“I only heard one voice,” I corrected him.
He laughed and then pulled me tight against his right side and started to lead me forward.
“I’m just humoring you with this.” He motioned broadly with his hand toward the darkness in front of us as we walked. There was something pale and immense there—the house, I realized. “It doesn’t matter in the slightest what they say.”
“This affects them now, too.”
He shrugged indifferently.
He led me through the open front door into the dark house and flipped the lights on. The room was just as I’d remembered it—the piano and the white couches and the pale, massive staircase. No dust, no white sheets.
Edward called out the names with no more volume than I’d use in regular conversation. “Carlisle? Esme? Rosalie? Emmett? Jasper? Alice?” They would hear.
Carlisle was suddenly standing beside me, as if he’d been there all along. “Welcome back, Bella.” He smiled. “What can we do for you this morning? I imagine, due to the hour, that this is not a purely social visit?”
I nodded. “I’d like to talk to everyone at once, if that’s okay. About something important.”
I couldn’t help glancing up at Edward’s face as I spoke. His expression was critical, but resigned. When I looked back to Carlisle, he was looking at Edward, too.
“Of course,” Carlisle said. “Why don’t we talk in the other room?”
Carlisle led the way through the bright living room, around the corner to the dining room, turning on lights as he went. The walls were white, the ceilings high, like the living room. In the center of the room, under the low-hanging chandelier, was a large, polished oval table surrounded by eight chairs. Carlisle held out a chair for me at the head.
I’d never seen the Cullens use the dining room table before—it was just a prop. They didn’t eat in the house.
As soon as I turned to sit in the chair, I saw that we were not alone. Esme had followed Edward, and behind her the rest of the family filed in.
Carlisle sat down on my right, and Edward on my left. Everyone else took their seats in silence. Alice was grinning at me, already in on the plot. Emmett and Jasper looked curious, and Rosalie smiled at me tentatively. My answering smile was just as timid. That was going to take some getting used to.
Carlisle nodded toward me. “The floor is yours.”
I swallowed. Their gazing eyes made me nervous. Edward took my hand under the table. I peeked at him, but he was watching the others, his face suddenly fierce.
“Well,” I paused. “I’m hoping Alice has already told you everything that happened in Volterra?”
“Everything,” Alice assured me.
I threw her a meaningful look. “And on the way?”
“That, too,” she nodded.
“Good,” I sighed with relief. “Then we’re all on the same page.”
They waited patiently while I tried to order my thoughts.
“So, I have a problem,” I began. “Alice promised the Volturi that I would become one of you. They’re going to send someone to check, and I’m sure that’s a bad thing—something to avoid.
“And so, now, this involves you all. I’m sorry about that.” I looked at each one of their beautiful faces, saving the most beautiful for last. Edward’s mouth was turned down into a grimace. “But, if you don’t want me, then I’m not going to force myself on you, whether Alice is willing or not.”
Esme opened her mouth to speak, but I held up one finger to stop her.
“Please, let me finish. You all know what I want. And I’m sure you know what Edward thinks, too. I think the only fair way to decide is for everyone to have a vote. If you decide you don’t want me, then...I guess I’ll go back to Italy alone. I can’t have them coming here.” My forehead creased as I considered that.
There was the faint rumble of a growl in Edward’s chest. I ignored him.
“Taking into account, then, that I won’t put any of you in danger either way, I want you to vote yes or no on the issue of me becoming a vampire.”
I half-smiled on the last word, and gestured toward Carlisle to begin.
“Just a minute,” Edward interrupted.
I glared at him through narrowed eyes. He raised his eyebrows at me, squeezing my hand.
“I have something to add before we vote.”
I sighed.
“About the danger Bella’s referring to,” he continued. “I don’t think we need to be overly anxious.”
His expression became more animated. He put his free hand on the shining table and leaned forward.
“You see,” he explained, looking around the table while he spoke, “there was more than one reason why I didn’t want to shake Aro’s hand there at the end. There’s something they didn’t think of, and I didn’t want to clue them in.” He grinned.
“Which was?” Alice prodded. I was sure my expression was just as skeptical as hers.
“The Volturi are overconfident, and with good reason. When they decide to find someone, it’s not really a problem. Do you remember Demetri?” He glanced down at me.
I shuddered. He took that as a yes.
“He finds people—that’s his talent, why they keep him.
“Now, the whole time we were with any of them, I was picking their brains for anything that might save us, getting as much information as possible. So I saw how Demetri’s talent works. He’s a tracker—a tracker a thousand times more gifted than James was. His ability is loosely related to what I do, or what Aro does. He catches the...flavor? I don’t know how to describe it...the tenor...of someone’s mind, and then he follows that. It works over immense distances.
“But after Aro’s little experiments, well . . .” Edward shrugged.
“You think he won’t be able to find me,” I said flatly.
He was smug. “I’m sure of it. He relies totally on that other sense. When it doesn’t work with you, they’ll all be blind.”
“And how does that solve anything?”
