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Twife or Death: Lesbian Twilight Chapter 24

Updated as of (9-14-2021) (previous) (all chapters)

All rights belong to Stephenie Meyer, and this project is non-profit and fan entertainment.

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24. CHANGE

I ended up changing my mind.

The fire in my arm wasn’t really so bad—the worst thing I’d ever felt up to that point, yes. But not the same as my entire body on fire.

I begged her to make it stop. I told her that this was really all I wanted. For the burning to stop. Nothing else.

I heard Alice telling her that everyone had said the same thing—reminding her that she’d begged Carine to kill her, too. Telling her my first decision was the one that counted.

I remember at one point screaming at her to shut up.

I think she apologized.

But mostly it was hard to pay attention to what was happening outside the fire. I know they moved me. It seemed like I was on the bloody, vomit-covered wood floor for a long time, but it was hard to judge how the minutes passed. Sometimes Carine would say something and it would feel like a year had passed before Alice answered her, but it was probably just the fire that made the seconds into years.

And then someone carried me. I saw the sun for another year-long second—it looked pale and cool. Then everything was dark. It was dark for a long time.

I could still see Edythe. She held me in her arms, my face near hers, one of her hands on my cheek. Julie was nearby, too. I think she had my legs.

When I screamed, she apologized, over and over again. I tried not to scream. It didn’t do any good. There was no relief, no release in it. The fire didn’t care what I did. It just burned.

When my eyes were in focus, I could see dim lights moving across Edythe’s face, though all around her head it was just black. Aside from her voice and mine, the only sound was a deep, constant thrumming. Sometimes it got louder, and then it was quiet again.

I didn’t realize I was back in the black car until it stopped. I didn’t hear the door open, but the sudden flash of light was blinding. I must have recoiled from it, because Edythe crooned in my ear.

“We’re just stopping to refill the gas tank. We’ll be home soon, Bella. You’re doing so well. This will be over soon. I am so sorry.”

I couldn’t feel her hand against my face—it should have been cool, but nothing was cool anymore. I tried to reach for it, but I couldn’t exactly tell what my limbs were doing. I think I was thrashing some, but Edythe and Julie kept me contained. Edythe guessed what I wanted. She grabbed my hand and held it to her lips. Julie took my other one. I wished I could feel it. I tried to grip their hands without knowing how to make the muscles move, or being able to feel them. Maybe I got it right. They didn’t let go.

It got darker. Eventually, I couldn’t see either of them anymore. It was black as ink inside the car—there was no difference between having my eyes open or closed. I started to panic. The fire made the night like a sensory deprivation chamber; I couldn’t feel anything but pain—not the seat beneath me, not Julie restraining my legs, not Edythe holding my head, my hand. I was all alone with the burning, and I was terrified.

I don’t know what I must have gasped out—my voice was totally gone now, either raw from screaming or burned past usability, I couldn’t guess which—but Edythe’s voice was in my ear again.

“I’m right here, Bella. You’re not alone. I won’t leave you. I will be here. Listen to my voice. I’m here with you.…”

Her voice calmed me—made the panic go away, if not the pain. I listened, keeping my breathing shallow so I could hear her better. I didn’t need to scream anymore. The burning only got more and never less, but I was adapting. It was all I could feel, but not all I could think about.

“I never wanted this for you, Bella,” Edythe continued. “I would give anything to take this away. I’ve made so many mistakes. I should have stayed away from you, from the first day. I should never have come back again. I’ve destroyed your life, I’ve taken everything from you.…” It sounded like she was sobbing again.

“No,” I tried to say, but I’m not sure if I even shaped the word with my mouth.

“She’s probably far enough along that she'll remember this,” Alice said softly.

“I hope so,” Edythe said, her voice breaking.

“I’m just saying, you might use the time more productively. There is so much she doesn’t know.”

“You’re right, you’re right.” She sighed. “Where do I begin?”

“You could explain about being thirsty,” Alice suggested. “That was the hardest part, when I first woke up. And we’ll be expecting a lot from her.”

When Edythe answered, it was like she was spitting the words through her teeth. “I won’t hold her to that. She didn’t choose this. She’s free to become whatever she wants to be.”

“Hah,” Alice said. “You know her better than that, Edythe. The other way won’t be good enough for her. Do you see? She’ll be fine.”

It was quiet while she tuned in to whatever Alice was seeing inside her head. Though I understood the silence, it still left me alone in the fire. I started panicking again.

