right?”
“Yes, he had it right.”
He looked up at me, his topaz eyes probing. I met his gaze for a moment, then pretended to be distracted by the television.
“I hope she likes it,” I muttered.
“Of course she will,” he said lightly, casually, and I was sure in that second that he knew I was keeping something from him. I was also sure that he had no idea of the specifics.
“Let’s take her home,” he suggested, standing and putting his arm around my shoulders.
I hesitated.
“What?” he demanded.
“I wanted to practice with Emmett a little ” I’d lost the whole day to my vital
errand; it made me feel behind.
Emmett—on the sofa with Rose and holding the remote, of course—looked up and grinned in anticipation. “Excellent. The forest needs thinning.”
Edward frowned at Emmett and then at me. “There’s plenty of time for that tomorrow,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I complained. “There’s no such thing as plenty of time
anymore. That concept does not exist. I have a lot to learn and—” He cut me off. “Tomorrow.”
And his expression was such that not even Emmett argued.
I was surprised at how hard it was to go back to a routine that was, after all, brand new. But stripping away even that little bit of hope I’d been fostering made everything seem impossible.
I tried to focus on the positives. There was a good chance that my daughter was going to survive what was coming, and Jacob, too. If they had a future, then that was a kind of victory, wasn’t it? Our little band must be going to hold their own if Jacob and Renesmee were going to have the opportunity to run in the first place. Yes, Alice’s strategy only made sense if we were going to put up a really good fight. So, a kind of victory there, too, considering that the Volturi had never been seriously challenged in millennia.
It was not going to be the end of the world. Just the end of the Cullens. The end of Edward, the end of me.
I preferred it that way—the last part anyway. I would not live without Edward again; if he was leaving this world, then I would be right behind him.
I wondered idly now and then if there would be anything for us on the other side. I knew Edward didn’t really believe so, but Carlisle did. I couldn’t imagine it myself. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine Edward not existing somehow, somewhere. If we could be together in any place, then that was a happy ending.
And so the pattern of my days continued, just that much harder than before.
We went to see Charlie on Christmas Day, Edward, Renesmee, Jacob, and I. All of Jacob’s pack were there, plus Sam, Emily, and Sue. It was a big help to have them there in Charlie’s little rooms, their huge, warm bodies wedged into corners around his sparsely decorated tree—you could see exactly where he’d gotten bored and quit—and overflowing his furniture. You could always count on werewolves to be buzzed about a coming fight, no matter how suicidal. The electricity of their excitement provided a nice current that disguised my utter lack of spirit. Edward was, as always, a better actor than I was.
Renesmee wore the locket I’d given her at dawn, and in her jacket pocket was the MP3 player Edward had given her—a tiny thing that held five thousand songs, already filled with Edward’s favorites. On her wrist was an intricately braided Quileute version of a promise ring. Edward had gritted his teeth over that one, but it didn’t bother me.
Soon, so soon, I would be giving her to Jacob for safekeeping. How could I be bothered by any symbol of the commitment I was so relying on?
Edward had saved the day by ordering a gift for Charlie, too. It had shown up yesterday—priority overnight shipping—and Charlie spent all morning reading the thick instruction manual to his new fishing sonar system.
From the way the werewolves ate, Sue’s lunch spread must have been good. I wondered how the gathering would have looked to an outsider. Did we play our parts well enough? Would a stranger have thought us a happy circle of friends, enjoying the holiday with casual cheer?
I think Edward and Jacob both were as relieved as I was when it was time to go. It felt odd to spend energy on the human façade when there were so many more important things to be doing. I had a hard time concentrating. At the same time, this was perhaps the last time I would see Charlie. Maybe it was a good thing that I was too numb to really register that.
I hadn’t seen my mother since the wedding, but I found I could only be glad for the gradual distancing that had begun two years ago. She was too fragile for my world. I didn’t want her to have any part of this. Charlie was stronger.
Maybe even strong enough for a goodbye now, but I wasn’t.
It was very quiet in the car; outside, the rain was just a mist, hovering on the edge between liquid and ice. Renesmee sat on my lap, playing with her locket, opening and closing it. I watched her and imagined the things I would say to Jacob right now if I didn’t have to keep my words out of Edward’s head.
If it’s ever safe again, take her to Charlie. Tell him the whole story someday. Tell him how much I loved him, how I couldn’t bear to leave him even when my human life was over. Tell him he was the best father. Tell him to pass my love on to Renée, all my hopes that she will be happy and well. . . .
I would have to give Jacob the documents before it was too late. I would give him a note for Charlie, too. And a letter for Renesmee. Something for her to read when I couldn’t tell her I loved her anymore.
There was nothing unusual about the outside of the Cullen house as we pulled into the meadow, but I could hear some kind of subtle uproar inside. Many low voices murmured and growled. It sounded intense, and it sounded like an argument. I could pick out Carlisle’s voice and Amun’s more often than the others.
Edward parked in front of the house rather than going around to the garage. We exchanged one wary glance before we got out of the car.
Jacob’s stance changed; his face turned serious and careful. I guessed that he was in Alpha mode now. Obviously, something had happened, and he was going to get the information he and Sam would need.
“Alistair is gone,” Edward murmured as we darted up the steps.
Inside the front room, the main confrontation was physically apparent. Lining the walls was a ring of spectators, every vampire who had joined us, except for Alistair and the three involved in the quarrel. Esme, Kebi, and Tia were the closest to the three vampires in the center; in the middle of the room, Amun was hissing at Carlisle and Benjamin.
Edward’s jaw tightened and he moved quickly to Esme’s side, towing me by the hand. I clutched Renesmee tightly to my chest.
“Amun, if you want to go, no one is forcing you to stay,” Carlisle said calmly.
“You’re stealing half my coven, Carlisle!” Amun shrieked, stabbing one finger at Benjamin. “Is that why you called me here? To steal from me?”
Carlisle sighed, and Benjamin rolled his eyes.
“Yes, Carlisle picked a fight with the Volturi, endangered his whole family, just to lure me here to my death,” Benjamin said sarcastically. “Be reasonable, Amun.
I’m committed to do the right thing here—I’m not joining any other coven. You can do whatever you want, of course, as Carlisle has pointed out.”
“This won’t end well,” Amun growled. “Alistair was the only sane one here. We should all be running.”
“Think of who you’re calling sane,” Tia murmured in a quiet aside. “We’re all going to be slaughtered!”
“It’s not going to come to a fight,” Carlisle said in a firm voice. “You say!”
“If it does, you can always switch sides, Amun. I’m sure the Volturi will appreciate your help.”
Amun sneered at him. “Perhaps that is the answer.”
Carlisle’s answer was soft and sincere. “I wouldn’t hold that against you, Amun. We have been friends for a long time, but I would never ask you to die for me.”
Amun’s voice was more controlled, too. “But you’re taking my Benjamin down with you.”
Carlisle put his hand on Amun’s shoulder; Amun shook it off.
“I’ll stay, Carlisle, but it might be to your detriment. I will join them if that’s the road to survival. You’re all fools to think that you can defy the Volturi.” He
scowled, then sighed, glanced at Renesmee and me, and added in an exasperated tone, “I will witness that the child has grown. That’s nothing but the truth.
Anyone would see that.” “That’s all we’ve ever asked.”
Amun grimaced, “But not all that you are getting, it seems.” He turned on Benjamin. “I gave you life. You’re wasting it.”
Benjamin’s face looked colder than I’d ever seen it; the expression contrasted oddly with his boyish features. “It’s a pity you couldn’t replace my will with your own in the process; perhaps then you would have been satisfied with me.”
Amun’s eyes narrowed. He gestured abruptly to Kebi, and they stalked past us out the front door.
“He’s not leaving,” Edward said quietly to me, “but he’ll be keeping his distance even more from now on. He wasn’t bluffing when he spoke of joining the Volturi.”
“Why did Alistair go?” I whispered.
“No one can be positive; he didn’t leave a note. From his mutters, it’s been clear that he thinks a fight is inevitable. Despite his demeanor, he actually does care too much for Carlisle to stand with the Volturi. I suppose he decided the danger was too much.” Edward shrugged.
Though our conversation was clearly just between the two of us, of course everyone could hear it. Eleazar answered Edward’s comment like it had been meant for all.
“From the sound of his mumblings, it was a bit more than that. We haven’t spoken much of the Volturi agenda, but Alistair worried that no matter how decisively we can prove your innocence, the Volturi will not listen. He thinks they will find an excuse to achieve their goals here.”
The vampires glanced uneasily at one another. The idea that the Volturi would manipulate their own sacrosanct law for gain was not a popular idea. Only the Romanians were composed, their small half-smiles ironic. They seemed amused at how the others wanted to think well of their ancient enemies.
Many low discussions began at the same time, but it was the Romanians I listened to. Maybe because the fair-haired Vladimir kept shooting glances in my direction.
“I do so hope Alistair was right about this,” Stefan murmured to Vladimir. “No matter the outcome, word will spread. It’s time our world saw the Volturi for
what they’ve become. They’ll never fall if everyone believes this nonsense about them protecting our way of life.”
“At least when we ruled, we were honest about what we were,” Vladimir replied. Stefan nodded. “We never put on white hats and called ourselves saints.”
“I’m thinking the time has come to fight,” Vladimir said. “How can you imagine we’ll ever find a better force to stand with? Another chance this good?”
“Nothing is impossible. Maybe someday—”
“We’ve been waiting for fifteen hundred years, Stefan. And they’ve only gotten stronger with the years.” Vladimir paused and looked at me again. He showed no surprise when he saw that I was watching him, too. “If the Volturi win this conflict, they will leave with more power than they came with. With every conquest they add to their strengths. Think of what that newborn alone could give them”—he jerked his chin toward me—“and she is barely discovering her gifts. And the earth-mover.” Vladimir nodded toward Benjamin, who stiffened.
Almost everyone was eavesdropping on the Romanians now, like me. “With their witch twins they have no need of the illusionist or the fire touch.” His eyes moved to Zafrina, then Kate.
Stefan looked at Edward. “Nor is the mind reader is exactly necessary. But I see your point. Indeed, they will gain much if they win.”
“More than we can afford to have them gain, wouldn’t you agree?” Stefan sighed. “I think I must agree. And that means… ”
“That we must stand against them while there is still hope.” “If we can just cripple them, even, expose them . . .”
“Then, someday, others will finish the job.” “And our long vendetta will be repaid. At last.”
They locked eyes for a moment and then murmured in unison. “It seems the only way.”
“So we fight,” Stefan said.
Though I could see that they were torn, self-preservation warring with revenge, the smile they exchanged was full of anticipation.
“We fight,” Vladimir agreed.
I suppose it was a good thing; like Alistair, I was sure the battle was impossible to avoid. In that case, two more vampires fighting on our side could only help. But the Romanians’ decision still made me shudder.
“We will fight, too,” Tia said, her usually grave voice more solemn than ever. “We believe the Volturi will overstep their authority. We have no wish to belong to them.” Her eyes lingered on her mate.
Benjamin grinned and threw an impish glance toward the Romanians. “Apparently, I’m a hot commodity. It appears I have to win the right to be free.”
“This won’t be the first time I’ve fought to keep myself from a king’s rule,” Garrett said in a teasing tone. He walked over and clapped Benjamin on the back. “Here’s to freedom from oppression.”
“We stand with Carlisle,” Tanya said. “And we fight with him.”
The Romanians’ pronouncement seemed to have made the others feel the need to declare themselves as well.
“We have not decided,” Peter said. He looked down at his tiny companion; Charlotte’s lips were set in dissatisfaction. It looked like she’d made her decision. I wondered what it was.
“The same goes for me,” Randall said. “And me,” Mary added.
“The packs will fight with the Cullens,” Jacob said suddenly. “We’re not afraid of vampires,” he added with a smirk.
“Children,” Peter muttered. “Infants,” Randall corrected. Jacob grinned tauntingly.
“Well, I’m in, too,” Maggie said, shrugging out from under Siobhan’s restraining hand. “I know truth is on Carlisle’s side. I can’t ignore that.”
Siobhan stared at the junior member of her coven with worried eyes. “Carlisle,” she said as if they were alone, ignoring the suddenly formal feel of the gathering, the unexpected outburst of declarations, “I don’t want this to come to a fight.”
“Nor do I, Siobhan. You know that’s the last thing I want.” He half-smiled. “Perhaps you should concentrate on keeping it peaceful.”
“You know that won’t help,” she said.
I remembered Rose and Carlisle’s discussion of the Irish leader; Carlisle believed that Siobhan had some subtle but powerful gift to make things go her way—and yet Siobhan didn’t believe it herself.
“It couldn’t hurt,” Carlisle said.
Siobhan rolled her eyes. “Shall I visualize the outcome I desire?” she asked sarcastically.
Carlisle was openly grinning now. “If you don’t mind.”
“Then there is no need for my coven to declare itself, is there?” she retorted. “Since there is no possibility of a fight.” She put her hand back on Maggie’s shoulder, pulling the girl closer to her. Siobhan’s mate, Liam, stood silent and expressionless.
Almost everyone else in the room looked mystified by Carlisle and Siobhan’s clearly joking exchange, but they didn’t explain themselves.
That was the end of the dramatic speeches for the night. The group slowly dispersed, some off to hunt, some to while away the time with Carlisle’s books or televisions or computers.
Edward, Renesmee, and I went to hunt. Jacob tagged along.
“Stupid leeches,” he muttered to himself when we got outside. “Think they’re so superior.” He snorted.
“They’ll be shocked when the infants save their superior lives, won’t they?” Edward said.
Jake smiled and punched his shoulder. “Hell yeah, they will.”
This wasn’t our last hunting trip. We all would hunt again nearer to the time we expected the Volturi. As the deadline was not exact, we were planning to stay a few nights out in the big baseball clearing Alice had seen, just in case. All we knew was that they would come the day that the snow stuck to the ground. We didn’t want the Volturi too close to town, and Demetri would lead them to wherever we were. I wondered who he would track in, and guessed that it would be Edward since he couldn’t track me.
I thought about Demetri while I hunted, paying little attention to my prey or the drifting snowflakes that had finally appeared but were melting before they touched the rocky soil. Would Demetri realize that he couldn’t track me? What would he make of that? What would Aro? Or was Edward wrong? There were
those little exceptions to what I could withstand, those ways around my shield. Everything that was outside my mind was vulnerable—open to the things Jasper, Alice, and Benjamin could do. Maybe Demetri’s talent worked a little differently, too.
And then I had a thought that brought me up short. The half-drained elk dropped from my hands to the stony ground. Snowflakes vaporized a few inches from the warm body with tiny sizzling sounds. I stared blankly at my bloody hands.
Edward saw my reaction and hurried to my side, leaving his own kill undrained.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a low voice, his eyes sweeping the forest around us, looking for whatever had triggered my behavior.
“Renesmee,” I choked.
“She’s just through those trees,” he reassured me. “I can hear both her thoughts and Jacob’s. She’s fine.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I was thinking about my shield—you really think it’s worth something, that it will help somehow. I know the others are hoping that I’ll be able to shield Zafrina and Benjamin, even if I can only keep it up for a few seconds at a time. What if that’s a mistake? What if your trust in me is the reason that we fail?”
My voice was edging toward hysteria, though I had enough control to keep it low. I didn’t want to upset Renesmee.
“Bella, what brought this on? Of course, it’s wonderful that you can protect yourself, but you’re not responsible for saving anyone. Don’t distress yourself needlessly.”
“But what if I can’t protect anything?” I whispered in gasps. “This thing I do, it’s faulty, it’s erratic! There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Maybe it will do nothing against Alec at all.”
“Shh,” he hushed me. “Don’t panic. And don’t worry about Alec. What he does is no different than what Jane or Zafrina does. It’s just an illusion—he can’t get inside your head any more than I can.”
“But Renesmee does!” I hissed frantically through my teeth. “It seemed so natural, I never questioned it before. It’s always been just part of who she is. But she puts her thoughts right into my head just like she does with everyone else. My shield has holes, Edward!”
I stared at him desperately, waiting for him to acknowledge my terrible revelation. His lips were pursed, as if he was trying to decide how to phrase something. His expression was perfectly relaxed.
