Life and Death

by Stephenie Meyer

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” I whispered into her hair. “I haven’t had to wait at all. Why do I get off so easily?”

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “I should make this harder for you, definitely.” Her hand stroked my cheek. “You only have to risk your life every second you spend with me, surely that’s not much. You only have to turn your back on nature, on humanity … what is that worth?”

  “I’m not feeling deprived.”

  She turned her face into my chest and whispered, “Not yet.”

  “What—” I started, but then her body was suddenly motionless. I froze, but she was gone, my arms wrapped around the empty air.

  “Lie down,” she hissed, but I couldn’t tell where she was in the darkness.

  I threw myself back on the bed, shaking the quilt out and then rolling on my side, the way I usually slept. I heard the door crack open. Charlie was checking up on me. I breathed evenly, exaggerating the movement.

  A long minute passed. I listened for the door to close. Suddenly Edythe was next to me. She lifted my arm and placed it over her shoulders as she burrowed herself closer to me.

  “You’re a terrible actor—I’d say that career path is out for you.”

  “There goes my ten-year plan,” I muttered. My heart was being obnoxious. She could probably feel it as well as hear it, careening around inside my ribs like it might bust one of them.

  She hummed a melody I didn’t recognize. It reminded me of a lullaby. Then she paused. “Should I sing you to sleep?”

  “Right,” I laughed. “Like I could sleep with you here.”

  “You do it all the time,” she reminded me.

  “Not with you here,” I disagreed, tightening my arm around her.

  “You have a point. So if you don’t want to sleep, what do you want to do, then?”

  “Honestly? A lot of things. None of them careful.”

  She didn’t say anything; it didn’t sound like she was breathing. I went on quickly.

  “But since I promised to be careful, what I’d like is … to know more about you.”

  “Ask me anything.” I could hear that she was smiling now.

  I sifted through my questions for the most important. “Why do you do it?” I asked. “I still don’t understand why you work so hard to resist what you … are. Don’t misunderstand, of course I’m glad that you do—I’ve never been happier to be alive. I just don’t see why you would bother in the first place.”

  She answered slowly. “That’s a good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others—the vast majority of our kind who are quite content with our lot—they, too, wonder at how we live. But you see, just because we’ve been … dealt a certain hand … it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose to rise above—to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can.”

  I lay still, feeling kind of awed. She was a better person than I would ever be.

  “Did you fall asleep?” she murmured almost silently after a few minutes.

  “No.”

  “Is that all you were curious about?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not quite.”

  “What else do you want to know?”

  “Why can you read minds—why only you? And Archie, seeing the future and everything … why does that happen?”

  I felt her shrug under my arm. “We don’t really know. Carine has a theory … she believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified—like our minds, and our senses. She thinks that I must have already been very sensitive to the thoughts of those around me. And that Archie had some precognition, wherever he was.”

  “What did she bring into the next life, and the others?”

  “Carine brought her compassion. Earnest brought his ability to love passionately. Eleanor brought her strength, Royal his … tenacity. Or you could call it pigheadedness,” she chuckled. “Jessamine is very interesting. She was quite charismatic in her first life, able to influence those around her to see things her way. Now she is able to manipulate the emotions of those near her—calm down a room of angry people, for example, or excite a lethargic crowd, conversely. It’s a very subtle gift.”

  I considered the impossibilities she described, trying to take it in. She waited patiently while I thought.

  “So where did it all start? I mean, Carine changed you, and then someone must have changed her, and so on… .”

  “Well, where did you come from? Evolution? Creation? Couldn’t we have evolved in the same way as other species, predator and prey? Or, if you don’t believe that all this world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is it so hard to believe that the same force that created the delicate angelfish with the shark, the baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our kinds together?”

  “Let me get this straight—I’m the baby seal, right?”

  “Correct.” She laughed, and her fingers brushed across my lips. “Aren’t you tired? It’s been a rather long day.”

  “I just have a few million more questions.”

  “We have tomorrow, and the next day, and the next… .”

  A feeling of euphoria, of pure bliss, filled up my chest until I thought I might explode. I couldn’t imagine there was a drug addict in the world who wouldn’t trade his favorite fix for this feeling.

  It was a minute before I could talk again. “Are you sure you won’t vanish in the morning? You are mythical, after all.”

  “I won’t leave you,” she promised solemnly, and that same feeling, even stronger than before, washed through me.

  When I could speak, I said, “One more, then, tonight… .” And then the blood rushed up my neck. The darkness was no help. I was sure she could feel the heat.

  “What is it?”

  “Um, nope, forget it. I changed my mind.”

  “Beau, you can ask me anything.”

  I didn’t speak, and she groaned.

  “I keep thinking it will get less frustrating, not hearing your thoughts. But it just gets worse and worse.”

