"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 C harlie, 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.
"Is it really bad, Jake?" I asked anxiously, wishing I had some way to help him. "Are you miserable?"
"No, I'm not miserable," he told me. "Not anymore. Not now that you know. That was hard, before." He leaned over so that his cheek was resting on top of my head.
He was quiet for a moment, and I wondered what he was thinking about. Maybe I didn't want to know.
"What's the hardest part?" I whispered, still wishing I could help.
"The hardest part is feeling... out of control," he said slowly. "Feeling like I can't be sure of myself--like maybe you shouldn't be around me, like maybe nobody should. Like I'm a monster who might hurt somebody. You've seen Emily. Sam lost control of his temper for just one second... and she was standing too close. And now there's nothing he can ever do to put it right again. I hear his thoughts--I know what that feels like...
"Who wants to be a nightmare, a monster?
"And then, the way it comes so easily to me, the way I'm better at it than the rest of them--does that make me even less human than Enbry or Sam? Sometimes I'm afraid that I'm losing myself."
"Is it hard? To find yourself again?"
"At first," he said. "It takes some practice to phase back and forth. But it's easier tor me."
"Why?" I wondered.
"Because Ephraim Black was my father's grandfather, and Quil Ateara was my mother's grandfather."
"Quil?" I asked in confusion.
"His great-grandfather," Jacob clarified. "The Quil you know is my second cousin."
"But why does it matter who your great-grandfathers are?"
"Because Ephraim and Quil were in the last pack. Levi Uley was the third. It's in my blood on both sides. I never had a chance. Like Quil doesn't have a chance."
His expression was bleak.
"What's the very best part?" I asked, hoping to cheer him up.
"The best part," he said, suddenly smiling again, "is the speed."
"Better than the motorcycles?"
He nodded, enthusiastic. "There's no comparison."
"How fast can you... ?"
"Run
?" he finished my question. "Fast enough. What can I measure it by? We caught... what was his name? Laurent? I imagine that means more to you than it would to someone else."
It did mean something to me. I couldn't imagine that--the wolves running faster than a vampire. When the Cullens ran, they all but turned invisible with speed.
"So, tell me something I don't know," he said. "Something about vampires. How did you stand it, being around them? Didn't it creep you out?"
"No," I said curtly.
My tone made him thoughtful for a moment.
"Say, why'd your bloodsucker kill that James, anyway?" he asked suddenly.
"James was trying to kill me--it was like a game for him. He lost. Do you remember last spring when I was in the hospital down in Phoenix?"
Jacob sucked in a breath. "He got that close?"
"He got very, very close." I stroked my scar. Jacob noticed, because he held the hand I moved.
"What's that?" He traded hands, examining my right. "This is your funny scar, the cold one." He looked at it closer, with new eyes, and gasped.
"Yes, it's what you think it is," I said. "James bit me."
His eyes bulged, and his face turned a strange, sallow color under the russet surface. He looked like he was about to be sick.
"But if he bit you... ? Shouldn't you be... ?" He choked.
"Edward saved me twice," I whispered. "He sucked the venom out--you know, like with a rattlesnake." I twitched as the pain lashed around the edges of the hole.
But I wasn't the only one twitching. I could feel Jacob's whole body trembling next to mine. Even the car shook.
"Careful, Jake. Easy. Ca in down."
"Yeah," he panted. "Calm." He shook his head back and forth quickly. After a moment, only his hands were shaking.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, almost. Tell me something else. Give me something else to think about."
"What do you want to know?"
"I don't know." He had his eyes closed, concentrating. "The extra stuff I guess. Did any of the other Cullens have... extra talents? Like the mind reading?"
I hesitated a second. This felt like a question he would ask of his spy, not his friend. But what was the point of hiding what I knew? It didn't matter now, and it would help him control himself.
So I spoke quickly, the image of Emily's ruined face in my mind, and the hair rising on my arms. I couldn't imagine how the russet wolf would fit inside the Rabbit--Jacob would tear the whole garage apart if he changed now.
"Jasper could... sort of control the emotions of the people around him. Not in a bad way, just to calm someone down, that kind of thing. It would probably help Paul a lot," I added, teasing weakly. "And then Alice could see things that were going to happen. The future, you know, but not absolutely. The things she saw would change when someone changed the path they were on..."
Like how she'd seen me dying... and she'd seen me becoming one of them. Two things that had not happened. And one that never would. My head started to spin--I couldn't seem to pull in enough oxygen from the air. No lungs.
Jacob was entirely in control now, very still beside me.
"Why do you do that?" he asked. He tugged lightly at one of my arms, which was bound around my chest, and then gave up when it wouldn't come loose easily. I hadn't even realized I'd moved them. "You do that when you're upset. Why?"
"It hurts to think about them," I whispered. "It's like I can't breathe... like I'm breaking into pieces..."It was bizarre how much I could tell Jacob now. We had no more secrets.
He smoothed my hair. "It's okay, Bella, it's okay. I won't bring it up again. I'm sorry."
"I'm fine." I gasped. "Happens all the time. Not your fault."
"We're a pretty messed-up pair, aren't we?" Jacob said. "Neither one of us can hold our shape together right."
"Pathetic," I agreed, still breathless.
"At least we have each other," he said, clearly comforted by the thought.
I was comforted, too. "At least there's that," I agreed.
And when we were together, it was fine. But Jacob had a horrible, dangerous job he felt compelled to do, and so I was often alone, stuck in La Push for safety, with nothing to do to keep my mind off any of my worries.
