Luminosity

by Alicorn

  "Hm," she said speculatively. "Maybe it's worth being chief just to make my brother do what I say occasionally." She didn't sound serious, so I laughed, and she smiled at me. "Okay. Trying to go wolf now."

  "Wait a sec," I said, and she glanced at me curiously. "Based on who'd be descended from past werewolves, what kind of pack size do you think we're looking at? And how do you want to handle telling and activating them? I mean, no hard feelings, but you tried to take my face off - I'd rather avoid situations where anybody will succeed at that with me or a - non-magical person. I like having a face. And you know better than I do what might have kept you calm to start out."

  "Let me think," she said. "There's Jake, he's fifteen now, the Clearwater kids are eighteen and thirteen..." She went through more names, coming up with a couple dozen Quileutes between twelve and twenty-five who she'd expect to have the gene. "I'm not sure if you should activate the really young ones, though," she added. "I mean, they kinda shouldn't be getting into any fights. And if this is going to be athing you'd need to make another trip in some years to activate the ones who are really young now anyway."

  "You're the boss of them," I reminded her. "They can still stay home and play video games instead of trying to kill bad vampires even if they're activated."

  "I guess. Now I feel like maybe I should be worrying about parental consent or something."

  "How's this for a plan," I said. "I hang back in the middle of the woods. You go in - on two feet, if you can hang onto it, and you're getting better at it all the time. You talk to anybody you need to talk to, get any permission you need - and I just stay put and shake hands with whoever you bring me and then you take them someplace else before they go floof." I added a gesture to symbolize the explosion of fur that was the human-to-wolf transition. "All at your discretion about who knows what and who I meet. You're handling everything really well and you know everybody there better than I do - and you can make judgment calls in person without accidentally floofing everybody floofable just by being there, like I would."

  Rachel giggled manically at the term of art "floof". "That sounds good," she acknowledged. "And after that's dealt with I'll call Becky and see if I can get her to come up. Plane tickets are expensive from Hawaii, though..."

  "I've got it covered," I told her. "Don't worry about that or anything else that can be solved by throwing money at it. I have a psychic sister, remember? She can't see you, but you aren't the CFO of a publicly trading corporation, either."

  Rachel laughed again. "Okay. So I guess I should get dressed and see if I can avoid floofing for a while, instead of running there."

  "Up to you, Chief," I teased, and she snickered. I handed over the clothes.

  "Keep cracking jokes," she added. "I think it helps - if I'm right about how it seems to work, I go like this when I think things are funny and I go wolf when I'm pissed off, even a little."

  I obliged as best I could, although I hadn't read any joke books since turning, and most of the material I could produce on demand without situational prompting was Emmett's brand of off-color insinuation. Accompanied by anecdotes for context, this seemed to suit Rachel well enough, and she didn't burst out of her khakis.

  Rachel was reasonably familiar with the woods around the reservation, and pointed out where she wanted me to wait before I'd even caught the scent of humans other than her. I stood by the landmark rock she'd indicated. "Oh, and Rachel," I called after her.

  "What?" she asked.

  "If there's anybody who you aren't sure about having the gene, but who you'd want to activate if they did, you may as well bring them by. I'll be able to tell by smell without having to give anything away except the part where I'm a weird girl standing in the woods waiting for you to introduce me to people."

  "I smell funny to you, too?" she asked, sounding nonplussed. "Huh. Okay. I think I thought of most everybody, though. Although I guess there've been some rumors about the Calls..."

  "I don't know the Calls, but it doesn't cost me anything to shake hands with them."

  "Just the one. It'd be the son, not the mom. Nobody knows who his dad is - she showed up from the Makah reservation, pregnant, people assumed she'd left the father there but she never got child support or talked about a dead lover or anything. So I'll bring her kid - last, though. He's Jacob's age, I think they're friends." I nodded. "Anyway," she said, "if anybody changes faster than I did and goes for you before I get them where I have picked out, lead them that way - there's a sharp dropoff, not that it'd be hard to get out of, but it'll at least provide a clear border. I don't want some fifteen-year-old racing into the village without thinking and taking his mom's arm off because she grounded him or something. And you can get around in the trees pretty good - well enough that you'd be tricky to catch, if you keep your wits about you."