“You thought of this a long time ago, didn’t you?” I demanded, feeling like an idiot for my months of overlooking the obvious.
He nodded, a faint smile pulling up one corner of his mouth. “The first time she touched you.”
I sighed at my own stupidity, but his calm had mellowed me some. “And this doesn’t bother you? You don’t see it as a problem?”
“I have two theories, one more likely than the other.” “Give me the least likely first.”
“Well, she’s your daughter,” he pointed out. “Genetically half you. I used to tease you about how your mind was on a different frequency than the rest of ours.
Perhaps she runs on the same.”
This didn’t work for me. “But you hear her mind just fine. Everyone hears her mind. And what if Alec runs on a different frequency? What if—?”
He put a finger to my lips. “I’ve considered that. Which is why I think this next theory is much more likely.”
I gritted my teeth and waited.
“Do you remember what Carlisle said to me about her, right after she showed you that first memory?”
Of course I remembered. “He said, ‘It’s an interesting twist. Like she’s doing the exact opposite of what you can.’”
“Yes. And so I wondered. Maybe she took your talent and flipped it, too.” I considered that.
“You keep everyone out,” he began.
“And no one keeps her out?” I finished hesitantly.
“That’s my theory,” he said. “And if she can get into your head, I doubt there’s a shield on the planet who could keep her at bay. That will help. From what we’ve seen, no one can doubt the truth of her thoughts once they’ve allowed her to show
them. And I think no one can keep her from showing them, if she gets close enough. If Aro allows her to explain ”
I shuddered to think of Renesmee so close to Aro’s greedy, milky eyes.
“Well,” he said, rubbing my tight shoulders. “At least there’s nothing that can stop him from seeing the truth.”
“But is the truth enough to stop him?” I murmured. For that, Edward had no answer.
35. DEADLINE
“Headed out?” Edward asked, his tone nonchalant. There was a sort of forced composure about his expression. He hugged Renesmee just a little bit tighter to his chest.
“Yes, a few last-minute things…,” I responded just as casually. He smiled my favorite smile. “Hurry back to me.”
“Always.”
I took his Volvo again, wondering if he’d read the odometer after my last errand. How much had he pieced together? That I had a secret, absolutely. Would he have deduced the reason why I didn’t confide in him? Did he guess that Aro might soon know everything he knew? I thought Edward could have come to that conclusion, which explained why he had demanded no reasons from me. I guessed he was trying not to speculate too much, trying to keep my behavior off his mind. Had he put this together with my odd performance the morning after Alice left, burning my book in the fire? I didn’t know if he could have made that leap.
It was a dreary afternoon, already dark as dusk. I sped through the gloom, my eyes on the heavy clouds. Would it snow tonight? Enough to layer the ground and create the scene from Alice’s vision? Edward estimated that we had about two more days. Then we would set ourselves in the clearing, drawing the Volturi to our chosen place.
As I headed through the darkening forest, I considered my last trip to Seattle. I thought I knew Alice’s purpose in sending me to the dilapidated drop point where
J. Jenks referred his shadier clients. If I’d gone to one of his other, more legitimate offices, would I have ever known what to ask for? If I’d met him as Jason Jenks or Jason Scott, legitimate lawyer, would I ever have unearthed J. Jenks, purveyor of illegal documents? I’d had to go the route that made it clear I was up to no good. That was my clue.
It was black when I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant a few minutes early, ignoring the eager valets by the entrance. I popped in my contacts and then went to wait for J inside the restaurant. Though I was in a hurry to be done with this depressing necessity and back with my family, J seemed careful to keep himself untainted by his baser associations; I had a feeling a handoff in the dark parking lot would offend his sensibilities.
I gave the name Jenks at the podium, and the obsequious maître d’ led me upstairs to a small private room with a fire crackling in a stone hearth. He took the calf-length ivory trench coat I’d worn to disguise the fact that I was wearing
Alice’s idea of appropriate attire, and gasped quietly at my oyster satin cocktail dress. I couldn’t help being a little flattered; I still wasn’t used to being beautiful to everyone rather than just Edward. The maître d’ stuttered half-formed compliments as he backed unsteadily from the room.
I stood by the fire to wait, holding my fingers close to the flame to warm them a little before the inevitable handshake. Not that J wasn’t obviously aware that there was something up with the Cullens, but it was still a good habit to practice.
For one half second, I wondered what it would feel like to put my hand in the fire. What it would feel like when I burned. . . .
J’s entrance distracted my morbidity. The maître d’ took his coat, too, and it was evident that I was not the only one who had dressed up for this meeting.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” J said as soon as we were alone. “No, you’re exactly on time.”
He held out his hand, and as we shook I could feel that his fingers were still quite noticeably warmer than mine. It didn’t seem to bother him.
“You look stunning, if I may be so bold, Mrs. Cullen.” “Thank you, J. Please, call me Bella.”
“I must say, it’s a different experience working with you than it is with Mr. Jasper. Much less… unsettling.” He smiled hesitantly.
“Really? I’ve always found Jasper to have a very soothing presence.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “Is that so?” he murmured politely while clearly still in disagreement. How odd. What had Jasper done to this man?
“Have you known Jasper long?”
He sighed, looking uncomfortable. “I’ve been working with Mr. Jasper for more than twenty years, and my old partner knew him for fifteen years before that.… He never changes.” J cringed delicately.
“Yeah, Jasper’s kind of funny that way.”
J shook his head as if he could shake away the disturbing thoughts. “Won’t you have a seat, Bella?”
“Actually, I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ve got a long drive home.” As I spoke, I took the thick white envelope with his bonus from my bag and handed it to him.
“Oh,” he said, a little catch of disappointment in his voice. He tucked the envelope into an inside pocket of his jacket without bothering to check the amount. “I was hoping we could speak for just a moment.”
“About?” I asked curiously.
“Well, let me get you your items first. I want to make sure you’re satisfied.”
He turned, placed his briefcase on the table, and popped the latches. He took out a legal-sized manila envelope.
Though I had no idea what I should be looking for, I opened the envelope and gave the contents a cursory glance. J had flipped Jacob’s picture and changed the coloring so that it wasn’t immediately evident that it was the same picture on both his passport and driver’s license. Both looked perfectly sound to me, but that meant little. I glanced at the picture on Vanessa Wolfe’s passport for a fraction of a second, and then looked away quickly, a lump rising in my throat.
“Thank you,” I told him.
His eyes narrowed slightly, and I felt he was disappointed that my examination was not more thorough. “I can assure you every piece is perfect. All will pass the most rigorous scrutiny by experts.”
“I’m sure they are. I truly appreciate what you’ve done for me, J.”
“It’s been my pleasure, Bella. In the future, feel free to come to me for anything the Cullen family needs.” He didn’t even hint at it really, but this sounded like an invitation for me to take over Jasper’s place as liaison.
“There was something you wanted to discuss?”
“Er, yes. It’s a bit delicate ” He gestured to the stone hearth with a questioning
expression. I sat on the edge of the stone, and he sat beside me. Sweat was dewing up on his forehead again, and he pulled a blue silk handkerchief from his pocket and began mopping.
“You are the sister of Mr. Jasper’s wife? Or married to his brother?” he asked. “Married to his brother,” I clarified, wondering where this was leading.
“You would be Mr. Edward’s bride, then?” “Yes.”
He smiled apologetically. “I’ve seen all the names many times, you see. My belated congratulations. It’s nice that Mr. Edward has found such a lovely partner after all this time.”
“Thank you very much.”
He paused, dabbing at the sweat. “Over the years, you might imagine that I’ve developed a very healthy level of respect for Mr. Jasper and the entire family.”
I nodded cautiously.
He took a deep breath and then exhaled without speaking. “J, please just say whatever you need to.”
He took another breath and then mumbled quickly, slurring the words together.
“If you could just assure me that you are not planning to kidnap the little girl from her father, I would sleep better tonight.”
“Oh,” I said, stunned. It took me a minute to understand the erroneous conclusion he’d drawn. “Oh no. It’s nothing like that at all.” I smiled weakly, trying to reassure him. “I’m simply preparing a safe place for her in case something were to happen to my husband and me.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you expecting something to happen?” He blushed, then apologized. “Not that it’s any of my business.”
I watched the red flush spread behind the delicate membrane of his skin and was glad—as I often was—that I was not the average newborn. J seemed a nice enough man, criminal behavior aside, and it would have been a shame to kill him.
“You never know.” I sighed.
He frowned. “May I wish you the best of luck, then. And please don’t be put out with me, my dear, but… if Mr. Jasper should come to me and ask what names I put on these documents . . .”
“Of course you should tell him immediately. I’d like nothing better than to have Mr. Jasper fully aware of our entire transaction.”
My transparent sincerity seemed to ease a bit of his tension.
“Very good,” he said. “And I can’t prevail upon you to stay for dinner?” “I’m sorry, J. I’m short on time at present.”
“Then, again, my best wishes for your health and happiness. Anything at all the Cullen family needs, please don’t hesitate to call on me, Bella.”
“Thank you, J.”
I left with my contraband, glancing back to see that J was staring after me, his expression a mixture of anxiety and regret.
The return trip took me less time. The night was black, and so I turned off my headlights and floored it. When I got back to the house, most of the cars, including Alice’s Porsche and my Ferrari, were missing. The traditional vampires were going as far away as possible to satiate their thirst. I tried not to think of their hunting in the night, cringing at the mental picture of their victims.
Only Kate and Garrett were in the front room, arguing playfully about the nutritional value of animal blood. I inferred that Garrett had attempted a hunting trip vegetarian-style and found it difficult.
Edward must have taken Renesmee home to sleep. Jacob, no doubt, was in the woods close by the cottage. The rest of my family must have been hunting as well. Perhaps they were out with the other Denalis.
Which basically gave me the house to myself, and I was quick to take advantage.
I could smell that I was the first one to enter Alice and Jasper’s room in a long while, maybe the first since the night they’d left us. I rooted silently through their huge closet until I found the right sort of bag. It must have been Alice’s; it was a small black leather backpack, the kind that was usually used as a purse, little enough that even Renesmee could carry it without looking out of place. Then I raided their petty cash, taking about twice the yearly income for the average American household. I guessed my theft would be less noticeable here than anywhere else in the house, since this room made everyone sad. The envelope with the fake passports and IDs went into the bag on top of the money. Then I sat on the edge of Alice and Jasper’s bed and looked at the pitifully insignificant package that was all I could give my daughter and my best friend to help save their lives. I slumped against the bedpost, feeling helpless.
But what else could I do?
I sat there for several minutes with my head bowed before the inkling of a good idea came to me.
If…
If I was to assume that Jacob and Renesmee were going to escape, then that included the assumption that Demetri would be dead. That gave any survivors a little breathing room, Alice and Jasper included.
So why couldn’t Alice and Jasper help Jacob and Renesmee? If they were reunited, Renesmee would have the best protection imaginable. There was no reason why this couldn’t happen, except for the fact that Jake and Renesmee both were blind spots for Alice. How would she begin to look for them?
I deliberated for a moment, then left the room, crossing the hall to Carlisle and Esme’s suite. As usual, Esme’s desk was stacked with plans and blueprints, everything neatly laid out in tall piles. The desk had a slew of pigeonholes above the work surface; in one was a box of stationery. I took a fresh sheet of paper and a pen.
Then I stared at the blank ivory page for a full five minutes, concentrating on my decision. Alice might not be able to see Jacob or Renesmee, but she could see me. I visualized her seeing this moment, hoping desperately that she wasn’t too busy to pay attention.
Slowly, deliberately, I wrote the words RIO DE JANEIRO in all caps across the page.
Rio seemed the best place to send them: It was far away from here, Alice and Jasper were already in South America at last report, and it wasn’t like our old problems had ceased to exist just because we had worse problems now. There was still the mystery of Renesmee’s future, the terror of her racing age. We’d been headed south anyway. Now it would be Jacob’s, and hopefully Alice’s, job to search for the legends.
I bowed my head again against a sudden urge to sob, clenching my teeth together. It was better that Renesmee go on without me. But I already missed her so much I could barely stand it.
I took a deep breath and put the note at the bottom of the duffel bag, where Jacob would find it soon enough.
I crossed my fingers that—since it was unlikely that his high school offered Portuguese—Jake had at least taken Spanish as his language elective.
There was nothing left now but waiting.
For two days, Edward and Carlisle stayed in the clearing where Alice had seen the Volturi arrive. It was the same killing field where Victoria’s newborns had attacked last summer. I wondered if it felt repetitive to Carlisle, like déjà vu. For me, it would be all new. This time Edward and I would stand with our family.
We could only imagine that the Volturi would be tracking either Edward or Carlisle. I wondered if it would surprise them that their prey didn’t run. Would that make them wary? I couldn’t imagine the Volturi ever feeling a need for caution.
Though I was—hopefully—invisible to Demetri, I stayed with Edward. Of course. We only had a few hours left to be together.
Edward and I had not had a last grand scene of farewell, nor did I plan one. To speak the word was to make it final. It would be the same as typing the words The End on the last page of a manuscript. So we did not say our goodbyes, and we stayed very close to each other, always touching. Whatever end found us, it would not find us separated.
We set up a tent for Renesmee a few yards back into the protective forest, and then there was more déjà vu as we found ourselves camping in the cold again with Jacob. It was almost impossible to believe how much things had changed since last June. Seven months ago, our triangular relationship seemed impossible, three different kinds of heartbreak that could not be avoided. Now everything was in perfect balance. It seemed hideously ironic that the puzzle pieces would fit together just in time for all of them to be destroyed.
It started to snow again the night before New Year’s Eve. This time, the tiny flakes did not dissolve into the stony ground of the clearing. While Renesmee and Jacob slept—Jacob snoring so loudly I wondered how Renesmee didn’t wake—the snow made first a thin icing over the earth, then built into thicker drifts. By the time the sun rose, the scene from Alice’s vision was complete. Edward and I held hands as we stared across the glittering white field, and neither of us spoke.
Through the early morning, the others gathered, their eyes bearing mute evidence of their preparations—some light gold, some rich crimson. Soon after we all were together, we could hear the wolves moving in the woods. Jacob emerged from the tent, leaving Renesmee still sleeping, to join them.
Edward and Carlisle were arraying the others into a loose formation, our witnesses to the sides like galleries.
I watched from a distance, waiting by the tent for Renesmee to wake. When she did, I helped her dress in the clothes I’d carefully picked out two days before.
Clothes that looked frilly and feminine but that were actually sturdy enough to not show any wear—even if a person wore them while riding a giant werewolf through a couple of states. Over her jacket I put on the black leather backpack with the documents, the money, the clue, and my love notes for her and Jacob, Charlie and Renée. She was strong enough that it was no burden to her.
Her eyes were huge as she read the agony on my face. But she had guessed enough not to ask me what I was doing.
“I love you,” I told her. “More than anything.”
“I love you, too, Momma,” she answered. She touched the locket at her neck, which now held a tiny photo of her, Edward, and me. “We’ll always be together.”
“In our hearts we’ll always be together,” I corrected in a whisper as quiet as a breath. “But when the time comes today, you have to leave me.”
Her eyes widened, and she touched her hand to my cheek. The silent no was louder than if she’d shouted it.
I fought to swallow; my throat felt swollen. “Will you do it for me? Please?” She pressed her fingers harder to my face. Why?
“I can’t tell you,” I whispered. “But you’ll understand soon. I promise.” In my head, I saw Jacob’s face.
I nodded, then pulled her fingers away. “Don’t think of it,” I breathed into her ear. “Don’t tell Jacob until I tell you to run, okay?”
This she understood. She nodded, too. I took from my pocket one last detail.
While packing Renesmee’s things, an unexpected sparkle of color had caught my eye. A chance ray of sun through the skylight had hit the jewels on the ancient precious box stuffed high overhead on a shelf in an untouched corner. I considered it for a moment and then shrugged. After putting together Alice’s clues, I couldn’t hope that the coming confrontation would be resolved peacefully. But why not try to start things out as friendly as possible? I asked myself. What could it hurt? So I guess I must have had some hope left after all— blind, senseless hope—because I’d scaled the shelves and retrieved Aro’s wedding present to me.