“I’m here, Bella, I’m here. Don’t be afraid.” She took a deep breath. “I’ll keep talking. There are so many things to tell you. The first one is that when this passes, when you’re… new, you won’t be exactly the same as I am, not in the very beginning. Being a young vampire means certain things, and the hardest to ignore is the thirst. You’ll be thirsty—all the time. You won’t be able to think about much else for a while. Maybe a year, maybe two. It’s different for everyone. As soon as this is over, I’ll take you hunting. You wanted to see that, didn’t you? We’ll bring Eleanor so you can see her bear impression—” She laughed once, a damaged little sound. “If you decide—if you want to live like us, it will be hard. Especially in the beginning. It might be too hard, and I understand that. We all do. If you want to try it my way, I’ll go with you. I can tell you who the human monsters are. There are options. Whatever you want. If… if you don’t want me with you, I’ll understand that, too, Bella. I swear I won’t follow you if you tell me not to—”

“No,” I gasped. I heard myself that time, so I knew I’d done it right.

“You don’t have to make any more decisions now. There’s time for that. Just know that I will respect any decision you make.” She took another deep breath. “I should probably warn you about your eyes. They won’t be blue anymore.” Another half-sob. “But don’t let them frighten you. They won’t stay so bright for long.

“I suppose that’s a very small thing, though.… I should focus on the most important things. The hard things—the very worst thing. Oh, I’m so sorry, Bella. You can’t see your father or mother again. It’s not safe. You would hurt them—you wouldn’t be able to help yourself. And… there are rules. Rules that, as your creator, I’m bound by. We’d both be held responsible if you ran out of control. Oh—” Her breath caught. “There’s so much she doesn’t know, Alice.”

“We’ve got time, Edythe. Just relax. Take it slow.”

I heard her inhale again.

“The rules,” she said. “One rule with a thousand different permutations—the reality of vampires must be kept secret. That means newborn vampires must be controlled. I will teach you—we’ll keep you safe, I promise.” Another sigh. “And you can’t tell anyone what you are. I broke that rule. I didn’t think it could hurt you—that anyone would ever find out. I should have known that just being near you would eventually destroy you. I should have known I would ruin your life—that I was lying to myself about any other path being possible. I’ve done everything wrong—”

“You’re letting self-castigation get in the way of information again, Edythe.” It was Julie this time, her voice strained but a note of dry amusement remained.

“Right, right.” A deep breath. “Bella. Do you remember the painting in Carine’s study—the nighttime patrons of the arts I told you about? They’re called the Volturi—they are… for the lack of a better word, the police of our world. I’ll tell you more about them in a bit—you just need to know that they exist, so that I can explain why you can’t tell Charlie or your mother where you are. You can’t talk to them again, Bella.” Her voice was straining higher, like it was about to fracture. “It’s best… we don’t have much choice but to let them think you’re dead. I’m so sorry. You didn’t even get to say goodbye. It’s not fair!”

There was a long pause while I could hear her breath hitching.

“Why don’t you go back to the Volturi?” Alice suggested. “Keep emotion out of it.”

“You’re right,” she repeated in a whisper. “Ready to learn a new world history, Bella?”

She talked all night without a break, until the sun came up and I could see her face again. She told me stories that sounded like dark fairy tales. I was beginning to grasp the edges of how big this world was, but I knew it would be a long time before I totally comprehended the size of it.

She told me about the people I’d seen in the painting with Carine, the Volturi. How they’d joined forces during the Mycenaean age, and begun a millennia-long campaign to create peace and order in the vampire world. How there had been six of them in the beginning. How betrayal and murder had cut them in half. Someone named Ara had murdered her sister, her best friend’s wife. The best friend was Marcella, she was the woman I’d seen standing with Carine. Ara’s own wife Sulpicia, the one with all the masses of dark hair in the painting, had been the only witness. She’d turned her over to Marcella and their soldiers. There had been some question of what to do—Ara had a very powerful extra gift, like what Edythe had, but more, she said—and the Volturi weren’t sure they’d be able to succeed without her. But Sulpicia searched out a young girl, Mele, the one Edythe had called a servant and a thief, who had a gift of her own. She could absorb another vampire’s gift. She couldn’t use that stolen gift herself, but she could give it to someone else who she was touching. Sulpicia had Mele took Ara’s gift, and then Marcella executed her. Once she had her wife’s gift, Sulpicia found out that another in their group, Caius, was in on the plot. She was executed, too, and her wife, Athenodora, joined with Sulpicia and Marcella to lead their soldiers. They overthrew the vampires who terrorized Europe, and then the ones who enslaved Egypt. Once they were in charge, they made regulations that kept the vampire world hidden and safe.

