Luminosity

by Alicorn

  And she could be killed, if I attacked. If it came down to it, however insane he thought I was being in my assault, Edward would be on my side. Just as Irina would have been on Laurent's against her own sisters if they'd kicked up a fuss about his killings. Edward's mindreading and my newborn strength made the fight almost risk-free on our end, even if Nahuel was factored in. Neither the hybrid nor Huilen was any sort of witch, and she was small and he was weak and slow compared to us.

  But I didn't want to kill her. That seemed like an incorrect thing to do.

  I thought about it, and decided that this wasn'tjust a matter of wanting to keep my hands clean of death. I had no queasiness about the mental image of personally destroying, say, Aro, in the likely event that this proved necessary. I could probably even bring myself to execute his mate, since she'd been in one of the best possible positions to affect the direction of the Volturi out of anyone save the three rulers themselves, and had done nothing. (And because if I had to kill Aro, it would amount to a mercy killing to send his wife after him.)

  But Huilen was, incredibly, frustratingly, not anevil woman, even if she'd killed a hundred people or more in every one of the hundred and fifty years she'd been a vampire. Evil women did not adhere to the dying wishes of their sisters, from across the memory-thinning wall of turning, to bring up their nephews. An evil Huilen would have strangled the sleeping oxygen-dependent baby who'd curled up beside her while she turned. Or she wouldn't have taken Pire into the jungle and helped her in the first place - she'd have let their village kill her sister and gestating nephew, washing her hands of the mess.

  If she really wasn't evil, though, she shouldn't bemurdering people. Huilen's death would be dreadful, but her victims weren't evil either.

  Damn the awkwardness, full speed ahead.

  There was a lull in the conversation after Edward established that Nahuel had spent one month in the womb from conception to messy, deadly birth. Huilen was grimacing again, displaying clear misery over her sister's loss.

  "It's strange to me," I said quietly, "that you feel so strongly about Pire's death, but you both kill humans for food."

  "She was my sister," growled Huilen.

  I held up my hands, palms forward, in a calming gesture. "I understand. I would feel more strongly about it if one of my family were killed than if it were only a stranger, too. But of course strangers tend to have families too." It was difficult to restrain my flippancy. I would really need to look into that and find a way to force myself to be serious, if I were going to make any kind of habit out of vegetarain evangelism. "Huilen, I understand it's not common knowledge that full vampires can live on animal blood - but Nahuel, if you know that you can eat animal blood or even humans' food..."

  "I can; that doesn't mean I like it," he said.

  "Maybe you could rob blood banks or something," I said. My family didn't do this (or even legally buy blood, which doctors such as Carlisle could do) because drinking any human blood would make it harder to resist killing for more. It would be the equivalent of an alcoholic keeping beer in the fridge to make it less likely that he'd rob a liquor store if he got a craving.

  But it might work differently for a half-vampire (he'd tried animal blood and human food long enough to know that they sustained him, for one thing, which I didn't think vampires had a history of doing on their own save Carlisle). And Huilen was already killing people. If they started drinking blood without murdering to get it, they might develop opinions of themselves that were more consistent with vegetarian diets, and move in that direction on their own. Maybe.

  Or at least they wouldn't be first up against the wall when the revolution came. They'd have a little warning.

  Nahuel looked vaguely interested by the suggestion, as though he might try it the way he'd tried other nutritional regimens; Huilen, less so. I let the conversation drift away, frowning to myself.

  * * *

  We visited with the hybrid coven for a few more hours, picking up minutiae we couldn't use about Nahuel and sharing trivia about ourselves. Edward seemed inclined to count them among our non-vegetarian friends as we departed. This was reasonable enough, considering that "non-vegetarian" wasn't a disqualifying feature. It seemed to make him feel better about having learned that Gianna couldn't hope to live through a half-vampire pregnancy.

  I let Edward continue to teach me to be a polyglot as we went to the nearest airport, but my mind wasn't on linguistics. I was thinking about death.