Now I fastened the thick gold rope around my neck and felt the weight of the enormous diamond nestle into the hollow of my throat.
“Pretty,” Renesmee whispered. Then she wrapped her arms like a vise around my neck. I squeezed her against my chest. Interlocked this way, I carried her out of the tent and to the clearing.
Edward cocked one eyebrow as I approached, but otherwise did not remark on my accessory or Renesmee’s. He just put his arms tight around us both for one long moment and then, with a deep sigh, let us go. I couldn’t see a goodbye anywhere in his eyes. Maybe he had more hope for something after this life than he’d let on.
We took our place, Renesmee climbing agilely onto my back to leave my hands free. I stood a few feet behind the front line made up by Carlisle, Edward, Emmett, Rosalie, Tanya, Kate, and Eleazar. Close beside me were Benjamin and
Zafrina; it was my job to protect them as long as I was able. They were our best offensive weapons. If the Volturi were the ones who could not see, even for a few moments, that would change everything.
Zafrina was rigid and fierce, with Senna almost a mirror image at her side. Benjamin sat on the ground, his palms pressed to the dirt, and muttered quietly about fault lines. Last night, he’d strewn piles of boulders in natural-looking, now snow-covered heaps all along the back of the meadow. They weren’t enough to injure a vampire, but hopefully enough to distract one.
The witnesses clustered to our left and right, some nearer than others—those who had declared themselves were the closest. I noticed Siobhan rubbing her temples, her eyes closed in concentration; was she humoring Carlisle? Trying to visualize a diplomatic resolution?
In the woods behind us, the invisible wolves were still and ready; we could only hear their heavy panting, their beating hearts.
The clouds rolled in, diffusing the light so that it could have been morning or afternoon. Edward’s eyes tightened as he scrutinized the view, and I was sure he was seeing this exact scene for the second time—the first time being Alice’s vision. It would look just the same when the Volturi arrived. We only had minutes or seconds left now.
All our family and allies braced themselves.
From the forest, the huge russet Alpha wolf came forward to stand at my side; it must have been too hard for him to keep his distance from Renesmee when she was in such immediate danger.
Renesmee reached out to twine her fingers in the fur over his massive shoulder, and her body relaxed a little bit. She was calmer with Jacob close. I felt a tiny bit better, too. As long Jacob was with Renesmee, she would be all right.
Without risking a glance behind, Edward reached back to me. I stretched my arm forward so that I could grip his hand. He squeezed my fingers.
Another minute ticked by, and I found myself straining to hear some sound of approach.
And then Edward stiffened and hissed low between his clenched teeth. His eyes focused on the forest due north of where we stood.
We stared where he did, and waited as the last seconds passed.
36. BLOODLUST
They came with pageantry, with a kind of beauty.
They came in a rigid, formal formation. They moved together, but it was not a march; they flowed in perfect synchronicity from the trees—a dark, unbroken shape that seemed to hover a few inches above the white snow, so smooth was the advance.
The outer perimeter was gray; the color darkened with each line of bodies until the heart of the formation was deepest black. Every face was cowled, shadowed. The faint brushing sound of their feet was so regular it was like music, a complicated beat that never faltered.
At some sign I did not see—or perhaps there was no sign, only millennia of practice—the configuration folded outward. The motion was too stiff, too square to resemble the opening of a flower, though the color suggested that; it was the opening of a fan, graceful but very angular. The gray-cloaked figures spread to the flanks while the darker forms surged precisely forward in the center, each movement closely controlled.
Their progress was slow but deliberate, with no hurry, no tension, no anxiety. It was the pace of the invincible.
This was almost my old nightmare. The only thing lacking was the gloating desire I’d seen on the faces in my dream—the smiles of vindictive joy. Thus far, the Volturi were too disciplined to show any emotion at all. They also showed no surprise or dismay at the collection of vampires that waited for them here—a collection that looked suddenly disorganized and unprepared in comparison.
They showed no surprise at the giant wolf that stood in our midst.
I couldn’t help counting. There were thirty-two of them. Even if you did not count the two drifting, waifish black-cloaked figures in the very back, who I took to be the wives—their protected position suggesting that they would not be involved in the attack—we were still outnumbered. There were just nineteen of us who would fight, and then seven more to watch as we were destroyed. Even counting the ten wolves, they had us.
“The redcoats are coming, the redcoats are coming,” Garrett muttered mysteriously to himself and then chuckled once. He slid one step closer to Kate.
“They did come,” Vladimir whispered to Stefan.
“The wives,” Stefan hissed back. “The entire guard. All of them together. It’s well we didn’t try Volterra.”
And then, as if their numbers were not enough, while the Volturi slowly and majestically advanced, more vampires began entering the clearing behind them.
The faces in this seemingly endless influx of vampires were the antithesis to the Volturi’s expressionless discipline—they wore a kaleidoscope of emotions. At first there was the shock and even some anxiety as they saw the unexpected force awaiting them. But that concern passed quickly; they were secure in their overwhelming numbers, secure in their position behind the unstoppable Volturi force. Their features returned to the expression they’d worn before we’d surprised them.
It was easy enough to understand their mindset—the faces were that explicit. This was an angry mob, whipped to a frenzy and slavering for justice. I did not fully realize the vampire world’s feeling toward the immortal children before I read these faces.
It was clear that this motley, disorganized horde—more than forty vampires altogether—was the Volturi’s own kind of witness. When we were dead, they would spread the word that the criminals had been eradicated, that the Volturi had acted with nothing but impartiality. Most looked like they hoped for more than just an opportunity to witness—they wanted to help tear and burn.
We didn’t have a prayer. Even if we could somehow neutralize the Volturi’s advantages, they could still bury us in bodies. Even if we killed Demetri, Jacob would not be able to outrun this.
I could feel it as the same comprehension sunk in around me. Despair weighted the air, pushing me down with more pressure than before.
One vampire in the opposing force did not seem to belong to either party; I recognized Irina as she hesitated in between the two companies, her expression unique among the others. Irina’s horrified gaze was locked on Tanya’s position in the front line. Edward snarled, a very low but fervent sound.
“Alistair was right,” he murmured to Carlisle.
I watched Carlisle glance at Edward questioningly. “Alistair was right?” Tanya whispered.
“They—Caius and Aro—come to destroy and acquire,” Edward breathed almost silently back; only our side could hear. “They have many layers of strategy already in place. If Irina’s accusation had somehow proven to be false, they were committed to find another reason to take offense. But they can see Renesmee now, so they are perfectly sanguine about their course. We could still attempt to defend against their other contrived charges, but first they have to stop, to hear
the truth about Renesmee.” Then, even lower. “Which they have no intention of doing.”
Jacob gave a strange little huff.
And then, unexpectedly, two seconds later, the procession did halt. The low music of perfectly synchronized movements turned to silence. The flawless discipline remained unbroken; the Volturi froze into absolute stillness as one. They stood about a hundred yards away from us.
Behind me, to the sides, I heard the beating of large hearts, closer than before. I risked glances to the left and the right from the corners of my eyes to see what had stopped the Volturi advance.
The wolves had joined us.
On either side of our uneven line, the wolves branched out in long, bordering arms. I only spared a fraction of a second to note that there were more than ten wolves, to recognize the wolves I knew and the ones I’d never seen before. There were sixteen of them spaced evenly around us—seventeen total, counting Jacob. It was clear from their heights and oversized paws that the newcomers all were very, very young. I supposed I should have foreseen this. With so many vampires encamped in the neighborhood, a werewolf population explosion was inevitable.
More children dying. I wondered why Sam had allowed this, and then I realized he had no other choice. If any of the wolves stood with us, the Volturi would be sure to search out the rest. They had gambled their entire species on this stand.
And we were going to lose.
Abruptly, I was furious. Beyond furious, I was murderously enraged. My hopeless despair vanished entirely. A faint reddish glow highlighted the dark figures in front of me, and all I wanted in that moment was the chance to sink my teeth into them, to rip their limbs from their bodies and pile them for burning. I was so maddened I could have danced around the pyre where they roasted alive; I would have laughed while their ashes smoldered. My lips curved back automatically, and a low, fierce snarl tore up my throat from the pit of my stomach. I realized the corners of my mouth were turned up in a smile.
Beside me, Zafrina and Senna echoed my hushed growl. Edward squeezed the hand he still held, cautioning me.
The shadowed Volturi faces were still expressionless for the most part. Only two sets of eyes betrayed any emotion at all. In the very center, touching hands, Aro and Caius had paused to evaluate, and the entire guard had paused with them, waiting for the order to kill. The two did not look at each other, but it was obvious that they were communicating. Marcus, though touching Aro’s other hand, did
not seem part of the conversation. His expression was not as mindless as the guards’, but it was nearly as blank. Like the one other time I’d seen him, he appeared to be utterly bored.
The bodies of the Volturi’s witnesses leaned toward us, their eyes fixed furiously on Renesmee and me, but they stayed near the fringe of the forest, leaving a wide berth between themselves and the Volturi soldiers. Only Irina hovered close behind the Volturi, just a few paces away from the ancient females—both fair- haired with powdery skin and filmed eyes—and their two massive bodyguards.
There was a woman in one of the darker gray cloaks just behind Aro. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like she might actually be touching his back. Was this the other shield, Renata? I wondered, as Eleazar had, if she would be able to repel me.
But I would not waste my life trying to get to Caius or Aro. I had more vital targets.
I searched the line for them now and had no difficulty picking out the two petite, deep gray cloaks near the heart of the arrangement. Alec and Jane, easily the smallest members of the guard, stood just to Marcus’s side, flanked by Demetri on the other. Their lovely faces were smooth, giving nothing away; they wore the darkest cloaks beside the pure black of the ancients. The witch twins, Vladimir had called them. Their powers were the cornerstone of the Volturi offensive. The jewels in Aro’s collection.
My muscles flexed, and venom welled in my mouth.
Aro’s and Caius’s clouded red eyes flickered across our line. I read disappointment in Aro’s face as his gaze roved over our faces again and again, looking for one that was missing. Chagrin tightened his lips.
In that moment, I was nothing but grateful that Alice had run. As the pause lengthened, I heard Edward’s breath speed. “Edward?” Carlisle asked, low and anxious.
“They’re not sure how to proceed. They’re weighing options, choosing key targets—me, of course, you, Eleazar, Tanya. Marcus is reading the strength of our ties to each other, looking for weak points. The Romanians’ presence irritates them. They’re worried about the faces they don’t recognize—Zafrina and Senna in particular—and the wolves, naturally. They’ve never been outnumbered before.
That’s what stopped them.”
“Outnumbered?” Tanya whispered incredulously.
“They don’t count their witnesses,” Edward breathed. “They are nonentities, meaningless to the guard. Aro just enjoys an audience.”
“Should I speak?” Carlisle asked.
Edward hesitated, then nodded. “This is the only chance you’ll get.”
Carlisle squared his shoulders and paced several steps ahead of our defensive line. I hated to see him alone, unprotected.
He spread his arms, holding his palms up as if in greeting. “Aro, my old friend. It’s been centuries.”
The white clearing was dead silent for a long moment. I could feel the tension rolling off Edward as he listened to Aro’s assessment of Carlisle’s words. The strain mounted as the seconds ticked by.
And then Aro stepped forward out of the center of the Volturi formation. The shield, Renata, moved with him as if the tips of her fingers were sewn to his robe. For the first time, the Volturi ranks reacted. A muttered grumble rolled through the line, eyebrows lowered into scowls, lips curled back from teeth. A few of the guard leaned forward into a crouch.
Aro held one hand up toward them. “Peace.”
He walked just a few paces more, then cocked his head to one side. His milky eyes glinted with curiosity.
“Fair words, Carlisle,” he breathed in his thin, wispy voice. “They seem out of place, considering the army you’ve assembled to kill me, and to kill my dear ones.”
Carlisle shook his head and stretched his right hand forward as if there were not still almost a hundred yards between them. “You have but to touch my hand to know that was never my intent.”
Aro’s shrewd eyes narrowed. “But how can your intent possibly matter, dear Carlisle, in the face of what you have done?” He frowned, and a shadow of sadness crossed his features—whether it was genuine or not, I could not tell.
“I have not committed the crime you are here to punish me for.”
“Then step aside and let us punish those responsible. Truly, Carlisle, nothing would please me more than to preserve your life today.”
“No one has broken the law, Aro. Let me explain.” Again, Carlisle offered his hand.
Before Aro could answer, Caius drifted swiftly forward to Aro’s side.
“So many pointless rules, so many unnecessary laws you create for yourself, Carlisle,” the white-haired ancient hissed. “How is it possible that you defend the breaking of one that truly matters?”
“The law is not broken. If you would listen—”
“We see the child, Carlisle,” Caius snarled. “Do not treat us as fools.”
“She is not an immortal. She is not a vampire. I can easily prove this with just a few moments—”
Caius cut him off. “If she is not one of the forbidden, then why have you massed a battalion to protect her?”
“Witnesses, Caius, just as you have brought.” Carlisle gestured to the angry horde at the edge of the woods; some of them growled in response. “Any one of these friends can tell you the truth about the child. Or you could just look at her, Caius. See the flush of human blood in her cheeks.”
“Artifice!” Caius snapped. “Where is the informer? Let her come forward!” He craned his neck around until he spotted Irina lingering behind the wives. “You! Come!”
Irina stared at him uncomprehendingly, her face like that of someone who has not entirely awakened from a hideous nightmare. Impatiently, Caius snapped his fingers. One of the wives’ huge bodyguards moved to Irina’s side and prodded her roughly in the back. Irina blinked twice and then walked slowly toward Caius in a daze. She stopped several yards short, her eyes still on her sisters.
Caius closed the distance between them and slapped her across the face.
It couldn’t have hurt, but there was something terribly degrading about the action. It was like watching someone kick a dog. Tanya and Kate hissed in synchronization.
Irina’s body went rigid and her eyes finally focused on Caius. He pointed one clawed finger at Renesmee, where she clung to my back, her fingers still tangled in Jacob’s fur. Caius turned entirely red in my furious view. A growl rumbled through Jacob’s chest.
“This is the child you saw?” Caius demanded. “The one that was obviously more than human?”
Irina peered at us, examining Renesmee for the first time since entering the clearing. Her head tilted to the side, confusion crossed her features.
“Well?” Caius snarled.
“I… I’m not sure,” she said, her tone perplexed.
Caius’s hand twitched as if he wanted to slap her again. “What do you mean?” he said in a steely whisper.
“She’s not the same, but I think it’s the same child. What I mean is, she’s changed. This child is bigger than the one I saw, but—”
Caius’s furious gasp crackled through his suddenly bared teeth, and Irina broke off without finishing. Aro flitted to Caius’s side and put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“Be composed, brother. We have time to sort this out. No need to be hasty.” With a sullen expression, Caius turned his back on Irina.
“Now, sweetling,” Aro said in a warm, sugary murmur. “Show me what you’re trying to say.” He held his hand out to the bewildered vampire.
Uncertainly, Irina took his hand. He held hers for only five seconds. “You see, Caius?” he said. “It’s a simple matter to get what we need.”
Caius didn’t answer him. From the corner of his eye, Aro glanced once at his audience, his mob, and then turned back to Carlisle.
“And so we have a mystery on our hands, it seems. It would appear the child has grown. Yet Irina’s first memory was clearly that of an immortal child. Curious.”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to explain,” Carlisle said, and from the change in his voice, I could guess at his relief. This was the pause we had pinned all our nebulous hopes on.
I felt no relief. I waited, almost numb with rage, for the layers of strategy Edward had promised.
Carlisle held out his hand again.
Aro hesitated for a moment. “I would rather have the explanation from someone more central to the story, my friend. Am I wrong to assume that this breach was not of your making?”
“There was no breach.”
“Be that as it may, I will have every facet of the truth.” Aro’s feathery voice hardened. “And the best way to get that is to have the evidence directly from your talented son.” He inclined his head in Edward’s direction. “As the child clings to his newborn mate, I’m assuming Edward is involved.”
Of course he wanted Edward. Once he could see into Edward’s mind, he would know all our thoughts. Except mine.
