The right side of her face was scarred from hairline to chin by three thick, red lines, livid in color though they were long healed. One line pulled down the corner of her dark, almond-shaped right eye, another twisted the right side of her mouth into a permanent grimace.
Thankful for Embry’s warning, I quickly turned my eyes to the muffins in her hands. They smelled wonderful—like fresh blueberries.
“Oh,” Emily said, surprised. “Who’s this?”
I looked up, trying to focus on the left half of her face.
“Bella Swan,” Jared told her, shrugging. Apparently, I’d been a topic of conversation before. “Who else?”
“Leave it to Jacob to find a way around,” Emily murmured. She stared at me, and neither half of her once-beautiful face was friendly. “So, you’re the vampire girl.”
I stiffened. “Yes. Are you the wolf girl?”
She laughed, as did Embry and Jared. The left half of her face warmed. “I guess I am.” She turned to Jared. “Where’s Sam?”
“Bella, er, surprised Paul this morning.”
Emily rolled her good eye. “Ah, Paul,” she sighed. “Do you think they’ll be long? I was just about to start the eggs.”
“Don’t worry,” Embry told her. “If they’re late, we won’t let anything go to waste.”
Emily chuckled, and then opened the refrigerator. “No doubt,” she agreed. “Bella, are you hungry? Go ahead and help yourself to a muffin.”
“Thanks.” I took one from the plate and started nibbling around the edges. It was delicious, and it felt good in my tender stomach. Embry picked up his third and shoved it into his mouth whole.
“Save some for your brothers,” Emily chastised him, hitting him on the head with a wooden spoon. The word surprised me, but the others thought nothing of it.
“Pig,” Jared commented.
I leaned against the counter and watched the three of them banter like a family. Emily’s kitchen was a friendly place, bright with white cupboards and pale wooden floorboards. On the little round table, a cracked blue-and-white china pitcher was overflowing with wildflowers. Embry and Jared seemed entirely at ease here.
Emily was mixing a humongous batch of eggs, several dozen, in a big yellow bowl. She had the sleeves of her lavender shirt pushed up, and I could see that the scars extended all the way down her arm to the back of her right hand. Hanging out with werewolves truly did have its risks, just as Embry had said.
The front door opened, and Sam stepped through.
“Emily,” he said, and so much love saturated his voice that I felt embarrassed, intrusive, as I watched him cross the room in one stride and take her face in his wide hands. He leaned down and kissed the dark scars on her right cheek before he kissed her lips.
“Hey, none of that,” Jared complained. “I’m eating.”
“Then shut up and eat,” Sam suggested, kissing Emily’s ruined mouth again.
“Ugh,” Embry groaned.
This was worse than any romantic movie; this was so real that it sang out loud with joy and life and true love. I put my muffin down and folded my arms across my empty chest. I stared at the flowers, trying to ignore the utter peace of their moment, and the wretched throbbing of my wounds.
I was grateful for the distraction when Jacob and Paul came through the door, and then shocked when I saw that they were laughing. While I watched, Paul punched Jacob on the shoulder and Jacob went for a kidney jab in return. They laughed again. They both appeared to be in one piece.
Jacob scanned the room, his eyes stopping when he found me leaning, awkward and out of place, against the counter in the far corner of the kitchen.
“Hey, Bells,” he greeted me cheerfully. He grabbed two muffins as he passed the table and came to stand beside me. “Sorry about before,” he muttered under his breath. “How are you holding up?”
“Don’t worry, I’m okay. Good muffins.” I picked mine back up and started nibbling again. My chest felt better as soon as Jacob was beside me.
“Oh, man!” Jared wailed, interrupting us.
I looked up, and he and Embry were examining a fading pink line on Paul’s forearm. Embry was grinning, exultant.
“Fifteen dollars,” he crowed.
“Did you do that?” I whispered to Jacob, remembering the bet.
“I barely touched him. He’ll be perfect by sundown.”
“By sundown?” I looked at the line on Paul’s arm. Odd, but it looked weeks old.
“Wolf thing,” Jacob whispered.