“Quite obviously, Alice will be able to tell when they’re planning a visit, and I’ll hide you. They’ll be helpless,” he said with fierce enjoyment. “It will be like looking for a piece of straw in a haystack!”
He and Emmett exchanged a glance and a smirk.
This made no sense. “But they can find you,” I reminded him.
“And I can take care of myself.”
Emmett laughed, and reached across the table toward his brother, extending a fist.
“Excellent plan, my brother,” he said with enthusiasm.
Edward stretched out his arm to smack Emmett’s fist with his own.
“No,” Rosalie hissed.
“Absolutely not,” I agreed.
“Nice.” Jasper’s voice was appreciative.
“Idiots,” Alice muttered.
Esme just glared at Edward.
I straightened up in my chair, focusing. This was my meeting.
“All right, then. Edward has offered an alternative for you to consider,” I said coolly. “Let’s vote.”
I looked toward Edward this time; it would be better to get his opinion out of the way. “Do you want me to join your family?”
His eyes were hard and black as flint. “Not that way. You’re staying human.”
I nodded once, keeping my face businesslike, and then moved on.
“Alice?”
“Yes.”
“Jasper?”
“Yes,” he said, voice grave. I was a little surprised—I hadn’t been at all sure of his vote—but I suppressed my reaction and moved on.
“Rosalie?”
She hesitated, biting down on her full, perfect bottom lip. “No.”
I kept my face blank and turned my head slightly to move on, but she held up both her hands, palms forward.
“Let me explain,” she pleaded. “I don’t mean that I have any aversion to you as a sister. It’s just that...this is not the life I would have chosen for myself. I wish there had bee
n someone there to vote no for me.”
I nodded slowly, and then turned to Emmett.
“Hell, yes!” He grinned. “We can find some other way to pick a fight with this Demetri.”
I was still grimacing at that when I looked at Esme.
“Yes, of course, Bella. I already think of you as part of my family.”
“Thank you, Esme,” I murmured as I turned toward Carlisle.
I was suddenly nervous, wishing I had asked for his vote first. I was sure that this was the vote that mattered most, the vote that counted more than any majority.
Carlisle wasn’t looking at me.
“Edward,” he said.
“No,” Edward growled. His jaw was strained tight, his lips curled back from his teeth.
“It’s the only way that makes sense,” Carlisle insisted. “You’ve chosen not to live without her, and that doesn’t leave me a choice.”
Edward dropped my hand, shoving away from the table. He stalked out of the room, snarling under his breath.
“I guess you know my vote.” Carlisle sighed.
I was still staring after Edward. “Thanks,” I mumbled.
An earsplitting crash echoed from the other room.
I flinched, and spoke quickly. “That’s all I needed. Thank you. For wanting to keep me. I feel exactly the same way about all of you, too.” My voice was jagged with emotion by the end.
Esme was at my side in a flash, her cold arms around me.
“Dearest Bella,” she breathed.
I hugged her back. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Rosalie looking down at the table, and I realized that my words could be construed in two ways.
“Well, Alice,” I said when Esme released me. “Where do you want to do this?”
Alice stared at me, her eyes widening with terror.
“No! No! NO!” Edward roared, charging back into the room. He was in my face before I had time to blink, bending over me, his expression twisted in rage. “Are you insane?” he shouted. “Have you utterly lost your mind?”
I cringed away, my hands over my ears.
“Um, Bella,” Alice interjected in an anxious voice. “I don’t think I’m ready for that. I’ll need to prepare....”
“You promised,” I reminded her, glaring under Edward’s arm.
“I know, but...Seriously, Bella! I don’t have any idea how to not kill you.”
“You can do it,” I encouraged. “I trust you.”
Edward snarled in fury.
Alice shook her head quickly, looking panicked.
“Carlisle?” I turned to look at him.
Edward grabbed my face in his hand, forcing me to look at him. His other hand was out, palm toward Carlisle.
Carlisle ignored that. “I’m able to do it,” he answered my question. I wished I could see his expression. “You would be in no danger of me losing control.”
“Sounds good.” I hoped he could understand; it was hard to talk clearly the way Edward held my jaw.
“Hold on,” Edward said between his teeth. “It doesn’t have to be now.”
“There’s no reason for it not to be now,” I said, the words coming out distorted.
“I can think of a few.”
“Of course you can,” I said sourly. “Now let go of me.”
He freed my face, and folded his arms across his chest. “In about two hours, Charlie will be here looking for you. I wouldn’t put it past him to involve the police.”
“All three of them.” But I frowned.
This was always the hardest part. Charlie, Renée. Now Jacob, too. The people I would lose, the people I would hurt. I wished there was some way that I could be the only one to suffer, but I knew that was impossible.
At the same time, I was hurting them more by staying human. Putting Charlie in constant danger through my proximity. Putting Jake in worse danger still by drawing his enemies across the land he felt bound to protect. And Renée—I couldn’t even risk a visit to see my own mother for fear of bringing my deadly problems along with me!
I was a danger magnet; I’d accepted that about myself.
Accepting this, I knew I needed to be able to take care of myself and protect the ones I loved, even if that meant that I couldn’t be with them. I needed to be strong.