I listened as much as I could. It wasn’t a distraction from the pain—there was no escape. But it was better to think about than the fire.

Edythe said the Volturi were the ones who’d made up all the stories about crosses and holy water and mirrors. Over the centuries, they made all reports of vampires into myth. And now they continued to keep it that way. Vampires would stay in the shadows… or there would be consequences.

So I couldn’t go to Charlie’s house and let her see the eyes that Edythe said would be so bright. I couldn’t drive to Florida and hug my mom and let her know that I wasn’t dead. I couldn’t even call her and explain the confusing message I’d left on her answering machine. If there was anything in the news, if any rumor spread that something unnatural was involved, the Volturi soldiers might come to investigate.

I had to disappear quietly.

The fire hurt more than hearing these things. But I knew that wouldn’t always be the way it was. Soon, this would hurt the most.

Edythe moved on quickly, telling me about their friends in Canada who lived the same way. Three blonde Russian sisters and two Spanish vampires who were the Cullens’ closest family. She told me that two of them had extra powers—Nadezhda could do something electrical, and Elena knew the talents of every vampire she met.

She told me about other friends, all over the world. In Ireland and Brazil and Egypt. So many names. Eventually Alice stepped in again and told her to prioritize.

Edythe told me that I would never age. That I would always be seventeen, like she was. That the world would change around me, and I would remember all of it, never forgetting one second.

She told me how the Cullens lived—how they moved from cloudy place to cloudy place. Esme would restore a house for them. Alice would invest their assets with amazingly good returns. They would decide on a story to explain their relationships to each other, and Jasper would create new names and new documented pasts for each of them. Carine would take a job in a hospital with her new credentials, or she’d return to school to study a new field. If the location looked promising, the younger Cullens would pretend to be even younger than they were, so they could stay longer.

After my time as a new vampire was up, I would be able to go back to school. But my education wouldn’t have to wait. I had a lot of time ahead of me, and I would remember everything I read or heard.

I would never sleep again.

Food would be disgusting to me. I would never be hungry again, only thirsty.

I would never get sick. I would never feel tired.

I would be able to run faster than a race car. I’d be stronger than any other living species on the planet.

I wouldn’t need to breathe.

I would be able to see more clearly, hear even the smallest sound.

My heart would finish beating tomorrow or the next day, and it would never beat again.

I would be a vampire.

One good thing about the burning—it let me hear all this with some distance. It let me process what she was telling me without emotion. I knew the emotion would come later.

When it was starting to get dark again, our journey was over. Julie carried me into the house like I was a child, and they sat with me in the big room. The background behind Edythe’s face went from black to white. I could see them both much more clearly now, and I didn’t think it was just the light.

In her eyes, my face reflected back, and I was surprised to see that it looked like a face and not a charcoal briquette—though a face in anguish. Still, maybe I wasn’t the pile of ash I felt like.

She told me stories to fill the time, and the others took turns helping her. Julie told me myths she’d learned from her great grandmother, and bits of her family’s history that sounded more like legends, though she assured me they were true. Wolves remember. Not in the same way as vampires, obviously, but their stories were held sacred and passed orally down the generations.

Jasper told me her story after all. I guess she’d decided I was ready now. I was glad, when she did, that my emotions were mostly buried under the fire. She’d lost family, too, when the woman who created her stole her without warning. She told me about the army she’d belonged to, a life of carnage and death, and then breaking free. She told me about the day Alice had found her, how she’d started to let her find herself.

Esme told me how her life had ended before she'd killed herself, about her unstable, alcoholic wife and the daughter she'd loved more than her own soul. She told me about the night when her wife, in a drunken rampage, had jumped off a cliff with her little daughter in her arms, and how she hadn’t been able to do anything but follow after them. Then she told me how, after the pain, there had been the most beautiful woman in a nurse’s uniform—a nurse she recognized from a happier time in another place when she was just a young woman. A nurse who hadn’t aged at all.

Eleanor told me about being attacked by a bear, and then seeing an angel who took her to Carine instead of to heaven. She told me how she'd thought at first she’d been sent to hell—justly, she admitted—and then how she got into heaven after all.

She was the one who told me that the redhead had gotten away. She’d never come near Charlie after the one time that she'd searched Charlie’s house. When we’d all gotten back to Forks, she, Rosalie, and Jasper had followed Victoria’s trail as far as they could; it disappeared into the Salish Sea and they hadn’t been able to find the place where she came back out. For all they knew, she'd swum straight out to the Pacific and on to another continent. She must have assumed that Jamie had lost the fight and realized it was smarter to disappear.