I nodded, trying to not look weirded out.
“You okay?” I asked him under my breath.
“Not a scratch on me.” His expression was smug.
“Hey, guys,” Sam said in a loud voice, interrupting all the conversations going on in the small room. Emily was at the stove, scraping the egg mixture around a big skillet, but Sam still had one hand touching the small of her back, an unconscious gesture. “Jacob has information for us.”
Paul looked unsurprised. Jacob must have explained this to him and Sam already. Or...they’d just heard his thoughts.
“I know what the redhead wants.” Jacob directed his words toward Jared and Embry. “That’s what I was trying to tell you before.” He kicked the leg of the chair Paul had settled into.
“And?” Jared asked.
Jacob’s face got serious. “She is trying to avenge her mate—only it wasn’t the black-haired leech we killed. The Cullens got her mate last year, and she’s after Bella now.”
This wasn’t news to me, but I still shivered.
Jared, Embry, and Emily stared at me with open-mouthed surprise.
“She’s just a girl,” Embry protested.
“I didn’t say it made sense. But that’s why the bloodsucker’s been trying to get past us. She’s been heading for Forks.”
They continued to stare at me, mouths still hanging open, for a long moment. I ducked my head.
“Excellent,” Jared finally said, a smile beginning to pull up the corners of his mouth. “We’ve got bait.”
With stunning speed, Jacob yanked a can opener from the counter and launched it at Jared’s head. Jared’s hand flicked up faster than I would have thought possible, and he snagged the tool just before it hit his face.
“Bella is not bait.”
“You know what I mean,” Jared said, unabashed.
“So we’ll be changing our patterns,” Sam said, ignoring their squabble. “We’ll try leaving a few holes, and see if she falls for it. We’ll have to split up, and I don’t like that. But if she’s really after Bella, she probably won’t try to take advantage of our divided numbers.”
“Quil’s got to be close to joining us,” Embry murmured. “Then we’ll be able to split evenly.”
Everyone looked down. I glanced at Jacob’s face, and it was hopeless, like it had been yesterday afternoon, outside his house. No matter how comfortable they seemed to be with their fate, here in this happy kitchen, none of these werewolves wanted the same fate for their friend.
“Well, we won’t count on that,” Sam said in a low voice, and then continued at his regular volume. “Paul, Jared, and Embry will take the outer perimeter, and Jacob and I will take the inner. We’ll collapse in when we’ve got her trapped.”
I noticed that Emily didn’t particularly like that Sam would be in the smaller grouping. Her worry had me glancing up at Jacob, worrying, too.
Sam caught my eye. “Jacob thinks it would be best if you spent as much time as possible here in La Push. She won’t know where to find you so easily, just in case.”
“What about Charlie?” I demanded.
“March Madness is still going,” Jacob said. “I think Billy and Harry can manage to keep Charlie down here when he’s not at work.”
“Wait,” Sam said, holding one hand up. His glance flickered to Emily and then back to me. “That’s what Jacob thinks is best, but you need to decide for yourself. You should weigh the risks of both options very seriously. You saw t
his morning how easily things can get dangerous here, how quickly they get out of hand. If you choose to stay with us, I can’t make any guarantees about your safety.”
“I won’t hurt her,” Jacob mumbled, looking down.
Sam acted as if he hadn’t heard him speak. “If there was somewhere else you felt safe . . .”
I bit my lip. Where could I go that wouldn’t put someone else in danger? I recoiled again from the idea of bringing Renée into this—pulling her into the circle of the target I wore....“I don’t want to lead Victoria anywhere else,” I whispered.
Sam nodded. “That’s true. It’s better to have her here, where we can end this.”
I flinched. I didn’t want Jacob or any of the rest of them trying to end Victoria. I glanced at Jake’s face; it was relaxed, almost the same as I remembered it from before the onset of the wolf thing, and utterly unconcerned by the idea of hunting vampires.
“You’ll be careful, right?” I asked, an audible lump in my throat.