  I nodded again, and she turned and walked out to retrieve her packmates, one at a time.

  * * *

  She brought Jacob first. I heard them talking a mile away - he was incredulous that she was even there, let alone claiming to be a werewolf. He was also having trouble keeping up with her long, tireless strides.

  When they reached my rock, he was saying, "Raych, if this is some kind of joke... uh..." He stared at me. It didn't look like he recognized me. His hair was very long. I wondered suddenly if Rachel's fluffy coat was related to her fluffy haircut. If so, Jacob was going to need to visit the barber or he'd look like a cross between a wolf and a mop.

  "Hey, Jacob," I said.

  "Do... I... know you?" I hadn't put any contacts in; my eyes were their brilliantly crimson selves, albeit with the encroaching orange at the border of the iris. And of course my face was too symmetrical and smoothly planed to belong to my human past.

  "We've met," I said. "I'm Bella."

  "Bel- Charlie's kid?" He gaped.

  "The same," I said. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell him I was here, though. He's not informed of... things."

  "Things - is that what you call it?" he spluttered. Rachel bristled.

  "Sure, why not? Come, join us, be a Thing," I said, hoping to crack her up and delay the need for a new outfit. She smirked and didn't phase. I held out one white hand to Jacob. There was a long pause.

  "Jake, kiddo, you can smell her from where you are, right? You're gonna activate whether you touch her or not, this just speeds it up so I can stash you in the ravine and go get Leah," Rachel said.

  Her brother stared at me with horrified eyes. I looked back as benignly as I could, still holding my arm forth - it wasn't going to get tired or anything. Eventually he reached out, touched one knuckle with one fingertip, and pulled back as though burned. "You're cold," he said.

  "If you're trying to tempt me into saying you're hot, it's not going to work," I replied. Keep Rachel laughing. She did, a little, although she looked nervous once Jacob had touched my hand.

  "Eheheh," said Jacob, flicking his eyes to his sister. They walked towards the ravine, Jacob occasionally looking over his shoulder to throw me incredulous glances.

  I could hear all the way to the ravine, and I listened as Jacob complained incredulously of the shivers - but not, interestingly, of the emotional discomfort Rachel had described. It took him almost forty minutes to shift, going by when I started to hear barking. Two voices yelped and yowled at each other - so at some point she'd phased too. The "floof" noise was too soft to carry that far, so I didn't know when.

  I didn't hear signs of fighting; there were no snarls or pained howling. I waited for her to return, amusing myself by snapping a chunk of rock off of the boulder I stood near and inexpertly sculpting it into a little replica of wolf-Rachel with my fingertips.

  I was just scratching in the fur on the tail when the white wolf trotted back. She looked happy. I blinked at her curiously, and held out a bag of clothes.

  Very deliberately, or so it seemed to me, she phased and accepted the proferred bag. "Did you know we're telepathic?" she asked me. Then she furrowed her brow, puzzled at somet
hing. "...In wolf form?" she added, apparently having just noticed the absence of her newfound power.

  "I didn't," I said. "Big holes in you all sewn up?"

  "Yup!" she replied. If she'd had a tail at that moment it would've wagged. "All gone. Although it is sure weird sharing my head with my little brother." She shook her head, laughing softly. "So I guess I'm the only one who ever has to live with that. I'm half tempted to stop here, just the two of us - but Leah'll think this is cool, I bet. And her fiancé is on my list too, and her brother, she'll want to bring them in. Jake filled me in on that. Hope Leah and Sam don't saturate the mental soup with too much mush." She paused. "No pun intended. Anyway, I'm going to go get her. Hey, neat little statue. Is that me?"

  "Who else would it be? I don't know what Jacob looks like when he's wolfy."

  "Sorta rust-colored, and my god, his fur, it's so long!" Rachel said. "Not as big as me, at least not yet, but he's a kid, he'll grow. I told him to hang out in the ravine and then if he phases back quick enough, he can coach Leah and so on, and I can just keep making trips instead of hanging out through the whole process every time. I'll want those towels and the curtain, though."