Edward turned to quickly kiss my forehead and Renesmee’s, not meeting my eyes. Then he strode across the snowy field, clapping Carlisle on the shoulder as he passed. I heard a low whimper from behind me—Esme’s terror breaking through.
The red haze I saw around the Volturi army flamed brighter than before. I could not bear to watch Edward cross the empty white space alone—but I also could not endure to have Renesmee one step closer to our adversaries. The opposing needs tore at me; I was frozen so tightly it felt like my bones might shatter from the pressure of it.
I saw Jane smile as Edward crossed the midpoint in the distance between us, when he was closer to them than he was to us.
That smug little smile did it. My fury peaked, higher even than the raging bloodlust I’d felt the moment the wolves had committed to this doomed fight. I could taste madness on my tongue—I felt it flow through me like a tidal wave of pure power. My muscles tightened, and I acted automatically. I threw my shield with all the force in my mind, flung it across the impossible expanse of the field— ten times my best distance—like a javelin. My breath rushed out in a huff with the exertion.
The shield blew out from me in a bubble of sheer energy, a mushroom cloud of liquid steel. It pulsed like a living thing—I could feel it, from the apex to the edges.
There was no recoil to the elastic fabric now; in that instant of raw force, I saw that the backlash I’d felt before was of my own making—I had been clinging to that invisible part of me in self-defense, subconsciously unwilling to let it go. Now I set it free, and my shield exploded a good fifty yards out from me effortlessly, taking only a fraction of my concentration. I could feel it flex like just another muscle, obedient to my will. I pushed it, shaped it to a long, pointed oval.
Everything underneath the flexible iron shield was suddenly a part of me—I could feel the life force of everything it covered like points of bright heat, dazzling sparks of light surrounding me. I thrust the shield forward the length of the clearing, and exhaled in relief when I felt Edward’s brilliant light within my protection. I held there, contracting this new muscle so that it closely surrounded Edward, a thin but unbreakable sheet between his body and our enemies.
Barely a second had passed. Edward was still walking to Aro. Everything had changed absolutely, but no one had noticed the explosion except for me. A startled laugh burst through my lips. I felt the others glancing at me and saw Jacob’s big black eye roll down to stare at me like I’d lost my mind.
Edward stopped a few steps away from Aro, and I realized with some chagrin that though I certainly could, I should not prevent this exchange from happening. This was the point of all our preparations: getting Aro to hear our side of the story. It was almost physically painful to do it, but reluctantly I pulled my shield back and left Edward exposed again. The laughing mood had vanished. I focused totally on Edward, ready to shield him instantly if something went wrong.
Edward’s chin came up arrogantly, and he held his hand out to Aro as if he were conferring a great honor. Aro seemed only delighted with his attitude, but his delight was not universal. Renata fluttered nervously in Aro’s shadow. Caius’s scowl was so deep it looked like his papery, translucent skin would crease permanently. Little Jane showed her teeth, and beside her Alec’s eyes narrowed in concentration. I guessed that he was ready, like me, to act at a second’s notice.
Aro closed the distance without pause—and really, what did he have to fear? The hulking shadows of the lighter gray cloaks—the brawny fighters like Felix—were but a few yards away. Jane and her burning gift could throw Edward on the ground, writhing in agony. Alec could blind and deafen him before he could take a step in Aro’s direction. No one knew that I had the power to stop them, not even Edward.
With an untroubled smile, Aro took Edward’s hand. His eyes snapped shut at once, and then his shoulders hunched under the onslaught of information.
Every secret thought, every strategy, every insight—everything Edward had heard in the minds around him during the last month—was now Aro’s. And further back—every vision of Alice’s, every quiet moment with our family, every picture in Renesmee’s head, every kiss, every touch between Edward and me… All of that was Aro’s now, too.
I hissed with frustration, and the shield roiled with my irritation, shifting its shape and contracting around our side.
“Easy, Bella,” Zafrina whispered to me. I clenched my teeth together.
Aro continued to concentrate on Edward’s memories. Edward’s head bowed, too, the muscles in his neck locking tight as he read back again everything that Aro took from him, and Aro’s response to it all.
This two-way but unequal conversation continued long enough that even the guard grew uneasy. Low murmurs ran through the line until Caius barked a sharp order for silence. Jane was edging forward like she couldn’t help herself, and Renata’s face was rigid with distress. For a moment, I examined this powerful shield that seemed so panicky and weak; though she was useful to Aro, I could tell she was no warrior. It was not her job to fight but to protect. There was no bloodlust in her. Raw as I was, I knew that if this were between her and me, I would obliterate her.
I refocused as Aro straightened, his eyes flashing open, their expression awed and wary. He did not release Edward’s hand.
Edward’s muscles loosened ever so slightly. “You see?” Edward asked, his velvet voice calm.
“Yes, I see, indeed,” Aro agreed, and amazingly, he sounded almost amused. “I doubt whether any two among gods or mortals have ever seen quite so clearly.”
The disciplined faces of the guard showed the same disbelief I felt.
“You have given me much to ponder, young friend,” Aro continued. “Much more than I expected.” Still he did not release Edward’s hand, and Edward’s tense stance was that of one who listens.
Edward didn’t answer.
“May I meet her?” Aro asked—almost pleaded—with sudden eager interest. “I never dreamed of the existence of such a thing in all my centuries. What an addition to our histories!”
“What is this about, Aro?” Caius snapped before Edward could answer. Just the question had me pulling Renesmee around into my arms, cradling her protectively against my chest.
“Something you’ve never dreamed of, my practical friend. Take a moment to ponder, for the justice we intended to deliver no longer applies.”
Caius hissed in surprise at his words. “Peace, brother,” Aro cautioned soothingly.
This should have been good news—these were the words we’d been hoping for, the reprieve we’d never really thought possible. Aro had listened to the truth. Aro had admitted that the law had not been broken.
But my eyes were riveted on Edward, and I saw the muscles in his back tighten. I replayed in my head Aro’s instruction for Caius to ponder, and heard the double meaning.
“Will you introduce me to your daughter?” Aro asked Edward again. Caius was not the only one who hissed at this new revelation.
Edward nodded reluctantly. And yet, Renesmee had won over so many others. Aro always seemed the leader of the ancients. If he were on her side, could the others act against us?
Aro still gripped Edward’s hand, and he now answered a question that the rest of us had not heard.
“I think a compromise on this one point is certainly acceptable, under the circumstance. We will meet in the middle.”
Aro released his hand. Edward turned back toward us, and Aro joined him, throwing one arm casually over Edward’s shoulder like they were the best of friends—all the while maintaining contact with Edward’s skin. They began to cross the field back to our side.
The entire guard fell into step behind them. Aro raised a hand negligently without looking at them.
“Hold, my dear ones. Truly, they mean us no harm if we are peaceable.”
The guard reacted to this more openly than before, with snarls and hisses of protest, but held their position. Renata, clinging closer to Aro than ever, whimpered in anxiety.
“Master,” she whispered.
“Don’t fret, my love,” he responded. “All is well.”
“Perhaps you should bring a few members of your guard with us,” Edward suggested. “It will make them more comfortable.”
Aro nodded as if this was a wise observation he should have thought of himself. He snapped his fingers twice. “Felix, Demetri.”
The two vampires were at his side instantaneously, looking precisely the same as the last time I’d met them. Both were tall and dark-haired, Demetri hard and lean as the blade of a sword, Felix hulking and menacing as an iron-spiked cudgel.
The five of them stopped in the middle of the snowy field.
“Bella,” Edward called. “Bring Renesmee… and a few friends.”
I took a deep breath. My body was tight with opposition. The idea of taking Renesmee into the center of the conflict… But I trusted Edward. He would know if Aro was planning any treachery at this point.
Aro had three protectors on his side of the summit, so I would bring two with me. It took me only a second to decide.
“Jacob? Emmett?” I asked quietly. Emmett, because he would be dying to go. Jacob, because he wouldn’t be able to bear being left behind.
Both nodded. Emmett grinned.
I crossed the field with them flanking me. I heard another rumble from the guard as they saw my choices—clearly, they did not trust the werewolf. Aro lifted his hand, waving away their protest again.
“Interesting company you keep,” Demetri murmured to Edward. Edward didn’t respond, but a low growl slipped through Jacob’s teeth.
We stopped a few yards from Aro. Edward ducked under Aro’s arm and quickly joined us, taking my hand.
For a moment we faced each other in silence. Then Felix greeted me in a low aside.
“Hello again, Bella.” He grinned cockily while still tracking Jacob’s every twitch with his peripheral vision.
I smiled wryly at the mountainous vampire. “Hey, Felix.” Felix chuckled. “You look good. Immortality suits you.” “Thanks so much.”
“You’re welcome. It’s too bad . . .”
He let his comment trail off into silence, but I didn’t need Edward’s gift to imagine the end. It’s too bad we’re going to kill you in a sec.
“Yes, too bad, isn’t it?” I murmured. Felix winked.
Aro paid no attention to our exchange. He leaned his head to one side, fascinated. “I hear her strange heart,” he murmured with an almost musical lilt to his words. “I smell her strange scent.” Then his hazy eyes shifted to me. “In truth, young Bella, immortality does become you most extraordinarily,” he said. “It is as if you were designed for this life.”
I nodded once in acknowledgment of his flattery.
“You liked my gift?” he asked, eyeing the pendant I wore.
“It’s beautiful, and very, very generous of you. Thank you. I probably should have sent a note.”
Aro laughed delightedly. “It’s just a little something I had lying around. I thought it might complement your new face, and so it does.”
I heard a little hiss from the center of the Volturi line. I glanced over Aro’s shoulder.
Hmm. It seemed Jane wasn’t happy about the fact that Aro had given me a present.
Aro cleared his throat to reclaim my attention. “May I greet your daughter, lovely Bella?” he asked sweetly.
This was what we’d hoped for, I reminded myself. Fighting the urge to take Renesmee and run for it, I walked two slow steps forward. My shield rippled out behind me like a cape, protecting the rest of my family while Renesmee was left exposed. It felt wrong, horrible.
Aro met us, his face beaming.
“But she’s exquisite,” he murmured. “So like you and Edward.” And then louder, “Hello, Renesmee.”
Renesmee looked at me quickly. I nodded.
“Hello, Aro,” she answered formally in her high, ringing voice. Aro’s eyes were bemused.
“What is it?” Caius hissed from behind. He seemed infuriated by the need to ask.
“Half mortal, half immortal,” Aro announced to him and the rest of the guard without turning his enthralled gaze from Renesmee. “Conceived so, and carried by this newborn while she was still human.”
“Impossible,” Caius scoffed.
“Do you think they’ve fooled me, then, brother?” Aro’s expression was greatly amused, but Caius flinched. “Is the heartbeat you hear a trickery as well?”
Caius scowled, looking as chagrined as if Aro’s gentle questions had been blows.
“Calmly and carefully, brother,” Aro cautioned, still smiling at Renesmee. “I know well how you love your justice, but there is no justice in acting against this unique little one for her parentage. And so much to learn, so much to learn! I know you don’t have my enthusiasm for collecting histories, but be tolerant with me, brother, as I add a chapter that stuns me with its improbability. We came expecting only justice and the sadness of false friends, but look what we have gained instead! A new, bright knowledge of ourselves, our possibilities.”
He held out his hand to Renesmee in invitation. But this was not what she wanted. She leaned away from me, stretching upward, to touch her fingertips to Aro’s face.
Aro did not react with shock as almost everyone else had reacted to this performance from Renesmee; he was as used to the flow of thought and memory from other minds as Edward was.
His smile widened, and he sighed in satisfaction. “Brilliant,” he whispered. Renesmee relaxed back into my arms, her little face very serious. “Please?” she asked him.
His smile turned gentle. “Of course I have no desire to harm your loved ones, precious Renesmee.”
Aro’s voice was so comforting and affectionate, it took me in for a second. And then I heard Edward’s teeth grind together and, far behind us, Maggie’s outraged hiss at the lie.
“I wonder,” Aro said thoughtfully, seeming unaware of the reaction to his previous words. His eyes moved unexpectedly to Jacob, and instead of the disgust the other Volturi viewed the giant wolf with, Aro’s eyes were filled with a longing that I did not comprehend.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Edward said, the careful neutrality gone from his suddenly harsh tone.
“Just an errant thought,” Aro said, appraising Jacob openly, and then his eyes moved slowly across the two lines of werewolves behind us. Whatever Renesmee had shown him, it made the wolves suddenly interesting to him.
“They don’t belong to us, Aro. They don’t follow our commands that way. They’re here because they want to be.”
Jacob growled menacingly.
“They seem quite attached to you, though,” Aro said. “And your young mate and your… family. Loyal.” His voice caressed the word softly.
“They’re committed to protecting human life, Aro. That makes them able to coexist with us, but hardly with you. Unless you’re rethinking your lifestyle.”
Aro laughed merrily. “Just an errant thought,” he repeated. “You well know how that is. We none of us can entirely control our subconscious desires.”
Edward grimaced. “I do know how that is. And I also know the difference between that kind of thought and the kind with a purpose behind it. It could never work, Aro.”
Jacob’s vast head turned in Edward’s direction, and a faint whine slipped from between his teeth.
“He’s intrigued with the idea of… guard dogs,” Edward murmured back.
There was one second of dead silence, and then the sound of the furious snarls ripping from the entire pack filled the giant clearing.
There was a sharp bark of command—from Sam, I guessed, though I didn’t turn to look—and the complaint broke off into ominous quiet.
“I suppose that answers that question,” Aro said, laughing again. “This lot has picked its side.”
Edward hissed and leaned forward. I clutched at his arm, wondering what could be in Aro’s thoughts that would make him react so violently, while Felix and Demetri slipped into crouches in synchronization. Aro waved them off again.
They all returned to their former posture, Edward included.
“So much to discuss,” Aro said, his tone suddenly that of an inundated businessman. “So much to decide. If you and your furry protector will excuse me, my dear Cullens, I must confer with my brothers.”
37. CONTRIVANCES
Aro did not rejoin his anxious guard waiting on the north side of the clearing; instead, he waved them forward.
Edward started backing up immediately, pulling my arm and Emmett’s. We hurried backward, keeping our eyes on the advancing threat. Jacob retreated slowest, the fur on his shoulders standing straight up as he bared his fangs at Aro. Renesmee grabbed the end of his tail as we retreated; she held it like a leash, forcing him to stay with us. We reached our family at the same time that the dark cloaks surrounded Aro again.
Now there were only fifty yards between them and us—a distance any of us could leap in just a fraction of a second.
Caius began arguing with Aro at once.
“How can you abide this infamy? Why do we stand here impotently in the face of such an outrageous crime, covered by such a ridiculous deception?” He held his arms rigidly at his sides, his hands curled into claws. I wondered why he did not just touch Aro to share his opinion. Were we seeing a division in their ranks already? Could we be that lucky?
“Because it’s all true,” Aro told him calmly. “Every word of it. See how many witnesses stand ready to give evidence that they have seen this miraculous child grow and mature in just the short time they’ve known her. That they have felt the warmth of the blood that pulses in her veins.” Aro’s gesture swept from Amun on one side across to Siobhan on the other.
Caius reacted oddly to Aro’s soothing words, starting ever so slightly at the mention of witnesses. The anger drained from his features, replaced by a cold calculation. He glanced at the Volturi witnesses with an expression that looked vaguely… nervous.
I glanced at the angry mob, too, and saw immediately that the description no longer applied. The frenzy for action had turned to confusion. Whispered conversations seethed through the crowd as they tried to make sense of what had happened.
Caius was frowning, deep in thought. His speculative expression stoked the flames of my smoldering anger at the same time that it worried me. What if the guard acted again on some invisible signal, as they had in their march?
Anxiously, I inspected my shield; it felt just as impenetrable as before. I flexed it now into a low, wide dome that arced over our company.
I could feel the sharp plumes of light where my family and friends stood—each one an individual flavor that I thought I would be able to recognize with practice. I already knew Edward’s—his was the very brightest of them all. The extra empty space around the shining spots bothered me; there was no physical barrier to the shield, and if any of the talented Volturi got under it, it would protect no one but me. I felt my forehead crease as I pulled the elastic armor very carefully closer.