  “It’s bad enough that you eavesdrop on my sleep-talking,” I muttered.

  “Please tell me?” she murmured, her velvet voice taking on that mesmerizing intensity that I never could resist.

  I tried. I shook my head.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume it’s something much worse than it is,” she threatened.

  “I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said, then locked my teeth.

  “Please?” Again in that hypnotic voice.

  I sighed. “You won’t get … offended?”

  “Of course not.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well … so, obviously, I don’t know a lot that’s true about vampires”—the word slipped out accidentally, I was just thinking so hard about how to ask my question, and then I realized what I’d said and I froze.

  “Yes?”

  She sounded normal, like the word didn’t mean anything.

  I exhaled in relief.

  “Okay, I mean, I just know the things you’ve told me, and it seems like we’re pretty … different. Physically. You look human—only better—but you don’t eat or sleep, you know. You don’t need the same things.”

  “Debatable on some levels, but there are definitely truths in what you’re saying. What’s your question?”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “Ask me.”

  I blurted it all out in a rush. “So I’m just an ordinary human guy, and you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and I am just … overwhelmed by you, and a part of that, naturally, is that I’m insanely attracted to you, which I’m sure you can’t have helped but notice, what with your being, like, super aware of my circulatory system, but what I don’t know is, if it’s like that for you. Or is it like sleeping and eating, which you don’t need and I do—though I don’t want them nearly as much as I want you?
You said that Eleanor and Royal go off and live like a married couple, but does that even mean the same thing for vampires? And this question is totally offside, completely not first date appropriate, and I’m sorry and you don’t have to answer.”

  I sucked in a huge breath.

  “Hmm … I would have said this was our second date.”

  “You’re right.”

  She laughed. “Are you asking me about sex, Beau?”

  My face got hot again. “Yes. I shouldn’t have.”

  She laughed again. “I did climb into your bed, Beau. I believe that makes this line of inquiry quite understandable.”

  “You still don’t have to answer.”

  “I told you that you could ask me anything.” She paused, and then her voice was different. Kind of formal, like a teacher lecturing. “So … in the general sense—Sex and Vampires One-Oh-One. We all started out human, Beau, and most of those human desires are still there—just obscured behind more powerful desires. But we’re not thirsty all the time, and we tend to form … very strong bonds. Physical as well as emotional. Royal and Eleanor are just like any human couple who are attracted to each other, by which I mean, very, very annoying for those of us who have to live with them, and even more so for the one who can hear their minds.”

  I laughed quietly, and she joined in.

  “Awkward,” I murmured.

  “You have no idea,” she said darkly, then sighed. “And now in the specific sense … Sex and Vampires One-Oh-Two, Beau and Edythe.” She sighed again, more slowly this time. “I don’t think … that would be possible for us.”

  “Because I would have to get too … close?” I guessed.

  “That would be a problem, but that’s not the main problem. Beau, you don’t know how … well, fragile you are. I don’t mean that as an insult to your manliness, anyone human is fragile to me. I have to mind my actions every moment that we’re together so that I don’t hurt you. I could kill you quite easily, simply by accident.”

  I thought about the first few times that she’d touched me, how cautiously she’d moved, how much it had seemed to frighten her. How she would ask me to move my hand, rather than just pulling hers out from under it …

  Now she put her palm against my cheek.

  “If I were too hasty … if I were at all distracted, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don’t realize how incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I’m with you.”

  If her life were in my hands that way, would I have already killed her? I cringed at the thought.

  “I think I could be very distracted by you,” she murmured.

  “I am never not distracted by you.”

  “Can I ask you something now—something potentially offensive?”

  “It’s your turn.”

  “Do you have any experience with sex and humans?”

  I was a little surprised that my face didn’t go hot again. It felt natural to tell her everything. “Not even a little bit. This is all firsts for me. I told you, I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, not even close.”

  “I know. It’s just that I hear what other people think. I know that love and lust don’t always keep the same company.”

  “They do for me.”

  “That’s nice. We have that one thing in common, at least.”

  “Oh.” When she’d been talking before, about how we tend to form very strong bonds, physical as well as emotional, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was speaking from experience. I found that I was surprisingly relieved to know that wasn’t the case.

  “So, you do find me distracting?”

  “Indeed.” She was smiling again. “Would you like me to tell you the things that distract me?”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “It was your eyes first. You have lovely eyes, Beau, like a sky without clouds. I’ve spent all my life in rainy climates and so I often miss the sky, but not when I’m with you.”

  “Er, thanks?”

  She giggled. “I’m not alone. Six of your ten admirers started with your eyes, too.”

  “Ten?”

  “They’re not all so forward as Taylor and McKayla. Do you want a list? You have options.”

  “I think you’re making fun of me. And either way, there is no other option.” And never would be again.