I felt awkward, always taking up space at Billy's. I did some studying for another Calculus test that was coming up next week, but I could only look at math for so long. When I didn't have something obvious to do in my hands,
I felt like I ought to be making conversation with Billy--the pressure of normal societal rules. But Billy wasn't one for filling up the long silences, and so the awkwardness continued.
I tried hanging out at Emily's place Wednesday afternoon, for a change. At first it was kind of nice. Emily was a cheerful person who never sat still. I drifted behind her while she flitted around her little house and yard, scrubbing at the spotless floor, pulling a tiny weed, fixing a broken hinge, tugging a string of wool through an ancient loom, and always cooking, too. She complained lightly about the increase in the boys' appetites from all their extra running, but it was easy to see she didn't mind taking care of them. It wasn't hard to be with her--after all, we were both wolf girls now.
But Sam checked in after I'd been there for a few hours. I only stayed long enough to ascertain that Jacob was fine and there was no news, and then I had to escape. The aura of love and contentment that surrounded them was harder to take in concentrated doses, with no one else around to dilute it.
So that left me wandering the beach, pacing the length of the rocky crescent back and forth, again and again.
Alone time wasn't good for me. Thanks to the new honesty with Jacob, I'd been talking and thinking about the Cullens way too much. No matter how I tried to distract myself--and I had plenty to think of: I was honestly and desperately worried about Jacob and his wolf-brothers, I was terrified for Charlie and the others who thought they were hunting animals, I was getting in deeper and deeper with Jacob without ever having consciously decided to progress in that direction and I didn't know what to do about it--none of these very real, very deserving of thought, very pressing concerns could take my mind off the pain in my chest for long. Eventually, I couldn't even walk anymore, because I couldn't breathe. I sat down on a patch of semidry rocks and curled up in a ball.
Jacob found me like that, and I could tell from his expression that he understood.
"Sorry," he said right away. He pulled me up from the ground and wrapped both arms around my shoulders. I hadn't realized that I was cold until then. His warmth made me shudder, but at least I could breathe with him there.
"I'm ruining your spring break," Jacob accused himself as we walked back up the beach.
"No, you're not. I didn't have any plans. I don't think I like spring breaks, anyway."
"I'll take tomorrow morning off. The others can run without me. We'll do something fun."
The word seemed out of place in my life right now, barely comprehensible, bizarre. "Fun?"
"Fun is exactly what you need. Hmm..." he gazed out across the heaving gray waves, deliberating. As his eyes scanned the horizon, he had a flash of inspiration.
"Got it!" he crowed. "Another promise to keep."
"What are you talking about?"
He let go of my hand and pointed toward the southern edge of the beach, where the flat, rocky half-moon dead-ended against the sheer sea cliffs. I stared, uncomprehending.
"Didn't I promise to take you cliff diving?"
I shivered.
"Yeah, it'll be pretty cold--not as cold as it is today. Can you feel the weather changing? The pressure? It will be warmer tomorrow. You up for it?"
The dark water did not look inviting, and, from this angle, the cliffs looked even higher than before.
But it had been days since I'd heard Edward's voice. That was probably part of the problem. I was addicted to the sound of my delusions. It made things worse if I went too long without them. Jumping off a cliff was certain to remedy that situation.
"Sure, I'm up for it. Fun."
"It's a date," he said, and draped his arm around my shoulders.
"Okay--now let's go get you some sleep." I didn't like the way the circles under his eyes were beginning to look permanently etched onto his skin.
I woke early the next morning and snuck a change of clothes out to the truck. I had a feeling that Charlie would approve of today's plan just about as much as he would approve of the motorcycle.
The idea of a distraction from all my worries had me almost excited. Maybe it would be fun. A date with Jacob, a date with Edward... I laughed darkly to myself. Jake could say what he wanted about us being a messed-up pair--I was the one who was truly messed up. I made the werewolf seem downright normal.
I expected Jacob to meet me out front, the way he usually did when my noisy truck announced my arrival. When he didn't, I guessed that he might still be sleeping. I would wait--let him get as much rest as he could. He needed his sleep, and that would give the day time to warm a bit more. Jake had been right about the weather, though; it had changed in the night. A thick layer of clouds pressed heavily on the atmosphere now, making it almost sultry; it was warm and close under the gray blanket. I left my sweater in the truck.
I knocked quietly on the door.
"C'mon in, Bella," Billy said.
He was at the kitchen table, eating cold cereal.
"Jake sleeping?"
"Er, no." He set his spoon down, and his eyebrows pulled together.
"What happened?" I demanded. I could tell from his expression that something had.
"Embry, Jared, and Paul crossed a fresh trail early this morning. Sam and Jake took off to help. Sam was hopeful--she's hedged herself in beside the mountains. He thinks they have a good chance to finish this."
"Oh, no, Billy," I whispered. "Oh, no."
He chuckled, deep and low. "Do you really like La Push so well that you want to extend your sentence here?"
"Don't make jokes, Billy. This is too scary for that."
"You're right," he agreed, still complacent. His ancient eyes were impossible to read. "This one's tricky."
I bit my lip.
"It's not as dangerous for them as you think it is. Sam knows what he's doing. You're the one that you should worry about. The vampire doesn't want to fight them. She's just trying to find a way around them... to you."
"How does Sam know what he's doing?" I demanded, brushing aside his concern for me. "They've only killed just the one vampire--that could have been luck."
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