Even Rosalie took a turn. She told me about a life consumed with vanity, with material things, with ambition. She told me about the only daughter of a powerful politician—exactly what kind of power she wielded, Rosalie hadn’t entirely understood—and how Rosalie had planned to marry her and become heir to the dynasty. How the beautiful daughter pretended to love her to please her mother, and then how she had watched when her lover from a rival criminal syndicate had Rosalie beaten to death, how she’d laughed aloud the whole time. She told me about the revenge she'd gotten. Rosalie was the least careful with her words. She told me about losing her family, and how none of this was worth what she'd lost.

Edythe had whispered Eleanor’s name; she'd growled once and left.

I think it must have been while Rosalie or Eleanor was talking that Alice watched Jamie’s video from the dance studio. When Rosalie was gone, Alice took her spot. At first I wasn’t sure what they were talking about, because only Edythe was speaking out loud, but eventually I caught up. Alice was searching right there on her laptop, trying to narrow down the options of where she'd been kept in her human life. I was glad she didn’t seem to mention anything else about the tape—the focus was all on her past. I was trying to remember how to use my voice so that I could stop her if she tried to say anything about the rest of it. I hoped Alice was smart enough to have destroyed the tape before Edythe could watch.

The stories helped me think of other things, prepare myself, while the fire burned, but I was only able to pay partial attention. My mind was cataloguing the fire, experiencing it in new ways. It was amazing how each inch of my skin, each millimeter, was so distinct. It was like I could feel all my cells burning individually. I could feel the difference between the pain in the walls of my lungs, and the way the fire felt in the soles of my feet, inside my eyeballs, and down my spine. All the different agonies clearly separated.

I could hear my heart thudding—it seemed so loud. Like it had been hooked to an amp. I could hear other things, too. Mostly Edythe’s and Julie’s voices, sometimes the others talking—though I couldn’t see them. I heard music once, but I didn’t know where it was coming from.

It seemed like I was on the couch, my head in Edythe’s lap, for several years. The lights stayed bright, so I didn’t know if it was night or day. But Edythe’s eyes were always gold, so I guessed that the fire was lying about the time again.

I was so aware of every nerve ending in my body that I knew it immediately when something changed.

It started with my toes. I couldn’t feel them. It seemed like the fire had finally won, that it had started burning off pieces of me. Edythe had said I was changing, not dying, but in this moment of panic I thought she’d gotten it wrong. Maybe this vampire thing wouldn’t work on me. Maybe all this burning had been just a slow way to die. The worst way.

Edythe felt me freaking out again, and she started humming in my ear. I tried to look at the positives. If it was killing me, at least it would be over. And if it was going to end, at least I was in Edythe’s arms for the rest of my life.

And then I realized that my toes were still there, they just weren’t burning anymore. In fact, the fire was pulling out of the soles of my feet, too. I was glad I’d made sense of what was happening, because my fingertips were next. No need for more panic, maybe a reason for hope. The fire was leaving.

Only it seemed to be doing more than leaving—it was… moving. All the fire that receded from my extremities seemed to be draining into the center of my body, stoking the blaze there so that it was hotter than before.

I couldn’t believe there was such a thing as hotter.

My heart—already so loud—starting beating faster. The core of the fire seemed to be centered there. It was sucking the flames in from my hands and my ankles, leaving them pain-free, but multiplying the heat and pain in my heart.

“Carine,” Edythe called.

Carine walked into the room, and the amazing part about that was that I heard her. Edythe and her family never made any noise when they moved. But now, if I listened, I could hear the low sound of Carine’s lips brushing together as she spoke.

“Ah. It’s almost over.”

I wanted to be relieved, but the growing agony in my chest made it impossible to feel anything else. I stared up at Edythe’s face. She was more beautiful than she had ever been, because I could see her better than I ever had. But I couldn’t really appreciate her. So much pain.

“Edythe?” I gasped.

“You’re all right, Bella. It’s ending. I’m sorry, I know. I remember.”

The fire ripped hotter through my heart, dragging the flames up from my elbows and knees. I thought about Edythe going through this, suffering this way, and it put a different perspective on my pain. She didn’t even know Carine then. She didn’t know what was happening to her. She hadn’t been held the whole time in the arms of someone she loved.