  "Sure thing," I said. And she grinned at me, making only a little face when she inhaled vampire-scented air, and trotted back to the reservation.

  * * *

  Leah Clearwater, who had the sort of eyelashes that other women medicated themselves to get, was skeptical. But she followed Rachel into the forest readily enough, shook my hand with only the barest hesitation, and complained about my stench only fourteen times between meeting me and getting shaky enough to want to quit talking. I heard her yelling, "Oh, for crissake, Black, put some clothes on!" at Jacob when she arrived at the ravine, and Rachel offering her brother a towel. Apparently he'd dewolfed but not left his place. Rachel turned around as soon as she'd gotten them set up, and then went to retrieve the younger Clearwater.

  Leah's little brother Seth was thirteen, and a pleasanter child one could not hope to meet. He didn't make one remark about my temperature, odor, or supernatural weirdness, just introduced himself as polite as could be, thanked me for helping him "either let my sister play a really elaborate practical joke that'll make a good story later, or turn into a werewolf", and traipsed off to join the others. When Rachel doubled back, she reported that Leah-the-wolf was gray.

  Leah's fiancé was a man named Sam Uley, a solid, somber sort who seemed only to be playing along because Leah had already gone with Rachel. He accepted a handshake, grimacing but not commenting when he touched my skin, and proceeded to the phasing location with resigned exasperation. I finished my sculpture and picked up a large fallen branch to try working in wood instead; Rachel swung by en route to find another pack member and told me that Seth's wolf form was sandy-colored.

  It was at this point that her efforts met with less success. She came back alone and told me she was going to risk sending Jacob to get Quil Ateara and Embry Call, and Leah to get two girls named Marilyn and Olivia. It was in more or less this way that the rest of the pack came through, and through some combination of luck and Rachel's trick of humor, there were no sudden phasings in the middle of the village (although Rachel did need to go into Billy's house and get some of Jacob's clothes so the boys could do this looking less ridiculous than they would have just wrapped in towels). I promised Jacob as he walked by that I'd replace any of his possessions that got ruined.

  In all, I activated twenty-six wolves, fourteen female, twelve male. (Embry turned out to be one after all, leading to considerable gossip punctuated by occasional floof-induced sentence truncation about who his father could be.) It was after dark by the time the last was brought through. Rachel had a list of nine more people, including Becky, who weren't living on the reservation but were still under the twenty-five-year-old threshold and could be expected to have the gene.

  "Are we sure that threshold is true?" I asked when she gave me this list. "I mean, some of the other stories weren't true. Every girl we tried was able to activate, and that wasn't supposed to happen at all."

  "I'm not sure," she admitted. "I guess I could carry Dad out here and see if you can get him to turn into a wolf. He already knows everything."

  "I guess you could ask," I said dubiously. I'd agreed to leave this up to Rachel, and I had only a few weak objections to trying to activate Billy. He wouldn't exactly be worse off if his wolf form were disabled too; the fact that I had some trouble getting along with him personally wouldn't become significantly more of a problem if he were one of the pack. "Would you mind waiting until tomorrow? I want to call my husband, and hunt, and buy plane tickets for all these people." I waved the list of absent Quileutes.

  "Yeah, sure, we could use a rest anyway," Rachel said. "I'll ask Dad tomorrow. Have fun, uh, hunting." She paused. "What is it you usually eat?"

  "Me personally? Killer whales, when they're handy," I told her.

  "Right, bag a tasty whale, but go easy, because you are what you eat," she snickered. "See you in the morning. I'm going to stay out overnight - I don't want anybody breaking their furniture phasing in the middle of the night, in case that's a thing that happens, so we're camping. You might wanna avoid the ravine. Sam and Nina and Paul are having some extra trouble getting ahold of themselves and it wouldn't surprise me if one of them went for your throat."

  "Traditionally, I'm the one who goes for the throat."