  It had to go.

  * * *

  "It's a reasonable assumption that Joham wasn't trying to keep the women alive," Edward said tentatively, during the flight to Norway. "If he's trying to breed a master race, he could consider it a sign of bad genes or something, if one doesn't survive..."

  "Possibly," I said. "Maybe even probably. If it mattered to him that much that they were dying, he would have called off the "experiment" hundreds of years ago. But we don't know how to find him and check. We can stall for a few months, and see if he visits Nahuel in the available window of leeway and is willing to talk to us. But we can't tell Gianna we want her to carry a kind of baby that no one has ever lived through carrying unless we have some goodinformation that says she will be okay."

  "You're right," sighed Edward.

  "I think it's safe to delay until January, maybe even February," I said, patting his arm. "Just in case. Maybe you could look for him without me along, so Alice could be of more help?" Texts and e-mails from Rachel were frequent enough, and apparently affected my decisions enough, that there were still irregular blank spots in my future that Alice couldn't see. She'd been unable to provide advance directions regarding our hunt through South America, or it wouldn't have taken us half of August and the first week of September to conduct the search.

  "Maybe," he said, although he didn't sound very hopeful.

  I was tempted to say something about how being a vampire was better anyway, and a human child could turn into a vampire adult one day where a hybrid most likely couldn't and vampires had various advantages over half-vampires. That was just sour grapes. Edward had wanted - and I had wanted - our baby. Of course we'd love the stranger's child. But it wasn't the better outcome. Half-vampires weren'tdeficient in some vitally important way. So what if I could beat Nahuel up if I needed to - he was still unaging, still stronger and faster and smarter than a human, and there were hints that he didn't have the vampire struggle with blood, which was an advantage. Besides, half-vampires could be witches like the eldest sister, and good witchcraft could balance any losses in other areas.

  So instead of inventing that reassurance I leaned against Edward, exchanging comfort that didn't rely on rationalizations.

  * * *

  Chapter 22: Maggie

  When we arrived back in Norway, Gianna's egg-harvesting surgery had been and gone; hers were in the freezer next to mine. I went up to one of the computers in the bank of shared ones, rather than running to my cottage to boot up my laptop. I had another heap of e-mails from my parents and Rachel, and one reply from Angela saying she'd relayed my news to everyone and they all wished me well.

  Rachel had sent an e-mail that was very depressing. Emily and Leah had gotten into a fight. This was all it had taken to push Emily teetering over the edge of the fence she'd been sitting regarding Sam. She ran straight to his arms, leaving Claire in an eager Quil's care for a couple of days. (Claire had spent one week home with her parents before being farmed out to her Aunt Emily again; this hiatus had made Quil very miserable but didn't appear to do him physical harm, and he perked up again when she returned.)

  Leah was enraged. She picked fights with anyone and everyone - her brother, often, but everyone in the pack had gotten into at least one tussle with her except Rachel (who could order her to stand down) and Sam. Fast healing prevented this from being too much of a danger, but didn't make the doubly betrayed Leah more pleasant to be around. When Sam went wolf, she de-wolfed. At all costs she avoided sharing his thoughts. She stayed oth
erwise isolated from everyone except her mother, who was undergoing a loosely comparable distress.

  Rachel had nominated Leah to test the pack's range, and Leah had run all the way to Canada (but not near Denali, thankfully). There was no noticeable delay, static, or loss of fidelity to the telepathy. Moving away wouldn't free her from the torment. Even if she scrupulously avoided direct mental contact with Sam, she couldn't help but get it secondhand from the others in the pack.

  I thanked Rachel, asked her to keep me posted, and reminded her to let me know if she or the pack needed anything. I couldn't think of anything helpful to do about the Leah/Sam/Emily mess except to feel vaguely guilty. At least with the evidence stacking up that only male wolves could imprint, Becky's marriage was safe - unless the other accumulated stresses of activation and the move and her husband's departure from his career fractured it themselves.