The pain was almost gone from everywhere but my chest. The only leftover was my throat, but it was a different kind of burn now… drier… irritating.…

I heard more footsteps, and I was pretty sure I could tell the difference between them. The decisive, confident step was Eleanor, I was positive. Alice was the quicker, more rhythmic motion. Esme was a little slower, thoughtful. Jasper was the one who stopped by the door. I thought I heard Rosalie breathing behind her.

And then—

“Aaah!”

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 all the flames from the rest of my body to fuel the most painful burn yet. It was enough to stun me. My body bowed like the fire was dragging me upward by my heart.

It felt like a war inside me—my racing heart blitzing against the raging fire. They were both losing.

The fire constricted tighter, concentrating into one fist-sized ball of pain with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow-sounding thud. My heart stuttered twice, then thudded quietly again one more time.

There was no sound. No breathing. Not even mine.

For a second, all I could process was the absence of pain. The dull, dry afterburn in my throat was easy to ignore, because every other part of me felt amazing. The release was an incredible high.

I stared up at Edythe in wonder. I felt like I’d taken off a blindfold I’d been wearing all my life. What a view.

“Bella?” she asked. Now that I could really concentrate on it, the beauty of her voice was unreal.

“It’s disorienting, I know. You get used to it.”

Could you get used to hearing a voice like this? Seeing a face like that?

“Edythe,” I said, and the sound of my own voice jolted me. Was that me? It didn’t sound like me. It didn’t sound… human.

Unnerved, I reached out to touch her cheek. In the same instant that the desire to touch her entered my mind, my hand was cradling the side of her face. There was no in-between—no process of lifting my hand, watching it move to its destination. It was just there.

“Huh.”

She leaned into my touch, put her hand over mine, and held it against her face. It was strange because it was familiar—I’d always loved it when she’d done that, to see that she so obviously liked it when I touched her that way, that it meant something to her. But it was also nothing the same. Her face wasn’t cold anymore. Her hand felt right against mine. There was no difference between us now.

I stared into her eyes, then looked closer at the picture reflected in them.

“Ahh…” A little gasp escaped my throat by accident, and I felt my body lock down in surprise. It was weird—it felt like the natural thing to do, to be a statue because I was shocked.

“What is it, Bella?” She leaned closer, concerned, but that just brought the reflection closer.

“The eyes?” I breathed.

She sighed, and wrinkled her nose. “It goes away,” she promised. “I terrified myself every time I looked in a mirror for six months.”

“Six months,” I murmured. “And then they’ll be gold like yours?”

She looked away, over the back of the couch, to someone standing there behind us where I couldn’t see. I wanted to sit up and look around, but I was a little afraid to move. My body felt so strange.

“That depends on your diet, Bella,” Carine said calmly. “If you hunt like we do, your eyes will eventually turn this color. If not, your eyes will look like Laurent’s did.”

I decided to try sitting up.

And like before, thinking was doing. Without any movement, I was upright. Edythe kept my hand in hers as it left her face.

Behind the sofa, they were all there, watching. I’d been one hundred percent with my guesses—Carine closest, then Eleanor, Alice, and Esme. Jasper in the doorway to another room with Rosalie watching over her shoulder.

I looked at their faces, shocked again. If my brain hadn’t been so much… roomier than before, I would have forgotten what I was about to say. As it was, I recovered pretty fast.

“No, I want to do it your way,” I said to Carine. “That’s the right thing to do.”

Carine smiled. It would have knocked the breath out of me if I’d had to breathe.

“If only it were so easy. But that’s a noble choice. We’ll help you all we can.”

Edythe touched my arm. “We should hunt now, Bella. It will make your throat hurt less.”

When she mentioned my throat, the dry burn there was suddenly at the forefront of my mind. I swallowed. But…

“Hunt?” my new voice asked. “I, uh, well, I’ve never been hunting before. Not even like normal hunting with rifles, so I don’t really think I could… I mean, I have no idea how.…”

Eleanor chuckled under her breath.

Edythe smiled. “I’ll show you. It’s very easy, very natural. Didn’t you want to see me hunt?”

“Just us?” I checked.

She looked confused for a fraction of a second, and then her face was smooth. “Of course. Whatever you want. Come with me, Bella.”

And she was on her feet, still holding my hand. Then I was on my feet, too, and it was so simple to move, I wondered why I’d been afraid to try. Anything I wanted this body to do, it did.