  “Next it was your arms—I’m very fond of your arms, Beau—this includes your shoulders and hands.” She ran her hand down my arm, then back up to my shoulder, and back down to my hand again. “Or maybe it was your chin that was second …” Her fingers touched my face, like she thought I might not know what she meant. “I’m not entirely sure. It all took me quite by surprise when I realized that not only did I find you delicious, but also beautiful.”

  My face and neck were burning. I knew it couldn’t be true, but in the moment, she was pretty convincing.

  “Oh, and I didn’t even mention your hair.” Her fingernails combed against my scalp.

  “Okay, now I know you’re making fun.”

  “I’m truly not. Did you know your hair is just precisely the same shade as a teak inlaid ceiling in a monastery I once stayed at in … I think it would be Cambodia now?”

  “Um, no, I did not.” I yawned involuntarily.

  She laughed. “Did I answer your question to your satisfaction?”

  “Er, yes.”

  “Then you should sleep.”

  “I’m not sure if I can.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No!” I said a little too loudly.

  She laughed, then began to hum that same unfamiliar lullaby—her voice was like an angel’s, soft in my ear.

  More tired than I realized, exhausted from a day of mental and emotional stress like I’d never felt before, I drifted to sleep with her cold body in my arms.

  15. THE CULLENS

  THE MUTED LIGHT OF ANOTHER CLOUDY DAY EVENTUALLY WOKE ME. I lay with my arm across my eyes, groggy and dazed. Something, a dream trying to be remembered, struggled to break into my consciousness. I moaned and rolled on my side, hoping more sleep would come. And then yesterday came flooding back into my memory.

  “Oh!” I sat up so fast it made my head spin.

  “Your hair also has the ability to defy gravity.” Her amused voice came from the rocking chair in the corner. “It’s like your own superpower.”

  Automatically, I reached up to pat my hair down.

  She sat crossed-legged in the chair, a perfect smile on her perfect face.

  “You stayed.” It was like I hadn’t woken up after all.

  “Of course. That’s what you wanted, correct?”

  I nodded.

  She smiled wider. “It’s what I wanted, too.”

  I staggered out of the bed, not sure where I was going, only that I needed to be closer to her. She waited for me, and there was no surprise in her face when I sank to my knees in front of her. I reached up slowly and laid my palm against the side of her face. She leaned into my hand, her eyes slipping closed.

  “Charlie?” I asked. We’d both been speaking at normal volume.

  “He left an hour ago, with an amazing amount of gear.”

  He’d be gone all day. So it was just me and Edythe, in an empty house, with no need to go anywhere. So much time. I felt like some crazy old miser, gloating over his piles of gold coins, only instead of coins, it was seconds that I hoarded.

  It was only then that I realized she’d changed her clothes. Instead of the thin-strapped tank top, she wore a peach-colored sweater.

  “You left?” I asked.

  She opened her eyes and smiled, putting one of her hands up to keep mine against her face. “I could hardly leave in the clothes I came in—what would the neighbors think? In any case, I was only gone for a few minutes and you were very deeply asleep at that point, so I know I didn’t miss anything.”

  I groaned. “What did I say?”

  Her eyes
got a little wider, her face more vulnerable. “You said you loved me,” she whispered.

  “You already knew that.”

  “It was different, hearing the words.”

  I stared into her eyes. “I love you,” I said.

  She leaned down and rested her forehead carefully against mine. “You are my life now.”

  We sat like that for a long time, until finally my stomach grumbled. She sat up, laughing.

  “Humanity is so overrated,” I complained.

  “Should we begin with breakfast?”

  I threw my free hand over my jugular, my eyes wild.

  She flinched; then her eyes narrowed and she scowled at me.

  I laughed. “Come on, you know that was funny.”

  She was still frowning. “I disagree. Shall I rephrase? Breakfast time for the human?”

  “Okay. I need another human minute first, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course.”

  “Stay.”

  She smiled.

  I brushed my teeth twice again, then rushed through my shower. I ripped through my wet hair with a comb, trying to make it lie flat. It ignored me pretty thoroughly. And then I hit a wall. I’d forgotten to bring clothes with me.

  I hesitated for a minute, but I was too impatient to panic long. There was no help for it. I tucked the towel securely around my waist and then marched into the hall with my face blazing red. Even better—the patch of red on my chest was exposed, too. I stuck my head around the edge of the doorframe.

  “Um …”

  She was still in the rocking chair. She laughed at my expression.

  “Shall we meet in the kitchen, then?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She was past me in a rush of cool air, down the stairs before a second had passed. I was barely able to follow the motion—she was just a streak of pale color, then nothing.

  “Thanks,” I called after her, then hurried to my dresser.

  I knew I should probably put some thought into what I wore, but I was in a hurry to get downstairs. I did think to grab a pullover, so she wouldn’t worry about me getting cold.