The boys burst into loud hoots of amusement. Everyone laughed at me—except Emily. She met my eyes, and I could suddenly see the symmetry underlying her deformity. Her face was still beautiful, and alive with a concern even more fierce than mine. I had to look away, before the love behind that concern could start me aching again.
“Food’s ready,” she announced then, and the strategic conversation was history. The guys hurried to surround the table—which looked tiny and in danger of being crushed by them—and devoured the buffet-sized pan of eggs Emily placed in their midst in record time. Emily ate leaning against the counter like me—avoiding the bedlam at the table—and watched them with affectionate eyes. Her expression clearly stated that this was her family.
All in all, it wasn’t exactly what I’d been expecting from a pack of werewolves.
I spent the day in La Push, the majority of it in Billy’s house. He left a message on Charlie’s phone and at the station, and Charlie showed up around dinnertime with two pizzas. It was good he brought two larges; Jacob ate one all by himself.
I saw Charlie eyeing the two of us suspiciously all night, especially the much-changed Jacob. He asked about the hair; Jacob shrugged and told him it was just more convenient.
I knew that as soon as Charlie and I were headed home, Jacob would take off—off to run around as a wolf, as he had done intermittently through the entire day. He and his brothers of sorts kept up a constant watch, looking for some sign of Victoria’s return. But since they’d chased her away from the hot springs last night—chased her halfway to Canada, according to Jacob—she’d yet to make another foray.
I had no hope at all that she might just give up. I didn’t have that kind of luck.
Jacob walked me to my truck after dinner and lingered by the window, waiting for Charlie to drive away first.
“Don’t be afraid tonight,” Jacob said, while Charlie pretended to be having trouble with his seat belt. “We’ll be out there, watching.”
“I won’t worry about myself,” I promised.
“You’re silly. Hunting vampires is fun. It’s the best part of this whole mess.”
I shook my head. “If I’m silly, then you’re dangerously unbalanced.”
He chuckled. “Get some rest, Bella, honey. You look exhausted.”
“I’ll try.”
Charlie honked his horn impatiently.
“See you tomorrow,” Jacob said. “Come down first thing.”
“I will.”
Charlie followed me home. I paid scant attention to the lights in my rearview mirror. Instead, I wondered where Sam and Jared and Embry and Paul were, out running in the night. I wondered if Jacob had joined them yet.
When we got home, I hurried for the stairs, but Charlie was right behind me.
“What’s going on, Bella?” he demanded before I could escape. “I thought Jacob was part of a gang and you two were fighting.”
“We made up.”
“And the gang?”
“I don’t know—who can understand teenage boys? They’re a mystery. But I met Sam Uley and his fiancée, Emily. The seemed pretty nice to me.” I shrugged. “Must have all been a misunderstanding.”
His face changed. “I hadn’t heard that he and Emily had made it official. That’s nice. Poor girl.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“Mauled by a bear, up north, during salmon spawning season—horrible accident. It was more than a year ago now. I heard Sam was really messed up over it.”
“That’s horrible,” I echoed. More than a year ago. I’d bet that meant it had happened when there was just one werewolf in La Push. I shuddered at the thought of how Sam must have felt every time he looked at Emily’s face.
That night, I lay awake for a long time trying to sort through the day. I worked my way backward through dinner with Billy, Jacob, and Charlie, to the long afternoon in the Blacks’ house, waiting anxiously to hear something from Jacob, to Emily’s kitchen, to the horror of the werewolf fight, to talking with Jacob on the beach.
I thought about what Jacob had said early this morning, about hypocrisy. I thought about that for a long time. I didn’t like to think that I was a hypocrite, only what was the point of lying to myself?
I curled into a tight ball. No, Edward wasn’t a killer. Even in his darker past, he’d never been a murderer of innocents, at least.
But what if he had been? What if, during the time I that I’d known him, he’d been just like any other vampire? What if people had been disappearing from the woods, just like now? Would that have kept me away from him?
I shook my head sadly. Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.
I rolled over and tried to think of something else—and I thought of Jacob and his brothers, out running in the darkness. I fell asleep imagining the wolves, invisible in the night, guarding me from danger. When I dreamed, I stood in the forest again, but I didn’t wander. I was holding Emily’s scarred hand as we faced into the shadows and waited anxiously for our werewolves to come home.