Then I realized Julie wasn’t following. All at once, as I looked back at her, her vitality hit me. She was still breathing, her heart was beating- fast. I could hear her heart beating. It was fast but steady. She had dark splotches under her eyes, uneven and imperfect, and I could suddenly see every single freckle on her face and shoulders with crystal clear detail.

“Well? Aren’t you coming?” Edythe, of course, noticed my hesitation. There was another moment, Julie’s eyes flicked to mine, and I almost laughed.

“Of course you’re included in ‘us’.” I said, holding my other hand out to hers. And then she was right beside me, hand hot in mine. She burned like a fire, and there was something of that searing heat in her scent as well. Almost uncomfortable, but not quite.

We darted to the back wall of the big room—the glass wall that was a mirror now because it was night outside. I saw the three figures flashing by and I stopped. The strange thing was that when I stopped, it was so sudden that Edythe kept going, still holding my hand, and though she was still pulling, I didn’t move. My grip on her hand pulled her back. Like it was nothing.

But I was only noticing that with part of my brain. Mostly I was looking at my reflection.

I’d seen my face warped around the convex shape of her eyes, just the center, lacking the edges. I’d only really seen my eyes—brilliant, almost glowing red—and that had been enough to pull my focus. Now I saw my whole face—my neck, my arms.

If someone had cut an outline of my human self, this version would still fit into that space. But though I took up the same volume, all the angles were different. Harder, more pronounced. Like someone had made an ice sculpture of me and left the edges sharp.

My eyes—it was hard to look around the color, but the shape of them, too, seemed different. So vaguely, like I was remembering something I’d seen only through muddy water—I remembered how my eyes used to look. Undecided. Like I was never sure who I was. Then, after Edythe—still so hard to see in my memory, uncomfortable to try—they were suddenly more resolved.

These eyes had gone one step further than resolved—they were savage. If I walked into this self in a dark alley, I would be terrified of me.

Which was the point, I guess. People were supposed to be afraid of me now.

I still wore my bloodstained jeans, but I had an unfamiliar, pale blue shirt on. I didn’t remember that happening, but I could understand; vampire or human, no one wanted to hang around with someone drenched in vomit.

“Whoa,” I said. I locked eyes with Edythe in the reflection.

“It’s a lot,” she said.

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay.”

She pulled on my hand again, and I followed. Before a fourth of a second had passed, we were through the glass doors behind the stairs and on the back lawn.

There was no moon and no stars—the clouds were too thick. It should have been pitch-black outside the rectangle of light shining through the glass wall, but it wasn’t. I could see everything.

“Whoa,” I said again. “That is so cool.”

Edythe looked at me like she was surprised by my reaction. Had she forgotten what it was like the first time she saw the world through vampire eyes? I thought she’d said I wouldn’t forget things anymore.

“We’re going to have to go a ways out into the woods,” she told me. “Just in case.”

I remembered the gist of what she’d told me about hunting. “Right. So there aren’t any people around. Got it.”

Again—that same surprised look flashed across her face and then was gone.

“Follow me,” she said.

She whipped down the lawn so fast that I knew she would have been invisible to my old eyes. Then, at the edge of the river, she launched herself into a high arc that spun her over the river and into the trees beyond.

“Really?” I called after her.

I heard her laugh. “I promise, it’s easy.”

Great. I looked back at Julie, but she just crossed her arms with a small smile.

I sighed, then started running.

Running had never been my forte. I was all right on a flat track, if I was paying enough attention and I kept my eyes on my feet. Okay, honestly, even then I was still able to tangle my feet up and go down.

This was so different. I was flying—flying down the lawn, faster than I’d ever moved, but it was only too simple to put my feet exactly where they were supposed to go. I could feel all of my muscles, almost see the connections as they worked together, will them to do exactly what I needed. When I got to the edge of the river I didn’t even pause. I pushed off the same rock she’d used, and then I was really flying. The river slipped away behind me as I rocketed through the air. I passed where she’d landed and then fell down into the wood.

I felt an instant of panic when I realized I hadn’t even considered the landing, but then my hand already seemed to know how to catch a thick branch and angle my body so that my feet hit the ground with barely a sound.

“Holy crow,” I breathed in total disbelief.

I heard Edythe running through the trees, and already her gait was as familiar to me as the sound of my own breathing. I was sure I could tell the difference between the sound of her footfalls and anyone else’s. Julie’s was heavier, but just as swift. I’m sure I’d memorize that in time as well.

“We have to do that again!” I said as soon as I saw them.

Edythe paused a few feet away from me, and a frustrated expression that I knew well crossed her face.