“In the interest of remaining inconspicuous,” Edward said, still talking through his gritted teeth, but looking at Carlisle now, “I suggest that we put this conversation off, at the very least until Bella finishes high school, and moves out of Charlie’s house.”
“That’s a reasonable request, Bella,” Carlisle pointed out.
I thought about Charlie’s reaction when he woke up this morning, if—after all that life had put him through in the last week with Harry’s loss, and then I had put him through with my unexplained disappearance—he were to find my bed empty. Charlie deserved better than that. It was just a little more time; graduation wasn’t so far away...
I pursed my lips. “I’ll consider it.”
Edward relaxed. His jaw unclenched.
“I should probably take you home,” he said, more calm now, but clearly in a hurry to get me out of here. “Just in case Charlie wakes up early.”
I looked at Carlisle. “After graduation?”
“You have my word.”
I took a deep breath, smiled, and turned back to Edward. “Okay. You can take me home.”
Edward rushed me out of the house before Carlisle could promise me anything else. He took me out the back, so I didn’t get to see what was broken in the living room.
It was a quiet trip home. I was feeling triumphant, and a little smug. Scared stiff, too, of course, but I tried not to think about that part. It did me no good to worry about the pain—the physical or the emotional—so I wouldn’t. Not until I absolutely had to.
When we got to my house, Edward didn’t pause. He dashed up the wall and through my window in half a second. Then he pulled my arms from around his neck and set me on the bed.
I thought I had a pretty good idea of what he was thinking, but his expression surprised me. Instead of furious, it was calculating. He paced silently back and forth across my dark room while I watched with growing suspicion.
“Whatever you’re planning, it’s not going to work,” I told him.
“Shh. I’m thinking.”
“Ugh,” I groaned, throwing myself back on the bed and pulling the quilt over my head.
There was no sound, but suddenly he was there. He flipped the cover back so he could see me. He was lying next to me. His hand reached up to brush my hair from my cheek.
“If you don’t mind, I’d much rather you didn’t hide your face. I’ve lived without it for as long as I can stand. Now...tell me something.”
“What?” I asked, unwilling.
“If you could have anything in the world, anything at all, what would it be?”
I could feel the skepticism in my eyes. “You.”
He shook his head impatiently. “Something you don’t already have.”
I wasn’t sure where he was trying to lead me, so I thought carefully before I answered. I came up with something that was both true, and also probably impossible.
“I would want...Carlisle not to have to do it. I would want you to change me.”
I watched his reaction warily, expecting more of the fury I’d seen at his house. I was surprised that his expression didn’t change. It was still calculating, thoughtful.
“What would you be willing to trade for that?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I gawked at his composed face and blurted out the answer before I could think about it.
“Anything.”
He smiled faintly, and then pursed his lips. “Five years?”
My face twisted into an expression somewhere between chagrin and horror.
“You said anything,” he reminded me.
“Yes, but...you’ll use the time to find a way out of it. I have to strike while the iron is hot. Besides, it’s just too danger
ous to be human—for me, at least. So, anything but that.”
He frowned. “Three years?”
“No!”
“Isn’t it worth anything to you at all?”
I thought about how much I wanted this. Better to keep a poker face, I decided, and not let him know how very much that was. It would give me more leverage. “Six months?”
He rolled his eyes. “Not good enough.”
“One year, then,” I said. “That’s my limit.”
“At least give me two.”
“No way. Nineteen I’ll do. But I’m not going anywhere near twenty. If you’re staying in your teens forever, then so am I.”
He thought for a minute. “All right. Forget time limits. If you want me to be the one—then you’ll just have to meet one condition.”
“Condition?” My voice went flat. “What condition?”
His eyes were cautious—he spoke slowly. “Marry me first.”
I stared at him, waiting....“Okay. What’s the punch line?”
He sighed. “You’re wounding my ego, Bella. I just proposed to you, and you think it’s a joke.”
“Edward, please be serious.”
“I am one hundred percent serious.” He gazed at me with no hint of humor in his face.
“Oh, c’mon,” I said, an edge of hysteria in my voice. “I’m only eighteen.”
“Well, I’m nearly a hundred and ten. It’s time I settled down.”
I looked away, out the dark window, trying to control the panic before it gave me away.
“Look, marriage isn’t exactly that high on my list of priorities, you know? It was sort of the kiss of death for Renée and Charlie.”
“Interesting choice of words.”
“You know what I mean.”
He inhaled deeply. “Please don’t tell me that you’re afraid of the commitment,” his voice was disbelieving, and I understood what he meant.
“That’s not it exactly,” I hedged. “I’m...afraid of Renée. She has some really intense opinions on getting married before you’re thirty.”
“Because she’d rather you became one of the eternal damned than get married.” He laughed darkly.
“You think you’re joking.”
“Bella, if you compare the level of commitment between a marital union as opposed to bartering your soul in exchange for an eternity as a vampire . . .” He shook his head. “If you’re not brave enough to marry me, then—”
The Twilight Saga Collection Page 79