Carlisle was the farthest forward; I sucked the shield back inch by inch, trying to wrap it as exactly to his body as I could.
My shield seemed to want to cooperate. It hugged his shape; when Carlisle shifted to the side to stand nearer to Tanya, the elastic stretched with him, drawn to his spark.
Fascinated, I tugged in more threads of the fabric, pulling it around each glimmering shape that was a friend or ally. The shield clung to them willingly, moving as they moved.
Only a second had passed; Caius was still deliberating. “The werewolves,” he murmured at last.
With sudden panic, I realized that most of the werewolves were unprotected. I was about to reach out to them when I realize that, strangely, I could still feel their sparks. Curious, I drew the shield tighter in, until Amun and Kebi—the farthest edge of our group—were outside with the wolves. Once they were on the other side, their lights vanished. They no longer existed to that new sense. But the wolves were still bright flames—or rather, half of them were. Hmm… I edged outward again, and as soon as Sam was under cover, all the wolves were brilliant sparks again.
Their minds must have been more interconnected than I’d imagined. If the Alpha was inside my shield, the rest of their minds were every bit as protected as his.
“Ah, brother…,” Aro answered Caius’s statement with a pained look.
“Will you defend that alliance, too, Aro?” Caius demanded. “The Children of the Moon have been our bitter enemies from the dawn of time. We have hunted them to near extinction in Europe and Asia. Yet Carlisle encourages a familiar relationship with this enormous infestation—no doubt in an attempt to overthrow us. The better to protect his warped lifestyle.”
Edward cleared his throat loudly and Caius glared at him. Aro placed one thin, delicate hand over his own face as if he was embarrassed for the other ancient.
“Caius, it’s the middle of the day,” Edward pointed out. He gestured to Jacob. “These are not Children of the Moon, clearly. They bear no relation to your enemies on the other side of the world.”
“You breed mutants here,” Caius spit back at him.
Edward’s jaw clenched and unclenched, then he answered evenly, “They aren’t even werewolves. Aro can tell you all about it if you don’t believe me.”
Not werewolves? I shot a mystified look at Jacob. He lifted his huge shoulders and let them drop—a shrug. He didn’t know what Edward was talking about, either.
“Dear Caius, I would have warned you not to press this point if you had told me your thoughts,” Aro murmured. “Though the creatures think of themselves as werewolves, they are not. The more accurate name for them would be shape- shifters. The choice of a wolf form was purely chance. It could have been a bear or a hawk or a panther when the first change was made. These creatures truly have nothing to do with the Children of the Moon. They have merely inherited this skill from their fathers. It’s genetic—they do not continue their species by infecting others the way true werewolves do.”
Caius glared at Aro with irritation and something more—an accusation of betrayal, maybe.
“They know our secret,” he said flatly.
Edward looked about to answer this accusation, but Aro spoke faster. “They are creatures of our supernatural world, brother. Perhaps even more dependent upon secrecy than we are; they can hardly expose us. Carefully, Caius. Specious allegations get us nowhere.”
Caius took a deep breath and nodded. They exchanged a long, significant glance.
I thought I understood the instruction behind Aro’s careful wording. False charges weren’t helping convince the watching witnesses on either side; Aro was cautioning Caius to move on to the next strategy. I wondered if the reason behind the apparent strain between the two ancients—Caius’s unwillingness to share his thoughts with a touch—was that Caius didn’t care about the show as much as Aro did. If the coming slaughter was so much more essential to Caius than an untarnished reputation.
“I want to talk to the informant,” Caius announced abruptly, and turned his glare on Irina.
Irina wasn’t paying attention to Caius and Aro’s conversation; her face was twisted in agony, her eyes locked on her sisters, lined up to die. It was clear on her face that she knew now her accusation had been totally false.
“Irina,” Caius barked, unhappy to have to address her.
She looked up, startled and instantly afraid. Caius snapped his fingers.
Hesitantly, she moved from the fringes of the Volturi formation to stand in front of Caius again.
“So you appear to have been quite mistaken in your allegations,” Caius began. Tanya and Kate leaned forward anxiously.
“I’m sorry,” Irina whispered. “I should have made sure of what I was seeing. But I had no idea ” She gestured helplessly in our direction.
“Dear Caius, could you expect her to have guessed in an instant something so strange and impossible?” Aro asked. “Any of us would have made the same assumption.”
Caius flicked his fingers at Aro to silence him.
“We all know you made a mistake,” he said brusquely. “I meant to speak of your motivations.”
Irina waited nervously for him to continue, and then repeated, “My motivations?” “Yes, for coming to spy on them in the first place.”
Irina flinched at the word spy.
“You were unhappy with the Cullens, were you not?”
She turned her miserable eyes to Carlisle’s face. “I was,” she admitted. “Because… ?” Caius prompted.
“Because the werewolves killed my friend,” she whispered. “And the Cullens wouldn’t stand aside to let me avenge him.”
“The shape-shifters,” Aro corrected quietly.
“So the Cullens sided with the shape-shifters against our own kind—against the friend of a friend, even,” Caius summarized.
I heard Edward make a disgusted sound under his breath. Caius was ticking down his list, looking for an accusation that would stick.
Irina’s shoulders stiffened. “That’s how I saw it.”
Caius waited again and then prompted, “If you’d like to make a formal complaint against the shape-shifters—and the Cullens for supporting their actions—now would be the time.” He smiled a tiny cruel smile, waiting for Irina to give him his next excuse.
Maybe Caius didn’t understand real families—relationships based on love rather than just the love of power. Maybe he overestimated the potency of vengeance.
Irina’s jaw jerked up, her shoulders squared.
“No, I have no complaint against the wolves, or the Cullens. You came here today to destroy an immortal child. No immortal child exists. This was my mistake, and I take full responsibility for it. But the Cullens are innocent, and you have no reason to still be here. I’m so sorry,” she said to us, and then she turned her face toward the Volturi witnesses. “There was no crime. There’s no valid reason for you to continue here.”
Caius raised his hand as she spoke, and in it was a strange metal object, carved and ornate.
This was a signal. The response was so fast that we all stared in stunned disbelief while it happened. Before there was time to react, it was over.
Three of the Volturi soldiers leaped forward, and Irina was completely obscured by their gray cloaks. In the same instant, a horrible metallic screeching ripped through the clearing. Caius slithered into the center of the gray melee, and the shocking squealing sound exploded into a startling upward shower of sparks and tongues of flame. The soldiers leaped back from the sudden inferno, immediately retaking their places in the guard’s perfectly straight line.
Caius stood alone beside the blazing remains of Irina, the metal object in his hand still throwing a thick jet of flame into the pyre.
With a small clicking sound, the fire shooting from Caius’s hand disappeared. A gasp rippled through the mass of witnesses behind the Volturi.
We were too aghast to make any noise at all. It was one thing to know that death was coming with fierce, unstoppable speed; it was another thing to watch it happen.
Caius smiled coldly. “Now she has taken full responsibility for her actions.”
His eyes flashed to our front line, touching swiftly on Tanya’s and Kate’s frozen forms.
In that second I understood that Caius had never underestimated the ties of a true family. This was the ploy. He had not wanted Irina’s complaint; he had
wanted her defiance. His excuse to destroy her, to ignite the violence that filled the air like a thick, combustible mist. He had thrown a match.
The strained peace of this summit already teetered more precariously than an elephant on a tightrope. Once the fight began, there would be no way to stop it. It would only escalate until one side was entirely extinct. Our side. Caius knew this.
So did Edward.
“Stop them!” Edward cried out, jumping to grab Tanya’s arm as she lurched forward toward the smiling Caius with a maddened cry of pure rage. She couldn’t shake Edward off before Carlisle had his arms locked around her waist.
“It’s too late to help her,” he reasoned urgently as she struggled. “Don’t give him what he wants!”
Kate was harder to contain. Shrieking wordlessly like Tanya, she broke into the first stride of the attack that would end with everyone’s death. Rosalie was closest to her, but before Rose could clinch her in a headlock, Kate shocked her so violently that Rose crumpled to the ground. Emmett caught Kate’s arm and threw her down, then staggered back, his knees giving out. Kate rolled to her feet, and it looked like no one could stop her.
Garrett flung himself at her, knocking her to the ground again. He bound his arms around hers, locking his hands around his own wrists. I saw his body spasm as she shocked him. His eyes rolled back in his head, but his hold did not break.
“Zafrina,” Edward shouted.
Kate’s eyes went blank and her screams turned to moans. Tanya stopped struggling.
“Give me my sight back,” Tanya hissed.
Desperately, but with all the delicacy I could manage, I pulled my shield even tighter against the sparks of my friends, peeling it back carefully from Kate while trying to keep it around Garrett, making it a thin skin between them.
And then Garrett was in command of himself again, holding Kate to the snow. “If I let you up, will you knock me down again, Katie?” he whispered.
She snarled in response, still thrashing blindly.
“Listen to me, Tanya, Kate,” Carlisle said in a low but intense whisper. “Vengeance doesn’t help her now. Irina wouldn’t want you to waste your lives this way. Think about what you’re doing. If you attack them, we all die.”
Tanya’s shoulders hunched with grief, and she leaned into Carlisle for support. Kate was finally still. Carlisle and Garrett continued to console the sisters with words too urgent to sound like comfort.
And my attention returned to the weight of the stares that pressed down on our moment of chaos. From the corners of my eyes, I could see that Edward and everyone else besides Carlisle and Garrett were on their guard again as well.
The heaviest glare came from Caius, staring with enraged disbelief at Kate and Garrett in the snow. Aro was watching the same two, incredulity the strongest emotion on his face. He knew what Kate could do. He had felt her potency through Edward’s memories.
Did he understand what was happening now—did he see that my shield had grown in strength and subtlety far beyond what Edward knew me to be capable of? Or did he think Garrett had learned his own form of immunity?
The Volturi guard no longer stood at disciplined attention—they were crouched forward, waiting to spring the counterstrike the moment we attacked.
Behind them, forty-three witnesses watched with very different expressions than the ones they’d worn entering the clearing. Confusion had turned to suspicion.
The lightning-fast destruction of Irina had shaken them all. What had been her crime?
Without the immediate attack that Caius had counted on to distract from his rash act, the Volturi witnesses were left questioning exactly what was going on here.
Aro glanced back swiftly while I watched, his face betraying him with one flash of vexation. His need for an audience had backfired badly.
I heard Stefan and Vladimir murmur to each other in quiet glee at Aro’s discomfort.
Aro was obviously concerned with keeping his white hat, as the Romanians had put it. But I didn’t believe that the Volturi would leave us in peace just to save their reputation. After they finished with us, surely they would slaughter their witnesses for that purpose. I felt a strange, sudden pity for the mass of the strangers the Volturi had brought to watch us die. Demetri would hunt them until they were extinct, too.
For Jacob and Renesmee, for Alice and Jasper, for Alistair, and for these strangers who had not known what today would cost them, Demetri had to die.
Aro touched Caius’s shoulder lightly. “Irina has been punished for bearing false witness against this child.” So that was to be their excuse. He went on. “Perhaps we should return to the matter at hand?”
Caius straightened, and his expression hardened into unreadability. He stared forward, seeing nothing. His face reminded me, oddly, of a person who’d just learned he’d been demoted.
Aro drifted forward, Renata, Felix, and Demetri automatically moving with him. “Just to be thorough,” he said, “I’d like to speak with a few of your witnesses.
Procedure, you know.” He waved a hand dismissively.
Two things happened at once. Caius’s eyes focused on Aro, and the tiny cruel smile came back. And Edward hissed, his hands balling up in fists so tight it looked like the bones in his knuckles would split through his diamond-hard skin.
I was desperate to ask him what was going on, but Aro was close enough to hear even the quietest breath. I saw Carlisle glance anxiously at Edward’s face, and then his own face hardened.
While Caius had blundered through useless accusations and injudicious attempts to trigger the fight, Aro must have been coming up with a more effective strategy.
Aro ghosted across the snow to the far western end of our line, stopping about ten yards from Amun and Kebi. The nearby wolves bristled angrily but held their positions.
“Ah, Amun, my southern neighbor!” Aro said warmly. “It has been so long since you’ve visited me.”
Amun was motionless with anxiety, Kebi a statue at his side. “Time means little; I never notice its passing,” Amun said through unmoving lips.
“So true,” Aro agreed. “But maybe you had another reason to stay away?” Amun said nothing.
“It can be terribly time-consuming to organize newcomers into a coven. I know that well! I’m grateful I have others to deal with the tedium. I’m glad your new additions have fit in so well. I would have loved to have been introduced. I’m sure you were meaning to come to see me soon.”
“Of course,” Amun said, his tone so emotionless that it was impossible to tell if there was any fear or sarcasm in his assent.
“Oh well, we’re all together now! Isn’t it lovely?” Amun nodded, his face blank.
“But the reason for your presence here is not as pleasant, unfortunately. Carlisle called on you to witness?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you witness for him?”
Amun spoke with the same cold lack of emotion. “I’ve observed the child in question. It was evident almost immediately that she was not an immortal child— ”
“Perhaps we should define our terminology,” Aro interrupted, “now that there seem to be new classifications. By immortal child, you mean of course a human child who had been bitten and thus transformed into a vampire.”
“Yes, that’s what I meant.”
“What else did you observe about the child?”
“The same things that you surely saw in Edward’s mind. That the child is his biologically. That she grows. That she learns.”
“Yes, yes,” Aro said, a hint of impatience in his otherwise amiable tone. “But specifically in your few weeks here, what did you see?”
Amun’s brow furrowed. “That she grows… quickly.”
Aro smiled. “And do you believe that she should be allowed to live?”
A hiss escaped my lips, and I was not alone. Half the vampires in our line echoed my protest. The sound was a low sizzle of fury hanging in the air. Across the meadow, a few of the Volturi witnesses made the same noise. Edward stepped back and wrapped a restraining hand around my wrist.
Aro did not turn to the noise, but Amun glanced around uneasily. “I did not come to make judgments,” he equivocated.
Aro laughed lightly. “Just your opinion.”
Amun’s chin lifted. “I see no danger in the child. She learns even more swiftly than she grows.”
Aro nodded, considering. After a moment, he turned away. “Aro?” Amun called.
Aro whirled back. “Yes, friend?”
“I gave my witness. I have no more business here. My mate and I would like to take our leave now.”
Aro smiled warmly. “Of course. I’m so glad we were able to chat for a bit. And I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon.”
Amun’s lips were a tight line as he inclined his head once, acknowledging the barely concealed threat. He touched Kebi’s arm, and then the two of them ran quickly to the southern edge of the meadow and disappeared into the trees. I knew they wouldn’t stop running for a very long time.
Aro was gliding back along the length of our line to the east, his guards hovering tensely. He stopped when he was in front of Siobhan’s massive form.
“Hello, dear Siobhan. You are as lovely as ever.” Siobhan inclined her head, waiting.
“And you?” he asked. “Would you answer my questions the same way Amun has?”
“I would,” Siobhan said. “But I would perhaps add a little more. Renesmee understands the limitations. She’s no danger to humans—she blends in better than we do. She poses no threat of exposure.”
“Can you think of none?” Aro asked soberly.
Edward growled, a low ripping sound deep in his throat. Caius’s cloudy crimson eyes brightened.
Renata reached out protectively toward her master.
And Garrett freed Kate to take a step forward, ignoring Kate’s hand as she tried to caution him this time.
Siobhan answered slowly, “I don’t think I follow you.”
Aro drifted lightly back, casually, but toward the rest of his guard. Renata, Felix, and Demetri were closer than his shadow.
“There is no broken law,” Aro said in a placating voice, but every one of us could hear that a qualification was coming. I fought back the rage that tried to claw its way up my throat and snarl out my defiance. I hurled the fury into my shield, thickening it, making sure everyone was protected.
“No broken law,” Aro repeated. “However, does it follow then that there is no danger? No.” He shook his head gently. “That is a separate issue.”
The only response was the tightening of already stretched nerves, and Maggie, at the fringes of our band of fighters, shaking her head with slow anger.
Aro paced thoughtfully, looking as if he floated rather than touched the ground with his feet. I noticed every pass took him closer to the protection of his guard.