15. PRESSURE
IT WAS SPRING BREAK IN FORKS AGAIN. WHEN I WOKE up on Monday morning, I lay in bed for a few seconds absorbing that. Last spring break, I’d been hunted by a vampire, too. I hoped this wasn’t some kind of tradition forming.
Already I was falling into the pattern of things in La Push. I’d spent Sunday mostly on the beach, while Charlie hung out with Billy at the Blacks’ house. I was supposed to be with Jacob, but Jacob had other things to do, so I wandered alone, keeping the secret from Charlie.
When Jacob dropped in to check on me, he apologized for ditching me so much. He told me his schedule wasn’t always this crazy, but until Victoria was stopped, the wolves were on red alert.
When we walked along the beach now, he always held my hand.
This made me brood over what Jared had said, about Jacob involving his “girlfriend.” I supposed that that was exactly what it looked like from the outside. As long as Jake and I knew how it really was, I shouldn’t let those kinds of assumptions bother me. And maybe they wouldn’t, if I hadn’t known that Jacob would have loved for things to be what they appeared. But his hand felt nice as it warmed mine, and I didn’t protest.
I worked Tuesday afternoon—Jacob followed me on his bike to make sure I arrived safely—and Mike noticed.
“Are you dating that kid from La Push? The sophomore?” He asked, poorly disguising the resentment in his tone.
I shrugged. “Not in the technical sense of the word. I do spent most of my time with Jacob, though. He’s my best friend.”
Mike’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Don’t kid yourself, Bella. The guy’s head over heels for you.”
“I know,” I sighed. “Life is complicated.”
“And girls are cruel,” Mike said under his breath.
I supposed that was an easy assumption to make, too.
That night, Sam and Emily joined Charlie and me for dessert at Billy
’s house. Emily brought a cake that would have won over a harder man than Charlie. I could see, as the conversation flowed naturally through a range of casual subjects, that any worries Charlie might have harbored about gangs in La Push were being dissolved.
Jake and I skipped out early, to get some privacy. We went out to his garage and sat in the Rabbit. Jacob leaned his head back, his face drawn with exhaustion.
“You need some sleep, Jake.”
“I’ll get around to it.”
He reached over and took my hand. His skin was blazing on mine.
“Is that one of those wolf things?” I asked him. “The heat, I mean.”
“Yeah. We run a little warmer than the normal people. About one-oh-eight, one-oh-nine. I never get cold anymore. I could stand like this”— he gestured to his bare torso—“in a snowstorm and it wouldn’t bother me. The flakes would turn to rain where I stood.”
“And you all heal fast—that’s a wolf thing, too?”
“Yeah, wanna see? It’s pretty cool.” His eyes flipped open and he grinned. He reached around me to the glove compartment and dug around for a minute. His hand came out with a pocketknife.
“No, I do not want to see!” I shouted as soon as I realized what he was thinking. “Put that away!”
Jacob chuckled, but shoved the knife back where it belonged. “Fine. It’s a good thing we heal, though. You can’t go see just any doctor when you’re running a temperature that should mean you’re dead.”
“No, I guess not.” I thought about that for a minute. “. . . And being so big—that’s part of it? Is that why you’re all worried about Quil?”
“That and the fact that Quil’s grandfather says the kid could fry an egg on his forehead.” Jacob’s face turned hopeless. “It won’t be long now. There’s no exact age...it just builds and builds and then suddenly—” He broke off, and it was a moment before he could speak again. “Sometimes, if you get really upset or something, that can trigger it early. But I wasn’t upset about anything—I was happy.” He laughed bitterly. “Because of you, mostly. That’s why it didn’t happen to me sooner. Instead it just kept on building up inside me—I was like a time bomb. You know what set me off? I got back from that movie and Billy said I looked weird. That was all, but I just snapped. And then I—I exploded. I almost ripped his face off—my own father!” He shuddered, and his face paled.
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