I laughed. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand. You’re… in a very good mood.” Julie scoffed but Edythe ignored her.

“Oh. Is that wrong?”

“Aren’t you incredibly thirsty?”

I swallowed against the burn. It was bad, but not as bad as the rest of the fire I’d just left behind. The thirst-burn was always there, and it got worse when I focused on it, but there were so many other things to focus on. “Yes, when I think about it.”

Edythe squared her shoulders. “If you want to do this first, that’s fine, too.”

I looked at her. I was obviously missing something. “Do this? Do what?”

She stared at me for a second, her eyes doubtful. Suddenly she threw her hands up. “You know, I really thought that when your mind was more similar to mine, I’d be able to hear it. I guess that’s never going to happen.”

“Sorry.”

She laughed, but there was an unhappy note in the sound. “Honestly, Bella.”

“Can you please give me a clue as to what we’re talking about?”

“You wanted us to be alone,” she said, like this was an explanation.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Because you had some things you wanted to say to me?” She braced her shoulders again, tensing like she was expecting something bad.

“Oh. Well, I guess there are things to say. I mean, there’s one important thing, but I wasn’t thinking about that.” Seeing how frustrated she was by whatever misunderstanding was happening, I was totally honest. “I wanted to be alone with you because… well, I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want to do this hunting thing in front of Eleanor,” I confessed. “I figured there was a good chance I would screw something up, and I don’t know Eleanor all that well yet, but I have a feeling she would find that pretty funny.”

Julie burst into almost soundless giggles, and I elbowed her reflexively, launching he ten feet to the side. After multiple apologies, more laughter, and lots of brushing of leaves and dirt off Julie’s leather jacket, Edythe turned to look at me again.

“You were afraid Eleanor would laugh at you? Really, that’s all?”

“Really. Your turn, Edythe. What did you think was happening?”

She hesitated. “I thought you were being polite. I thought you preferred to yell at me alone rather than in front of my family.”

I froze up again. I wondered if that was going to happen every time I was surprised. It took me a second to thaw out.

“Yell at you?” I repeated. “Edythe—oh! You’re talking about all that stuff you were saying in the car, right? Sorry about that, I—”

“Sorry? What on earth are you apologizing for now, Bella Swan?”

She looked angry. Angry and so beautiful. I couldn’t guess why she was worked up. I shrugged. “I wanted to tell you then, but I couldn’t. I mean, I couldn’t even really concentrate—”

“Of course you couldn’t concentrate—”

“Edythe!” I crossed the space between us in one invisibly fast stride and put my hands on her shoulders. “You’ll never know what I’m thinking if you keep interrupting me.”

The anger on her face faded as she deliberately calmed herself. Then she nodded.

“You know what? I’m going to let you two work this out. Call me when you’re done.” Julie says with an amused huff, and I give her a nod. “Edythe- stop being so melodramatic. Remember what we talked about?”

Edythe bares her teeth in a very animalistic growl, but that only seems to make Julie smile wider before she disappears into the trees.

“Okay,” I said. “In the car—I wanted to tell you then that you didn’t need to apologize, I felt horrible that you were so sad. This isn’t your fault—”

She started to say something, so I put my finger over her lips.

“And it isn’t all bad,” I continued. “I’m… well, my head is still spinning and I know there are a million things to think about and I’m sad, of course, but I’m also good, Edythe. I’m always good when I’m with you.”

She stared at me for a long minute. Slowly, she raised her hand to pull my finger away from her mouth. I didn’t stop her.

“You aren’t angry at me for what I’ve done to you?” she asked quietly.

“Edythe, you saved my life! Again. Why would I be angry? Because of the way you saved it? What else could you have done?”

She exhaled, almost like she was mad again. “How can you…? Bella, you have to see that this is all my fault. I haven’t saved your life, I’ve taken it from you. Charlie—Renée—”

I put my finger over her mouth again, and then took a deep breath. “Yes. It’s hard, and it’s going to be hard for a long time. Maybe forever, right? But why would I put that on you? Jamie is the one who… well, who killed me. You brought me back to life.”

She pushed my hand down. “If I hadn’t involved you in my world—”

I laughed, and she looked up at me like I’d lost my mind. “Edythe—if you hadn’t involved me in your world, Charlie and Renée would have lost me three months earlier.”

She stared, frowning. It was obvious she wasn’t accepting any of this.

“Do you remember what I said when you saved my life in Port Angeles? The second time, or third.” I barely did. The words were easier to bring back than the images. I knew it went something like this. “That you were messing with fate because my number was up? Well… if I had to die, Edythe… isn’t this the most amazing way to do it?”