“She is unique… utterly, impossibly unique. Such a waste it would be, to destroy something so lovely. Especially when we could learn so much . . .” He sighed, as if unwilling to go on. “But there is danger, danger that cannot simply be ignored.”
No one answered his assertion. It was dead silent as he continued in a monologue that sounded as if he spoke it for himself only.
“How ironic it is that as the humans advance, as their faith in science grows and controls their world, the more free we are from discovery. Yet, as we become ever more uninhibited by their disbelief in the supernatural, they become strong enough in their technologies that, if they wished, they could actually pose a threat to us, even destroy some of us.
“For thousands and thousands of years, our secrecy has been more a matter of convenience, of ease, than of actual safety. This last raw, angry century has given birth to weapons of such power that they endanger even immortals. Now our status as mere myth in truth protects us from these weak creatures we hunt.
“This amazing child”—he lifted his hand palm down as if to rest it on Renesmee, though he was forty yards from her now, almost within the Volturi formation again—“if we could but know her potential—know with absolute certainty that she could always remain shrouded within the obscurity that protects us. But we know nothing of what she will become! Her own parents are plagued by fears of her future. We cannot know what she will grow to be.” He paused, looking first at our witnesses, and then, meaningfully, at his own. His voice gave a good imitation of sounding torn by his words.
Still looking at his own witnesses, he spoke again. “Only the known is safe. Only the known is tolerable. The unknown is… a vulnerability.”
Caius’s smile widened viciously.
“You’re reaching, Aro,” Carlisle said in a bleak voice.
“Peace, friend.” Aro smiled, his face as kind, his voice as gentle, as ever. “Let us not be hasty. Let us look at this from every side.”
“May I offer a side to be considered?” Garrett petitioned in a level tone, taking another step forward.
“Nomad,” Aro said, nodding in permission.
Garrett’s chin lifted. His eyes focused on the huddled mass at the end of the meadow, and he spoke directly to the Volturi witnesses.
“I came here at Carlisle’s request, as the others, to witness,” he said. “That is certainly no longer necessary, with regard to the child. We all see what she is.
“I stayed to witness something else. You.” He jabbed his finger toward the wary vampires. “Two of you I know—Makenna, Charles—and I can see that many of you others are also wanderers, roamers like myself. Answering to none. Think carefully on what I tell you now.
“These ancient ones did not come here for justice as they told you. We suspected as much, and now it has been proved. They came, misled, but with a valid excuse for their action. Witness now as they seek flimsy excuses to continue their true mission. Witness them struggle to find a justification for their true purpose—to destroy this family here.” He gestured toward Carlisle and Tanya.
“The Volturi come to erase what they perceive as the competition. Perhaps, like me, you look at this clan’s golden eyes and marvel. They are difficult to understand, it’s true. But the ancient ones look and see something besides their strange choice. They see power.
“I have witnessed the bonds within this family—I say family and not coven. These strange golden-eyed ones deny their very natures. But in return have they found something worth even more, perhaps, than mere gratification of desire? I’ve made a little study of them in my time here, and it seems to me that intrinsic to this intense family binding—that which makes them possible at all—is the peaceful character of this life of sacrifice. There is no aggression here like we all saw in the large southern clans that grew and diminished so quickly in their wild feuds. There is no thought for domination. And Aro knows this better than I do.”
I watched Aro’s face as Garrett’s words condemned him, waiting tensely for some response. But Aro’s face was only politely amused, as if waiting for a tantrum- throwing child to realize that no one was paying attention to his histrionics.
“Carlisle assured us all, when he told us what was coming, that he did not call us here to fight. These witnesses”—Garrett pointed to Siobhan and Liam—“agreed to give evidence, to slow the Volturi advance with their presence so that Carlisle would get the chance to present his case.
“But some of us wondered”—his eyes flashed to Eleazar’s face—“if Carlisle having truth on his side would be enough to stop the so-called justice. Are the Volturi
here to protect the safety of our secrecy, or to protect their own power? Did they come to destroy an illegal creation, or a way of life? Could they be satisfied when the danger turned out to be no more than a misunderstanding? Or would they push the issue without the excuse of justice?
“We have the answer to all these questions. We heard it in Aro’s lying words—we have one with a gift of knowing such things for certain—and we see it now in Caius’s eager smile. Their guard is just a mindless weapon, a tool in their masters’ quest for domination.
“So now there are more questions, questions that you must answer. Who rules you, nomads? Do you answer to someone’s will besides your own? Are you free to choose your path, or will the Volturi decide how you will live?
“I came to witness. I stay to fight. The Volturi care nothing for the death of the child. They seek the death of our free will.”
He turned, then, to face the ancients. “So come, I say! Let’s hear no more lying rationalizations. Be honest in your intents as we will be honest in ours. We will defend our freedom. You will or will not attack it. Choose now, and let these witnesses see the true issue debated here.”
Once more he looked to the Volturi witnesses, his eyes probing each face. The power of his words was evident in their expressions. “You might consider joining us. If you think the Volturi will let you live to tell this tale, you are mistaken. We may all be destroyed”—he shrugged—“but then again, maybe not. Perhaps we are on more equal footing than they know. Perhaps the Volturi have finally met their match. I promise you this, though—if we fall, so do you.”
He ended his heated speech by stepping back to Kate’s side and then sliding forward in a half-crouch, prepared for the onslaught.
Aro smiled. “A very pretty speech, my revolutionary friend.”
Garrett remained poised for attack. “Revolutionary?” he growled. “Who am I revolting against, might I ask? Are you my king? Do you wish me to call you master, too, like your sycophantic guard?”
“Peace, Garrett,” Aro said tolerantly. “I meant only to refer to your time of birth. Still a patriot, I see.”
Garrett glared back furiously.
“Let us ask our witnesses,” Aro suggested. “Let us hear their thoughts before we make our decision. Tell us, friends”—and he turned his back casually on us, moving a few yards toward his mass of nervous observers hovering even closer now to the edge of the forest—“what do you think of all this? I can assure you the
child is not what we feared. Do we take the risk and let the child live? Do we put our world in jeopardy to preserve their family intact? Or does earnest Garrett have the right of it? Will you join them in a fight against our sudden quest for dominion?”
The witnesses met his gaze with careful faces. One, a small black-haired woman, looked briefly at the dark blond male at her side.
“Are those our only choices?” she asked suddenly, gaze flashing back to Aro. “Agree with you, or fight against you?”
“Of course not, most charming Makenna,” Aro said, appearing horrified that anyone could come to that conclusion. “You may go in peace, of course, as Amun did, even if you disagree with the council’s decision.”
Makenna looked at her mate’s face again, and he nodded minutely.
“We did not come here for a fight.” She paused, exhaled, then said, “We came here to witness. And our witness is that this condemned family is innocent.
Everything that Garrett claimed is the truth.”
“Ah,” Aro said sadly. “I’m sorry you see us in that way. But such is the nature of our work.”
“It is not what I see, but what I feel,” Makenna’s maize-haired mate spoke in a high, nervous voice. He glanced at Garrett. “Garrett said they have ways of knowing lies. I, too, know when I am hearing the truth, and when I am not.” With frightened eyes he moved closer to his mate, waiting for Aro’s reaction.
“Do not fear us, friend Charles. No doubt the patriot truly believes what he says,” Aro chuckled lightly, and Charles’s eyes narrowed.
“That is our witness,” Makenna said. “We’re leaving now.”
She and Charles backed away slowly, not turning before they were lost from view in the trees. One other stranger began to retreat the same way, then three more darted after him.
I evaluated the thirty-seven vampires that stayed. A few of them appeared just too confused to make the decision. But the majority of them seemed only too aware of the direction this confrontation had taken. I guessed that they were giving up a head start in favor of knowing exactly who would be chasing after them.
I was sure Aro saw the same thing I did. He turned away, walking back to his guard with a measured pace. He stopped in front of them and addressed them in a clear voice.
“We are outnumbered, dearest ones,” he said. “We can expect no outside help. Should we leave this question undecided to save ourselves?”
“No, master,” they whispered in unison.
“Is the protection of our world worth perhaps the loss of some of our number?” “Yes,” they breathed. “We are not afraid.”
Aro smiled and turned to his black-clad companions. “Brothers,” Aro said somberly, “there is much to consider here.” “Let us counsel,” Caius said eagerly.
“Let us counsel,” Marcus repeated in an uninterested tone.
Aro turned his back to us again, facing the other ancients. They joined hands to form a black-shrouded triangle.
As soon as Aro’s attention was engaged in the silent counsel, two more of their witnesses disappeared silently into the forest. I hoped, for their sakes, that they were fast.
This was it. Carefully, I loosened Renesmee’s arms from my neck. “You remember what I told you?”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she nodded. “I love you,” she whispered.
Edward was watching us now, his topaz eyes wide. Jacob stared at us from the corner of his big dark eye.
“I love you, too,” I said, and then I touched her locket. “More than my own life.” I kissed her forehead.
Jacob whined uneasily.
I stretched up on my toes and whispered into his ear. “Wait until they’re totally distracted, then run with her. Get as far from this place as you possibly can.
When you’ve gone as far as you can on foot, she has what you need to get you in the air.”
Edward’s and Jacob’s faces were almost identical masks of horror, despite the fact that one of them was an animal.
Renesmee reached for Edward, and he took her in his arms. They hugged each other tightly.
“This is what you kept from me?” he whispered over her head. “From Aro,” I breathed.
“Alice?”
I nodded.
His face twisted with understanding and pain. Had that been the expression on my face when I’d finally put together Alice’s clues?
Jacob was growling quietly, a low rasp that was as even and unbroken as a purr. His hackles were stiff and his teeth exposed.
Edward kissed Renesmee’s forehead and both her cheeks, then he lifted her to Jacob’s shoulder. She scrambled agilely onto his back, pulling herself into place with handfuls of his fur, and fit herself easily into the dip between his massive shoulder blades.
Jacob turned to me, his expressive eyes full of agony, the rumbling growl still grating through his chest.
“You’re the only one we could ever trust her with,” I murmured to him. “If you didn’t love her so much, I could never bear this. I know you can protect her, Jacob.”
He whined again, and dipped his head to butt it against my shoulder.
“I know,” I whispered. “I love you, too, Jake. You’ll always be my best man.” A tear the size of a baseball rolled into the russet fur beneath his eye.
Edward leaned his head against the same shoulder where he’d placed Renesmee. “Goodbye, Jacob, my brother… my son.”
The others were not oblivious to the farewell scene. Their eyes were locked on the silent black triangle, but I could tell they were listening.
“Is there no hope, then?” Carlisle whispered. There was no fear in his voice. Just determination and acceptance.
“There is absolutely hope,” I murmured back. It could be true, I told myself. “I only know my own fate.”
Edward took my hand. He knew that he was included. When I said my fate, there was no question that I meant the two of us. We were just halves of the whole.
Esme’s breath was ragged behind me. She moved past us, touching our faces as she passed, to stand beside Carlisle and hold his hand.
Suddenly, we were surrounded by murmured goodbyes and I love you’s.
“If we live through this,” Garrett whispered to Kate, “I’ll follow you anywhere, woman.”
“Now he tells me,” she muttered.
Rosalie and Emmett kissed quickly but passionately.
Tia caressed Benjamin’s face. He smiled back cheerfully, catching her hand and holding it against his cheek.
I didn’t see all the expressions of love and pain. I was distracted by a sudden fluttering pressure against the outside of my shield. I couldn’t tell where it came from, but it felt like it was directed at the edges of our group, Siobhan and Liam particularly. The pressure did no damage, and then it was gone.
There was no change in the silent, still forms of the counseling ancients. But perhaps there was some signal I’d missed.
“Get ready,” I whispered to the others. “It’s starting.”
38. POWER
“Chelsea is trying to break our bindings,” Edward whispered. “But she can’t find them. She can’t feel us here ” His eyes cut to me. “Are you doing that?”
I smiled grimly at him. “I am all over this.”
Edward lurched away from me suddenly, his hand reaching out toward Carlisle. At the same time, I felt a much sharper jab against the shield where it wrapped protectively around Carlisle’s light. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t pleasant, either.
“Carlisle? Are you all right?” Edward gasped frantically. “Yes. Why?”
“Jane,” Edward answered.
The moment that he said her name, a dozen pointed attacks hit in a second, stabbing all over the elastic shield, aimed at twelve different bright spots. I flexed, making sure the shield was undamaged. It didn’t seem like Jane had been able to pierce it. I glanced around quickly; everyone was fine.
“Incredible,” Edward said.
“Why aren’t they waiting for the decision?” Tanya hissed.
“Normal procedure,” Edward answered brusquely. “They usually incapacitate those on trial so they can’t escape.”
I looked across at Jane, who was staring at our group with furious disbelief. I was pretty sure that, besides me, she’d never seen anyone remain standing through her fiery assault.
It probably wasn’t very mature. But I figured it would take Aro about half a second to guess—if he hadn’t already—that my shield was more powerful than Edward had known; I already had a big target on my forehead and there was really no point in trying to keep the extent of what I could do a secret. So I grinned a huge, smug smile right at Jane.
Her eyes narrowed, and I felt another stab of pressure, this time directed at me. I pulled my lips wider, showing my teeth.
Jane let out a high-pitched scream of a snarl. Everyone jumped, even the disciplined guard. Everyone but the ancients, who didn’t so much as look up from their conference. Her twin caught her arm as she crouched to spring.
The Romanians started chuckling with dark anticipation. “I told you this was our time,” Vladimir said to Stefan. “Just look at the witch’s face,” Stefan chortled.
Alec patted his sister’s shoulder soothingly, then tucked her under his arm. He turned his face to us, perfectly smooth, completely angelic.
I waited for some pressure, some sign of his attack, but I felt nothing. He continued to stare in our direction, his pretty face composed. Was he attacking? Was he getting through my shield? Was I the only one who could still see him? I clutched at Edward’s hand.
“Are you okay?” I choked out. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Is Alec trying?”
Edward nodded. “His gift is slower than Jane’s. It creeps. It will touch us in a few seconds.”
I saw it then, when I had a clue of what to look for.
A strange clear haze was oozing across the snow, nearly invisible against the white. It reminded me of a mirage—a slight warping of the view, a hint of a shimmer. I pushed my shield out from Carlisle and the rest of the front line, afraid to have the slinking mist too close when it hit. What if it stole right through my intangible protection? Should we run?
A low rumbling murmured through the ground under our feet, and a gust of wind blew the snow into sudden flurries between our position and the Volturi’s.
Benjamin had seen the creeping threat, too, and now he tried to blow the mist away from us. The snow made it easy to see where he threw the wind, but the mist didn’t react in any way. It was like air blowing harmlessly through a shadow; the shadow was immune.
The triangular formation of the ancients finally broke apart when, with a racking groan, a deep, narrow fissure opened in a long zigzag across the middle of the clearing. The earth rocked under my feet for a moment. The drifts of snow plummeted into the hole, but the mist skipped right across it, as untouched by gravity as it had been by wind.
Aro and Caius watched the opening earth with wide eyes. Marcus looked in the same direction without emotion.
They didn’t speak; they waited, too, as the mist approached us. The wind shrieked louder but didn’t change the course of the mist. Jane was smiling now.
And then the mist hit a wall.
I could taste it as soon as it touched my shield—it had a dense, sweet, cloying flavor. It made me remember dimly the numbness of Novocain on my tongue.
The mist curled upward, seeking a breach, a weakness. It found none. The fingers of searching haze twisted upward and around, trying to find a way in, and in the process illustrating the astonishing size of the protective screen.
There were gasps on both sides of Benjamin’s gorge. “Well done, Bella!” Benjamin cheered in a low voice. My smile returned.
I could see Alec’s narrowed eyes, doubt on his face for the first time as his mist swirled harmlessly around the edges of my shield.
And then I knew that I could do this. Obviously, I would be the number-one priority, the first one to die, but as long as I held, we were on more than equal footing with the Volturi. We still had Benjamin and Zafrina; they had no supernatural help at all. As long as I held.
“I’m going to have to concentrate,” I whispered to Edward. “When it comes to hand to hand, it’s going to be harder to keep the shield around the right people.”
“I’ll keep them off you.”