  I wrote my obligatory replies to my parents, but had no new European countries to tell them about; I told them we were in Norway and in the process of deciding where to go next. I confirmed for Charlie that I didn't plan to go back to Forks - or for that matter the United States - and attend high school in the new school year.

  Inbox unburied, I scanned my mental list of projects. I figured it was a fine time to start building an immunity to Jasper, to see if I could expand my power that way. I closed my eyes and tried to shift my thinking.

  I'd been told that he operated on a physical level. Breathing, pulse rate, maybe hormones. But he could work equally well on vampires and humans. (He tended to get better results from humans, but that was because their emotions were weaker and more malleable, not because he worked extra-forcefully on them.) Vampires had no pulses. Vampires could quit breathing at any time. I hadn't found either of these things to be major components in my experience of emotions. If we had hormones at all, it wasn't clear how they'd work - with no bloodstream to carry them, what would make them work?

  From what I'd been told, Jasper didn't workovertly on any of these physical signals, either - he didn't say to himself "now I will calm this target's heart rate" or "more dopamine is called for here". He sensed and manipulated emotionsdirectly. While he thought of it as functioning on a physical level, that wasn't how he interacted with his own power.

  So it was rather strange that I wouldn't be immune to him to start with. It was probably a very borderline thing, and the very unconsciousness of what I did was likely working against me. Perhaps if I just concentrated...

  My emotions are part of my mind, I thought. As much as my conscious thoughts, which Edward cannot hear and Aro cannot read. As much as my sensory experience, which Jane and Alec cannot alter. As much as my status as a person, which Harry cannot detect. Considerably morethan my electrical systems, which Kate cannot overload.

  I repeated this to myself several times, and then the door burst open. I opened my eyes, and a horrified Jasper was standing at the threshold.

  * * *

  He was looking at me rather like Harry had - like something about me was wrong.

  "Did it work?" I asked mildly.

  "Bella, what in the hell did you do?" demanded Jasper. Edward appeared behind him and shoved past to stand between us, and this was a little alarming, because it seemed to indicate that there might be some danger to me from Jasper, which Edward had heard.

  "Well," I said, flicking my gaze between Jasper and Edward, "it didn't make sense that you could detect my emotions, so I just... thought about that for a while."

  Jasper was looking at me like I was some kind of grotesque vampire-shaped robot occupying the uncanny valley of personhood. "I can't feelanything from you anymore," he almost gagged. "It's like you're a hole in the air."

  "I'm sorry if it makes me hard to be around..." I was looking at Jasper's scars. He looked very, very scary when he was mad. To have that many scars, a lot of vampires had tried and failed to kill him - the same number that must have died, or nearly, in the attempt.

  "Turn it off," Jasper demanded.

  "I'm not sure if I can," I said honestly.

  "Jasper, calm down," said Edward in a soft, dangerous voice.

  "It was bad enough when it was only you, Edward!" exclaimed Jasper. "Don't think I've forgotten how much that infuriated you - and then Alice started losing her - and now I can't get one hint of emotion off her - we rely on our powers to keep ourselves safe!"

  I was tempted to make some snide remark about how my power was doing a great job of keeping me safe, but I didn't actually feel that way; sure, Jasper couldn't magically detect my feelings anymore, but he hadn't been a danger to me before, and now he well might be. I kept my mouth shut and let Edward handle it.

  "This is Bella," Edward reminded Jasper in a level, cool voice, still interposing himself between us. "She is my wife, she is your sister, you don't need to keep tabs on her or be able to manipulate her emotions to defend us. She isone of us."

  "She's still a newborn," said Jasper, but he was grasping at straws.

  "She's no ordinary newborn, you know that," said Edward forcefully. "Calm. Down. Now."

  Jasper snarled. Where was Alice? Why wasn't she there, reining in her husband? He listened to her - was Rachel about to e-mail again, was I blacking out the entire room? I darted my hand out and quit the program; neither Jasper nor Edward was facing in a direction that would have let them see my mail, but it would have appeared in my peripheral vision. Neither reacted noticeably to the action.