A long minute passed while she stared at me, and then she shook her head. “Bella, you are amazing.”

“I guess I am now.”

“You always have been.”

I didn’t say anything, and my face gave me away. Or she was just that good. She knew my face so well, she spent so much time trying so hard to understand me, that she knew immediately when there was something I wasn’t saying.

“What is it, Bella?”

“Just… something Jamie said.” I winced. Though it was hard to see things in my old memory, the dance studio was the most recent, the most vivid.

Edythe’s jaw got hard. “She said a lot of things,” she hissed.

“Oh.” Suddenly I wanted to punch something. But I also didn’t want to let go of Edythe to do that. “You saw the tape.”

Her face was totally white. Furious and agonized at the same time. “Yes, I saw the tape.”

“When? I didn’t hear—”

“Headphones.”

“I wish you hadn’t—”

She shook her head. “I had to. But forget that now. Which lie were you thinking of?” She spit the words through her teeth.

It took me a minute. “You didn’t want me to be a vampire.”

“No, I absolutely did not.”

“So that part wasn’t a lie. And you’ve been so upset.… I know you feel bad about Charlie and my mom, but I guess I’m worried that part of it is because, well, you didn’t expect to have me around very long, you weren’t planning for that—” Her mouth flew open so fast that I put my whole hand over it. “Because if that’s what it is, don’t worry. If you want me to go away after a while, I can. You can show me what to do so I won’t get either of us in trouble. I don’t expect you to put up with me forever. You didn’t choose this any more than I did. I want you to know that I’m aware of that.”

She waited for me to move my hand. I did it slowly. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what was next.

She growled softly and flashed her teeth at me—not in a smile.

“You’re lucky I didn’t bite you,” she said. “The next time you put your hand on my mouth to say something so completely idiotic—and insulting—I will.”

“Sorry.”

She closed her eyes. Her arms wrapped around my waist and she leaned her head against my chest. My arms wound around her automatically. She tilted her face up so that she could look at me.

“I want you to listen to me very carefully, Bella. This—having you with me, getting to keep you here—it’s like I’ve been granted every selfish wish I’ve ever had. But the price for everything I want was to take the exact same thing away from you. All of your life. I’m angry with myself, I’m disappointed in myself. And I wish so much that I could bring that tracker back to life so that I could kill her myself, over and over and over again.…

“The reason I didn’t want you to be a vampire wasn’t because you weren’t special enough—it was because you are too special and you deserve more. I wanted you to have what we all miss—a human life. But you have to know, if it were only about me, if there were no price for you to pay, then tonight would be the best night of my life. I’ve been staring forever in the face for a century, and tonight is the very first time it’s looked beautiful to me. Because of you.

“Don’t you ever again think that I don’t want you. I will always want you. I don’t deserve you, but I will always love you. Are we clear?”

It was obvious that she was being totally sincere. Truth echoed in every word.

A huge grin spread across my new face. “So that’s okay, then.”

She smiled back. “I’d say so.”

“That was the one important thing I wanted to say—just, I love you. I always will. I knew that from pretty early in. So, with that being how things are, I think we can work the rest out.”

I held her face in my hands and bent down to kiss her. Like everything else, this was so easy now. Nothing to worry about, no hesitation.

It felt strange, though, that my heart wasn’t beating out a crazy drum solo, that the blood wasn’t stampeding through my veins. But something was zinging through me like electricity, every nerve in my body alive. More than alive—like all of my cells were rejoicing. I only wanted to hold her like this and I would need nothing else for the next hundred years.

But she broke away, and she was laughing. This time her laugh was full of joy. It sounded like singing.

“How are you doing this?” she laughed. “You’re supposed to be a newborn vampire and here you are, discussing the future calmly with me, smiling at me, kissing me! You’re supposed to be thirsty and nothing else.”

“I’m a lot of else,” I said. “But I am pretty thirsty, now that you mention it.”

She leaned up on her toes and kissed me once, hard. “I love you. Let’s go hunt.”

“Julie! Come join us!” I called out, marveling at the strength and clarity of my voice. A wolf bounded out of the trees and she was beautiful, so beautiful. Then she put her paws on my shoulders and licked my face. I pushed her away, laughing, at the last moment remembering to modulate my strength so I didn’t launch her into another tree.

We ran together into the darkness that wasn’t dark, and I was unafraid. This would be easy, I knew, just like everything else.

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