“No. You have to get to Demetri. Zafrina will keep them away from me.”
Zafrina nodded solemnly. “No one will touch this young one,” she promised Edward.
“I’d go after Jane and Alec myself, but I can do more good here.” “Jane’s mine,” Kate hissed. “She needs a taste of her own medicine.”
“And Alec owes me many lives, but I will settle for his,” Vladimir growled from the other side. “He’s mine.”
“I just want Caius,” Tanya said evenly.
The others started divvying up opponents, too, but they were quickly interrupted. Aro, staring calmly at Alec’s ineffective mist, finally spoke.
“Before we vote,” he began.
I shook my head angrily. I was tired of this charade. The bloodlust was igniting in me again, and I was sorry that I would help the others more by standing still. I wanted to fight.
“Let me remind you,” Aro continued, “whatever the council’s decision, there need be no violence here.”
Edward snarled out a dark laugh.
Aro stared at him sadly. “It will be a regrettable waste to our kind to lose any of you. But you especially, young Edward, and your newborn mate. The Volturi would be glad to welcome many of you into our ranks. Bella, Benjamin, Zafrina, Kate. There are many choices before you. Consider them.”
Chelsea’s attempt to sway us fluttered impotently against my shield. Aro’s gaze swept across our hard eyes, looking for any indication of hesitation. From his expression, he found none.
I knew he was desperate to keep Edward and me, to imprison us the way he had hoped to enslave Alice. But this fight was too big. He would not win if I lived. I was fiercely glad to be so powerful that I left him no way not to kill me.
“Let us vote, then,” he said with apparent reluctance.
Caius spoke with eager haste. “The child is an unknown quantity. There is no reason to allow such a risk to exist. It must be destroyed, along with all who protect it.” He smiled in expectation.
I fought back a shriek of defiance to answer his cruel smirk.
Marcus lifted his uncaring eyes, seeming to look through us as he voted.
“I see no immediate danger. The child is safe enough for now. We can always reevaluate later. Let us leave in peace.” His voice was even fainter than his brothers’ feathery sighs.
None of the guard relaxed their ready positions at his disagreeing words. Caius’s anticipatory grin did not falter. It was as if Marcus hadn’t spoken at all.
“I must make the deciding vote, it seems,” Aro mused.
Suddenly, Edward stiffened at my side. “Yes!” he hissed.
I risked a glance at him. His face glowed with an expression of triumph that I didn’t understand—it was the expression an angel of destruction might wear while the world burned. Beautiful and terrifying.
There was a low reaction from the guard, an uneasy murmur.
“Aro?” Edward called, nearly shouted, undisguised victory in his voice.
Aro hesitated for a second, assessing this new mood warily before he answered. “Yes, Edward? You have something further… ?”
“Perhaps,” Edward said pleasantly, controlling his unexplained excitement. “First, if I could clarify one point?”
“Certainly,” Aro said, raising his eyebrows, nothing now but polite interest in his tone. My teeth ground together; Aro was never more dangerous than when he was gracious.
“The danger you foresee from my daughter—this stems entirely from our inability to guess how she will develop? That is the crux of the matter?”
“Yes, friend Edward,” Aro agreed. “If we could but be positive… be sure that, as she grows, she will be able to stay concealed from the human world—not endanger the safety of our obscurity . . .” He trailed off, shrugging.
“So, if we could only know for sure,” Edward suggested, “exactly what she will become… then there would be no need for a council at all?”
“If there was some way to be absolutely sure,” Aro agreed, his feathery voice slightly more shrill. He couldn’t see where Edward was leading him. Neither could I. “Then, yes, there would be no question to debate.”
“And we would part in peace, good friends once again?” Edward asked with a hint of irony.
Even more shrill. “Of course, my young friend. Nothing would please me more.” Edward chuckled exultantly. “Then I do have something more to offer.”
Aro’s eyes narrowed. “She is absolutely unique. Her future can only be guessed at.”
“Not absolutely unique,” Edward disagreed. “Rare, certainly, but not one of a kind.”
I fought the shock, the sudden hope springing to life, as it threatened to distract me. The sickly-looking mist still swirled around the edges of my shield. And, as I struggled to focus, I felt again the sharp, stabbing pressure against my protective hold.
“Aro, would you ask Jane to stop attacking my wife?” Edward asked courteously. “We are still discussing evidence.”
Aro raised one hand. “Peace, dear ones. Let us hear him out.”
The pressure disappeared. Jane bared her teeth at me; I couldn’t help grinning back at her.
“Why don’t you join us, Alice?” Edward called loudly. “Alice,” Esme whispered in shock.
Alice!
Alice, Alice, Alice!
“Alice!” “Alice!” other voices murmured around me. “Alice,” Aro breathed.
Relief and violent joy surged through me. It took all my will to keep the shield where it was. Alec’s mist still tested, seeking a weakness—Jane would see if I left any holes.
And then I heard them running through the forest, flying, closing the distance as quickly as they could with no slowing effort at silence.
Both sides were motionless in expectation. The Volturi witnesses scowled in fresh confusion.
Then Alice danced into the clearing from the southwest, and I felt like the bliss of seeing her face again might knock me off my feet. Jasper was only inches behind her, his sharp eyes fierce. Close after them ran three strangers; the first was a tall, muscular female with wild dark hair—obviously Kachiri. She had the same elongated limbs and features as the other Amazons, even more pronounced in her case.
The next was a small olive-toned female vampire with a long braid of black hair bobbing against her back. Her deep burgundy eyes flitted nervously around the confrontation before her.
And the last was a young man… not quite as fast nor quite as fluid in his run. His skin was an impossible rich, dark brown. His wary eyes flashed across the gathering, and they were the color of warm teak. His hair was black and braided, too, like the woman’s, though not as long. He was beautiful.
As he neared us, a new sound sent shock waves through the watching crowd—the sound of another heartbeat, accelerated with exertion.
Alice leaped lightly over the edges of the dissipating mist that lapped at my shield and came to a sinuous stop at Edward’s side. I reached out to touch her arm, and so did Edward, Esme, Carlisle. There wasn’t time for any other welcome. Jasper and the others followed her through the shield.
All the guard watched, speculation in their eyes, as the latecomers crossed the invisible border without difficulty. The brawny ones, Felix and the others like him, focused their suddenly hopeful eyes on me. They had not been sure of what my shield repelled, but it was clear now that it would not stop a physical attack. As soon as Aro gave the order, the blitz would ensue, me the only object. I wondered how many Zafrina would be able to blind, and how much that would slow them. Long enough for Kate and Vladimir to take Jane and Alec out of the equation? That was all I could ask for.
Edward, despite his absorption in the coup he was directing, stiffened furiously in response to their thoughts. He controlled himself and spoke to Aro again.
“Alice has been searching for her own witnesses these last weeks,” he said to the ancient. “And she does not come back empty-handed. Alice, why don’t you introduce the witnesses you’ve brought?”
Caius snarled. “The time for witnesses is past! Cast your vote, Aro!”
Aro raised one finger to silence his brother, his eyes glued to Alice’s face.
Alice stepped forward lightly and introduced the strangers. “This is Huilen and her nephew, Nahuel.”
Hearing her voice… it was like she’d never left.
Caius’s eyes tightened as Alice named the relationship between the newcomers. The Volturi witnesses hissed amongst themselves. The vampire world was changing, and everyone could feel it.
“Speak, Huilen,” Aro commanded. “Give us the witness you were brought to bear.”
The slight woman looked to Alice nervously. Alice nodded in encouragement, and Kachiri put her long hand on the little vampire’s shoulder.
“I am Huilen,” the woman announced in clear but strangely accented English. As she continued, it was apparent she had prepared herself to tell this story, that she had practiced. It flowed like a well-known nursery rhyme. “A century and a half ago, I lived with my people, the Mapuche. My sister was Pire. Our parents named her after the snow on the mountains because of her fair skin. And she was very beautiful—too beautiful. She came to me one day in secret and told me of the angel that found her in the woods, that visited her by night. I warned her.” Huilen shook her head mournfully. “As if the bruises on her skin were not warning enough. I knew it was the Libishomen of our legends, but she would not listen.
She was bewitched.
“She told me when she was sure her dark angel’s child was growing inside her. I didn’t try to discourage her from her plan to run away—I knew even our father and mother would agree that the child must be destroyed, Pire with it. I went with her into the deepest parts of the forest. She searched for her demon angel but found nothing. I cared for her, hunted for her when her strength failed. She ate the animals raw, drinking their blood. I needed no more confirmation of what she carried in her womb. I hoped to save her life before I killed the monster.
“But she loved the child inside her. She called him Nahuel, after the jungle cat, when he grew strong and broke her bones—and loved him still.
“I could not save her. The child ripped his way free of her, and she died quickly, begging all the while that I would care for her Nahuel. Her dying wish—and I agreed.
“He bit me, though, when I tried to lift him from her body. I crawled away into the jungle to die. I didn’t get far—the pain was too much. But he found me; the newborn child struggled through the underbrush to my side and waited for me. When the pain ended, he was curled against my side, sleeping.
“I cared for him until he was able to hunt for himself. We hunted the villages around our forest, staying to ourselves. We have never come so far from our home, but Nahuel wished to see the child here.”
Huilen bowed her head when she was finished and moved back so she was partially hidden behind Kachiri.
Aro’s lips were pursed. He stared at the dark-skinned youth. “Nahuel, you are one hundred and fifty years old?” he questioned.
“Give or take a decade,” he answered in a clear, beautifully warm voice. His accent was barely noticeable. “We don’t keep track.”
“And you reached maturity at what age?”
“About seven years after my birth, more or less, I was full grown.” “You have not changed since then?”
Nahuel shrugged. “Not that I’ve noticed.”
I felt a shudder tremble through Jacob’s body. I didn’t want to think about this yet. I would wait till the danger was past and I could concentrate.
“And your diet?” Aro pressed, seeming interested in spite of himself. “Mostly blood, but some human food, too. I can survive on either.”
“You were able to create an immortal?” As Aro gestured to Huilen, his voice was abruptly intense. I refocused on my shield; perhaps he was seeking a new excuse.
“Yes, but none of the rest can.”
A shocked murmur ran through all three groups. Aro’s eyebrows shot up. “The rest?”
“My sisters.” Nahuel shrugged again.
Aro stared wildly for a moment before composing his face.
“Perhaps you would tell us the rest of your story, for there seems to be more.” Nahuel frowned.
“My father came looking for me a few years after my mother’s death.” His handsome face distorted slightly. “He was pleased to find me.” Nahuel’s tone suggested the feeling was not mutual. “He had two daughters, but no sons. He expected me to join him, as my sisters had.
“He was surprised I was not alone. My sisters are not venomous, but whether that’s due to gender or a random chance… who knows? I already had my family with Huilen, and I was not interested”—he twisted the word—“in making a change. I see him from time to time. I have a new sister; she reached maturity about ten years back.”
“Your father’s name?” Caius asked through gritted teeth.
“Joham,” Nahuel answered. “He considers himself a scientist. He thinks he’s creating a new super-race.” He made no attempt to disguise the disgust in his tone.
Caius looked at me. “Your daughter, is she venomous?” he demanded harshly.
“No,” I responded. Nahuel’s head snapped up at Aro’s question, and his teak eyes turned to bore into my face.
Caius looked to Aro for confirmation, but Aro was absorbed in his own thoughts. He pursed his lips and stared at Carlisle, and then Edward, and at last his eyes rested on me.
Caius growled. “We take care of the aberration here, and then follow it south,” he urged Aro.
Aro stared into my eyes for a long, tense moment. I had no idea what he was searching for, or what he found, but after he had measured me for that moment, something in his face changed, a faint shift in the set of his mouth and eyes, and I knew that Aro had made his decision.
“Brother,” he said softly to Caius. “There appears to be no danger. This is an unusual development, but I see no threat. These half-vampire children are much like us, it appears.”
“Is that your vote?” Caius demanded. “It is.”
Caius scowled. “And this Joham? This immortal so fond of experimentation?” “Perhaps we should speak with him,” Aro agreed.
“Stop Joham if you will,” Nahuel said flatly. “But leave my sisters be. They are innocent.”
Aro nodded, his expression solemn. And then he turned back to his guard with a warm smile.
“Dear ones,” he called. “We do not fight today.”
The guard nodded in unison and straightened out of their ready positions. The mist dissipated swiftly, but I held my shield in place. Maybe this was another trick.
I analyzed their expressions as Aro turned back to us. His face was as benign as ever, but unlike before, I sensed a strange blankness behind the façade. As if his scheming was over. Caius was clearly incensed, but his rage was turned inward now; he was resigned. Marcus looked… bored; there really was no other word for it. The guard was impassive and disciplined again; there were no individuals among them, just the whole. They were in formation, ready to depart. The Volturi
witnesses were still wary; one after another, they departed, scattering into the woods. As their numbers dwindled, the remaining sped up. Soon they were all gone.
Aro held his hands out to us, almost apologetic. Behind him, the larger part of the guard, along with Caius, Marcus, and the silent, mysterious wives, were already drifting quickly away, their formation precise once again. Only the three that seemed to be his personal guardians lingered with him.
“I’m so glad this could be resolved without violence,” he said sweetly. “My friend, Carlisle—how pleased I am to call you friend again! I hope there are no hard feelings. I know you understand the strict burden that our duty places on our shoulders.”
“Leave in peace, Aro,” Carlisle said stiffly. “Please remember that we still have our anonymity to protect here, and keep your guard from hunting in this region.”
“Of course, Carlisle,” Aro assured him. “I am sorry to earn your disapproval, my dear friend. Perhaps, in time, you will forgive me.”
“Perhaps, in time, if you prove a friend to us again.”
Aro bowed his head, the picture of remorse, and drifted backward for a moment before he turned around. We watched in silence as the last four Volturi disappeared into the trees.
It was very quiet. I did not drop my shield. “Is it really over?” I whispered to Edward.
His smile was huge. “Yes. They’ve given up. Like all bullies, they’re cowards underneath the swagger.” He chuckled.
Alice laughed with him. “Seriously, people. They’re not coming back. Everybody can relax now.”
There was another beat of silence.
“Of all the rotten luck,” Stefan muttered. And then it hit.
Cheers erupted. Deafening howls filled the clearing. Maggie pounded Siobhan on the back. Rosalie and Emmett kissed again—longer and more ardently than before. Benjamin and Tia were locked in each other’s arms, as were Carmen and Eleazar. Esme held Alice and Jasper in a tight embrace. Carlisle was warmly thanking the South American newcomers who had saved us all. Kachiri stood
very close to Zafrina and Senna, their fingertips interlocked. Garrett picked Kate up off the ground and swung her around in a circle.
Stefan spit on the snow. Vladimir ground his teeth together with a sour expression.
And I half-climbed the giant russet wolf to rip my daughter off his back and then crushed her to my chest. Edward’s arms were around us in the same second.
“Nessie, Nessie, Nessie,” I crooned.
Jacob laughed his big, barky laugh and poked the back of my head with his nose. “Shut up,” I mumbled.
“I get to stay with you?” Nessie demanded. “Forever,” I promised her.
We had forever. And Nessie was going to be fine and healthy and strong. Like the half-human Nahuel, in a hundred and fifty years she would still be young. And we would all be together.
Happiness expanded like an explosion inside me—so extreme, so violent that I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.
“Forever,” Edward echoed in my ear.
I couldn’t speak anymore. I lifted my head and kissed him with a passion that might possibly set the forest on fire.
I wouldn’t have noticed.
39. THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER
“So it was a combination of things there at the end, but what it really boiled down to was… Bella,” Edward was explaining. Our family and our two remaining guests sat in the Cullens’ great room while the forest turned black outside the tall windows.
Vladimir and Stefan had vanished before we’d stopped celebrating. They were extremely disappointed in the way things had turned out, but Edward said that they’d enjoyed the Volturi’s cowardice almost enough to make up for their frustration.
Benjamin and Tia were quick to follow after Amun and Kebi, anxious to let them know the outcome of the conflict; I was sure we would see them again—Benjamin and Tia, at least. None of the nomads lingered. Peter and Charlotte had a short conversation with Jasper, and then they were gone, too.