  Sure enough, a tense four seconds later, Alice popped up behind Jasper. "Jazz," she said reproachfully, touching his arm.

  He relaxed marginally, but didn't look at her. "Turn it off," he said again, hissing under the words.

  "I don't know if I can," I repeated.

  "Try," insisted Jasper.

  I braced myself, and shook my head.

  Even Alice looked a little surprised at that, although Edward seemed to have expected it. "Why?" asked Jasper tightly. "Bella, I can't even - it's like you're a robot or something, I'm not getting flat affect or something neutral like that, there's just nothing. You disappeared."

  "I understand," I said, quiet. "But I'm trying toexpand my shield, not diminish it. Besides," I added cautiously, "would you believe me if I tried, and then told you I couldn't?"

  Jasper growled at me, and Edward's hands clenched. Alice danced from toe to toe, looking nervous. "Jazz, honey," she said, tugging on Jasper's arm. "This isn't worth a fight."

  He took one long step backwards, then turned away and let Alice lead him down the stairs and out of the house. Edward didn't relax until a second after I couldn't hear them anymore. Then most of the tension drained out of him and he turned towards me, dropping down on one knee so he could hug me where I was sitting at the computer.

  "I didn't realize he'd react like that," I murmured, winding my arms around Edward.

  "I didn't either," Edward said. "Or I would have warned you when you first mentioned it. But I should have guessed. He's very sensitive to the climate of emotion around him, and he's never found anyone he couldn't get a signal from... some people are more or less resistant to the active half of his power, and he might have tolerated it better if it were just that, but there's no variation save for you with the passive half."

  "It's like Harry," I said, "but worse - I don't livewith Harry."

  Edward stood up and kissed the top of my head. "You don't technically live with Jasper, either. We have our own house."

  I nodded and got to my feet. "Do you think he'll get used to it?" I asked, going with Edward out of the computer room and downstairs to head to our cottage.

  "I think so," he soothed. "Alice will help. She was frightened when you first blanked out of her visions, but she took it much better than Jasper is after she confirmed that you were safe."

  "But she can still see me sometimes," I said.

  "That's true," said Edward, a little troubled. "I don't understand why that should be... everyone else you block, you block consistently."

  "Hm," I sai
d. If I pretended to speculate, I might give something away about the real reason behind Alice's spotty vision. I could have tried to add her to my immunities, but she was far too useful - if she could never see me at all, I lost a huge well of information. And I really didn't know if I could turn my shield, or part of it, off.

  Edward speculated for me. "I suppose only some visions you feature in heavily involve your thinking and its consequences," he said. "I haven't noticed a pattern like that in what Alice does and doesn't see, but then, I can't tell what you're thinking."

  I shrugged. Then my phone rang.

  * * *

  "Hi, Bella!" said a cheery, Irish-accented voice when I answered the phone.

  "Maggie?" I asked, bewildered.

  "That's me! I've been trying to call you for a week now!"

  "I was in a place with lousy reception," I said. The jungle was nothing if not that. I'd been able to keep my phone charged via occasional stops in cities with publicly available electrical outlets, but that didn't mean anyone had been able to actually reach me without leaving a message.

  "I would have called Carlisle or somebody instead but I figured if you weren't answering there was probably some stuff up with your coven," she said.

  "It was just me and Edward who were away; everyone else was home," I said. "But we're all here now. What is it you wanted to talk about?"

  "Well," Maggie said, "I want to visit."

  I blinked, and Edward, who could hear both sides of the conversation easily enough, did too.

  "You want to visit?" I said. I didn't think I'd misheard, but it was a hard convention to break: when astonished, confirm astonishing fact.

  "Yeah!" said Maggie brightly. "Just me, not Siobhan and Liam."

  "Uh, Maggie, we really can't have people going missing near where we live," I said.