  She laughed. She looked so much better since the pack had ceased to be a solo act - she was practically radiating health and power, and that excessive heat seemed more like a glow than a fever when it accompanied a smile. "Okay," she said, "I'm gonna floof and go to bed. Still love that word, by the way." She got out of her clothes, safely away from the eyes of her packmates, and (entirely deliberately) adopted her white-furred form. I watched her lope off into the night.

  * * *

  Chapter 18: Clearwater

  It wasn't far from La Push to the coastline. Leaving items like my cellphone that would be harmed by the saltwater onshore, I dove into the water and looked for lunch. I didn't find any killer whales, so I had a harbor seal instead. It wasn't nearly as good, but it filled me up. When I'd emerged from the water, I called Edward, told him that I expected to be away from Québec for at least a couple more days but that he shouldn't worry, and asked after Gianna.

  "She's okay," he said heavily, "or at least - well,Gianna is fine, but worried about her brother. The morphine didn't do what we thought. Not long after you took off, he started screaming. Carlisle broke his spine, but it's healed now. And he was able to say that the morphine didn't help - that it interacted with the venom somehow, and paralyzed him instead of actually dulling the pain. You can imagine how horrified Gianna was, and Carlisle's decided to start keeping barbituates on hand at all times so that we can do it the way we did with you every time in the future, even on no notice."

  I sucked in a breath of sea air through my teeth. "Eeesh. Yeah, good plan. Ilario's nearly done now?"

  "Yes," said Edward. "Nearly. They'll keep me posted - I asked them to call my phone instead of yours when possible and let them assume that your carrier has spotty reception here. At least, I think that's what they assumed - I can't be sure from this far away. Gianna has been informed that you prefer, in spite of your control, not to be around humans when you don't need to and are out hunting most of the time, so she isn't going to let anything slip. Alice did try calling you once, and told me that your power is developing in an interesting and inconvenient way," he relayed, with some mirth.

  He hadn't asked for anything about where I was at, and I was grateful. It had begun to wear on me to be away from him for so long. He could probably hear the ocean through the phone, but he could have asked for more precision about my location - or my project, or whether I was with anyone, or what I'd been using my shiny black credit card for lately - and I wouldn't have been able to resist telling him. It ached that I couldn't safely share it all. A little itchy feeling that I must be bein
g too paranoid, that nodanger was so great that it should stop me from telling Edward everything, prickled in my mind. Only the notion that Edward's own safety could be on the line if Aro got hold of the wrong information let me hold my tongue.

  "I'll be back as soon as I can," I promised him, not addressing the substance of his statements. "I love you, you know."

  "I love you," he murmured into the phone.

  "You never say "too"," I observed. "Why not?"

  "I got into the habit when you were a human," he said. "If I said "too", it would make it sound like my love and yours were comparable, when I was quite convinced that you couldn't love me as much as I loved you."

  "That's... very silly, but probably not inaccurate," I said. "Humans don't have a lot of space in their heads. I love you more now than I did then."

  I heard a smile in Edward's voice as he said, "Do you want me to start saying "too" now, then?"

  "No, don't, it's cute this way."

  "Very well," he laughed. "When you come back and when Ilario is ready to be in the same house as Gianna, what do you want to do next?"

  "I'd like to meet the Denalis soon," I said. "They didn't come to our wedding, and they're extended family, aren't they?"

  "We do tend to consider them so," Edward acknowledged. "I'm sure they'd be happy to have us visit."

  "Great. But don't schedule anything yet. I don't have a firm timetable."

  "Of course, Bella." I felt so accommodated. I'd told Aro that my coven didn't revolve around me, but in some sense, since I'd entered their sphere of attention, it had. Bella asked to see vampires doing tricks; Bella wants us to perform egg extraction surgery on her; Bella has been targeted by an unstoppable tracker; Bella needs to be picked up in Italy; Bella has rendered it necessary that we move to Norway; Bella's turning; Bella's a newborn; Bella's a special snowflake; Bella needs a test human; Bella's getting married; Bella needs a private South Atlantic island on which to honeymoon; Bella wants to rescue a human she met once; Bella wants to throw in the human's brother; and now Bella's gallivanting around without telling anybody what she's up to...