The reunited Amazons had been anxious to return home as well—they had a difficult time being away from their beloved rain forest—though they were more reluctant to leave than some of the others.
“You must bring the child to see me,” Zafrina had insisted. “Promise me, young one.”
Nessie had pressed her hand to my neck, pleading as well. “Of course, Zafrina,” I’d agreed.
“We shall be great friends, my Nessie,” the wild woman had declared before leaving with her sisters.
The Irish coven continued the exodus.
“Well done, Siobhan,” Carlisle complimented her as they said goodbye.
“Ah, the power of wishful thinking,” she answered sarcastically, rolling her eyes. And then she was serious. “Of course, this isn’t over. The Volturi won’t forgive what happened here.”
Edward was the one to answer that. “They’ve been seriously shaken; their confidence is shattered. But, yes, I’m sure they’ll recover from the blow someday. And then . . .” His eyes tightened. “I imagine they’ll try to pick us off separately.”
“Alice will warn us when they intend to strike,” Siobhan said in a sure voice. “And we’ll gather again. Perhaps the time will come when our world is ready to be free of the Volturi altogether.”
“That time may come,” Carlisle replied. “If it does, we’ll stand together.”
“Yes, my friend, we will,” Siobhan agreed. “And how can we fail, when I will it otherwise?” She let out a great peal of laughter.
“Exactly,” Carlisle said. He and Siobhan embraced, and then he shook Liam’s hand. “Try to find Alistair and tell him what happened. I’d hate to think of him hiding under a rock for the next decade.”
Siobhan laughed again. Maggie hugged both Nessie and me, and then the Irish coven was gone.
The Denalis were the last to leave, Garrett with them—as he would be from now on, I was fairly sure. The atmosphere of celebration was too much for Tanya and Kate. They needed time to grieve for their lost sister.
Huilen and Nahuel were the ones who stayed, though I had expected those last two to go back with the Amazons. Carlisle was deep in fascinated conversation with Huilen; Nahuel sat close beside her, listening while Edward told the rest of us the story of the conflict as only he knew it.
“Alice gave Aro the excuse he needed to get out of the fight. If he hadn’t been so terrified of Bella, he probably would have gone ahead with their original plan.”
“Terrified?” I said skeptically. “Of me?”
He smiled at me with a look I didn’t entirely recognize—it was tender, but also awed and even exasperated. “When will you ever see yourself clearly?” he said softly. Then he spoke louder, to the others as well as to me. “The Volturi haven’t fought a fair fight in about twenty-five hundred years. And they’ve never, never fought one where they were at a disadvantage. Especially since they gained Jane and Alec, they’ve only been involved with unopposed slaughterings.
“You should have seen how we looked to them! Usually, Alec cuts off all sense and feeling from their victims while they go through the charade of a counsel. That way, no one can run when the verdict is given. But there we stood, ready, waiting, outnumbering them, with gifts of our own while their gifts were rendered useless by Bella. Aro knew that with Zafrina on our side, they would be the blind ones when the battle commenced. I’m sure our numbers would have been pretty severely decimated, but they were sure that theirs would be, too. There was even a good possibility that they would lose. They’ve never dealt with that possibility before. They didn’t deal with it well today.”
“Hard to feel confident when you’re surrounded by horse-sized wolves,” Emmett laughed, poking Jacob’s arm.
Jacob flashed a grin at him.
“It was the wolves that stopped them in the first place,” I said. “Sure was,” Jacob agreed.
“Absolutely,” Edward agreed. “That was another sight they’ve never seen. The true Children of the Moon rarely move in packs, and they are never much in control of themselves. Sixteen enormous regimented wolves was a surprise they weren’t prepared for. Caius is actually terrified of werewolves. He almost lost a fight with one a few thousand years ago and never got over it.”
“So there are real werewolves?” I asked. “With the full moon and silver bullets and all that?”
Jacob snorted. “Real. Does that make me imaginary?” “You know what I mean.”
“Full moon, yes,” Edward said. “Silver bullets, no—that was just another one of those myths to make humans feel like they had a sporting chance. There aren’t very many of them left. Caius has had them hunted into near extinction.”
“And you never mentioned this because… ?” “It never came up.”
I rolled my eyes, and Alice laughed, leaning forward—she was tucked under Edward’s other arm—to wink at me.
I glared back.
I loved her insanely, of course. But now that I’d had a chance to realize that she was really home, that her defection was only a ruse because Edward had to believe that she’d abandoned us, I was beginning to feel pretty irritated with her. Alice had some explaining to do.
Alice sighed. “Just get it off your chest, Bella.” “How could you do that to me, Alice?”
“It was necessary.”
“Necessary!” I exploded. “You had me totally convinced that we were all going to die! I’ve been a wreck for weeks.”
“It might have gone that way,” she said calmly. “In which case you needed to be prepared to save Nessie.”
Instinctively, I held Nessie—asleep now on my lap—tighter in my arms.
“But you knew there were other ways, too,” I accused. “You knew there was hope. Did it ever occur to you that you could have told me everything? I know Edward had to think we were at a dead end for Aro’s sake, but you could have told me.”
She looked at me speculatively for a moment. “I don’t think so,” she said. “You’re just not that good an actress.”
“This was about my acting skills?”
“Oh, take it down an octave, Bella. Do you have any idea how complicated this was to set up? I couldn’t even be sure that someone like Nahuel existed—all I knew was that I would be looking for something I couldn’t see! Try to imagine searching for a blind spot—not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Plus we had to send back the key witnesses, like we weren’t in enough of a hurry. And then keeping my eyes open all the time in case you decided to throw me any more instructions. At some point you’re going to have to tell me what exactly is in Rio. Before any of that, I had to try to see every trick the Volturi might come in with and give you what few clues I could so you would be ready for their strategy, and I only had just a few hours to trace out all the possibilities. Most of all, I had to make sure you’d all believe that I was ditching out on you, because Aro had to be positive that you had nothing left up your sleeves or he never would have committed to an out the way he did. And if you think I didn’t feel like a schmuck—”
“Okay, okay!” I interrupted. “Sorry! I know it was rough for you, too. It’s just that… well, I missed you like crazy, Alice. Don’t do that to me again.”
Alice’s trilling laugh rang through the room, and we all smiled to hear that music once more. “I missed you, too, Bella. So forgive me, and try to be satisfied with being the superhero of the day.”
Everyone else laughed now, and I ducked my face into Nessie’s hair, embarrassed.
Edward went back to analyzing every shift of intention and control that had happened in the meadow today, declaring that it was my shield that had made the Volturi run away with their tails between their legs. The way everyone looked at me made me uncomfortable. Even Edward. It was like I had grown a hundred feet during the course of the morning. I tried to ignore the impressed looks, mostly keeping my eyes on Nessie’s sleeping face and Jacob’s unchanged expression. I would always be just Bella to him, and that was a relief.
The hardest stare to ignore was also the most confusing one.
It wasn’t like this half-human, half-vampire Nahuel was used to thinking of me in a certain way. For all he knew, I went around routing attacking vampires every day and the scene in the meadow had been nothing unusual at all. But the boy never took his eyes off me. Or maybe he was looking at Nessie. That made me uncomfortable, too.
He couldn’t be oblivious to the fact that Nessie was the only female of his kind that wasn’t his half-sister.
I didn’t think this idea had occurred to Jacob yet. I kind of hoped it wouldn’t soon. I’d had enough fighting to last me for a while.
Eventually, the others ran out of questions for Edward, and the discussion dissolved into a bunch of smaller conversations.
I felt oddly tired. Not sleepy, of course, but just like the day had been long enough. I wanted some peace, some normality. I wanted Nessie in her own bed; I wanted the walls of my own little home around me.
I looked at Edward and felt for a moment like I could read his mind. I could see he felt exactly the same way. Ready for some peace.
“Should we take Nessie . . .”
“That’s probably a good idea,” he agreed quickly. “I’m sure she didn’t sleep soundly last night, what with all the snoring.”
He grinned at Jacob.
Jacob rolled his eyes and then yawned. “It’s been a while since I slept in a bed. I bet my dad would get a kick out of having me under his roof again.”
I touched his cheek. “Thank you, Jacob.” “Anytime, Bella. But you already know that.”
He got up, stretched, kissed the top of Nessie’s head, and then the top of mine. Finally, he punched Edward’s shoulder. “See you guys tomorrow. I guess things are going to be kind of boring now, aren’t they?”
“I fervently hope so,” Edward said.
We got up when he was gone; I shifted my weight carefully so that Nessie was never jostled. I was deeply grateful to see her getting a sound sleep. So much weight had been on her tiny shoulders. It was time she got to be a child again— protected and secure. A few more years of childhood.
The idea of peace and security reminded me of someone who didn’t have those feelings all the time.
“Oh, Jasper?” I asked as we turned for the door.
Jasper was sandwiched tight in between Alice and Esme, somehow seeming more central to the family picture than usual. “Yes, Bella?”
“I’m curious—why is J. Jenks scared stiff by just the sound of your name?”
Jasper chuckled. “It’s just been my experience that some kinds of working relationships are better motivated by fear than by monetary gain.”
I frowned, promising myself that I would take over that working relationship from now on and spare J the heart attack that was surely on the way.
We were kissed and hugged and wished a good night to our family. The only off note was Nahuel again, who looked intently after us, as if he wished he could follow.
Once we were across the river, we walked barely faster than human speed, in no hurry, holding hands. I was sick of being under a deadline, and I just wanted to take my time. Edward must have felt the same.
“I have to say, I’m thoroughly impressed with Jacob right now,” Edward told me. “The wolves make quite an impact, don’t they?”
“That’s not what I mean. Not once today did he think about the fact that, according to Nahuel, Nessie will be fully matured in just six and a half years.”
I considered that for a minute. “He doesn’t see her that way. He’s not in a hurry for her to grow up. He just wants her to be happy.”
“I know. Like I said, impressive. It goes against the grain to say so, but she could do worse.”
I frowned. “I’m not going to think about that for approximately six and a half more years.”
Edward laughed and then sighed. “Of course, it looks like he’ll have some competition to worry about when the time comes.”
My frown deepened. “I noticed. I’m grateful to Nahuel for today, but all the staring was a little weird. I don’t care if she is the only half-vampire he’s not related to.”
“Oh, he wasn’t staring at her—he was staring at you.”
That’s what it had seemed like… but that didn’t make any sense. “Why would he do that?”
“Because you’re alive,” he said quietly. “You lost me.”
“All his life,” he explained, “—and he’s fifty years older than I am—” “Decrepit,” I interjected.
He ignored me. “He’s always thought of himself as an evil creation, a murderer by nature. His sisters all killed their mothers as well, but they thought nothing of it. Joham raised them to think of the humans as animals, while they were gods. But Nahuel was taught by Huilen, and Huilen loved her sister more than anyone else. It shaped his whole perspective. And, in some ways, he truly hated himself.”
“That’s so sad,” I murmured.
“And then he saw the three of us—and realized for the first time that just because he is half immortal, it doesn’t mean he is inherently evil. He looks at me and sees… what his father should have been.”
“You are fairly ideal in every way,” I agreed.
He snorted and then was serious again. “He looks at you and sees the life his mother should have had.”
“Poor Nahuel,” I murmured, and then sighed because I knew I would never be able to think badly of him after this, no matter how uncomfortable his stare made me.
“Don’t be sad for him. He’s happy now. Today, he’s finally begun to forgive himself.”
I smiled for Nahuel’s happiness and then thought that today belonged to happiness. Though Irina’s sacrifice was a dark shadow against the white light, keeping the moment from perfection, the joy was impossible to deny. The life I’d fought for was safe again. My family was reunited. My daughter had a beautiful future stretching out endlessly in front of her. Tomorrow I would go see my father; he would see that the fear in my eyes had been replaced with joy, and he would be happy, too. Suddenly, I was sure that I wouldn’t find him there alone. I hadn’t been as observant as I might have been in the last few weeks, but in this moment it was like I’d known all along. Sue would be with Charlie—the
werewolves’ mom with the vampire’s dad—and he wouldn’t be alone anymore. I smiled widely at this new insight.
But most significant in this tidal wave of happiness was the surest fact of all: I was with Edward. Forever.
Not that I’d want to repeat the last several weeks, but I had to admit they’d made me appreciate what I had more than ever.
The cottage was a place of perfect peace in the silver-blue night. We carried Nessie to her bed and gently tucked her in. She smiled as she slept.
I took Aro’s gift from around my neck and tossed it lightly into the corner of her room. She could play with it if she wished; she liked sparkly things.
Edward and I walked slowly to our room, swinging our arms between us.
“A night for celebrations,” he murmured, and he put his hand under my chin to lift my lips to his.
“Wait,” I hesitated, pulling away.
He looked at me in confusion. As a general rule, I didn’t pull away. Okay, it was more than a general rule. This was a first.
“I want to try something,” I informed him, smiling slightly at his bewildered expression.
I put my hands on both sides of his face and closed my eyes in concentration.
I hadn’t done very well with this when Zafrina had tried to teach me before, but I knew my shield better now. I understood the part that fought against separation from me, the automatic instinct to preserve self above all else.
It still wasn’t anywhere near as easy as shielding other people along with myself. I felt the elastic recoil again as my shield fought to protect me. I had to strain to push it entirely away from me; it took all of my focus.
“Bella!” Edward whispered in shock.
I knew it was working then, so I concentrated even harder, dredging up the specific memories I’d saved for this moment, letting them flood my mind, and hopefully his as well.
Some of the memories were not clear—dim human memories, seen through weak eyes and heard through weak ears: the first time I’d seen his face… the way it felt when he’d held me in the meadow… the sound of his voice through the darkness
of my faltering consciousness when he’d saved me from James… his face as he waited under a canopy of flowers to marry me… every precious moment from the island… his cold hands touching our baby through my skin…
And the sharp memories, perfectly recalled: his face when I’d opened my eyes to my new life, to the endless dawn of immortality… that first kiss… that first night…
His lips, suddenly fierce against mine, broke my concentration.
With a gasp, I lost my grip on the struggling weight I was holding away from myself. It snapped back like stressed elastic, protecting my thoughts once again.
“Oops, lost it!” I sighed.
“I heard you,” he breathed. “How? How did you do that?” “Zafrina’s idea. We practiced with it a few times.”
He was dazed. He blinked twice and shook his head.
“Now you know,” I said lightly, and shrugged. “No one’s ever loved anyone as much as I love you.”
“You’re almost right.” He smiled, his eyes still a little wider than usual. “I know of just one exception.”
“Liar.”
He started to kiss me again, but then stopped abruptly. “Can you do it again?” he wondered.
I grimaced. “It’s very difficult.” He waited, his expression eager.
“I can’t keep it up if I’m even the slightest bit distracted,” I warned him. “I’ll be good,” he promised.
I pursed my lips, my eyes narrowing. Then I smiled.
I pressed my hands to his face again, hefted the shield right out of my mind, and then started in where I’d left off—with the crystal-clear memory of the first night of my new life… lingering on the details.
I laughed breathlessly when his urgent kiss interrupted my efforts again.
“Damn it,” he growled, kissing hungrily down the edge of my jaw. “We have plenty of time to work on it,” I reminded him.
“Forever and forever and forever,” he murmured. “That sounds exactly right to me.”
And then we continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever.
the end
👁 :
I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf
The sexton keeps the key to,
Putting up
Our life, his porcelain,
Like a cup
Discarded of the housewife,
Quaint or broken;
A newer Sevres pleases,
Old ones crack.
I could not die with you,
For one must wait
To shut the other's gaze down, —
You could not.
And I, could I stand by
And see you freeze,
Without my right of frost,
Death's privilege?
Nor could I rise with you,
Because your face
Would put out Jesus',
That new grace
Glow plain and foreign
On my homesick eye,
Except that you, than he
Shone closer by.
They'd judge us — how?
For you served Heaven, you know,
Or sought to;
I could not,
Because you saturated sight,
And I had no more eyes
For sordid excellence
As Paradise.
And were you lost, I would be,
Though my name
Rang loudest
On the heavenly fame.
And were you saved,
And I condemned to be
Where you were not,
That self were hell to me.
So we must keep apart,
You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!
