Chuck Bass looked down from the top of the tall building. Far, far below him, the suspension bridge looked so fragile, its wires and cables as delicate as the strands of one of those cheap fiberoptic novelty lamps sold in discount stores like Wal-Mart.

Not that Chuck Bass had ever been to Wal-Mart. His family had always been much too wealthy for that, but he had seen pictures.

In the last few days, Chuck's billionaire father had suffered a fatal accident, Chuck had gotten drunker than he knew he could get, and had learned that Lily, his beautiful stepmother had a terrible secret. Chuck could have learned to live without Bart, he had always enjoyed getting drunk, and he had known that Lily had a terrible secret. He had not, however, been prepared for just how terrible it was, and so here he stood.

Chuck shuddered at the memory, and stepped off the edge of the roof, closing his eyes in anticipation of the oblivion he sought.

Almost immediately he felt himself crash into something hard, and for a moment he thought that perhaps he had miscalculated the wind trajectories that should have blown him clear of the bridge, and that he was somehow tangled in it.

He opened his eyes. This must be an alcohol-induced hallucination, he thought, as a pair intense black eyes stared down into his.

The next thing he was aware of was a terrible burning pain, as if flames were consuming his entire body from the inside out. "Oh crap," he thought. "Those religious wackos were right. This must be hell. Who knew hell was a microwave, though?"

His agonized reverie was interrupted by the sounds of distant voices, so beautiful that Chuck was confused. Wasn't it angels who were supposed to have the beautiful voices, and weren't they supposed to be in heaven, not hell? He really should have paid more attention in religious studies class.

As the fire slowly ebbed away and out of his tortured tissues, a smiling face came into focus. It looked vaguely like the face he had seen in his hallucination, except the eyes that were above him now were not black, but golden.

"You will start to feel better soon, Chuck," said one of the beautiful voices, and he was out again, as Carlisle turned his golden-eyed smile on his son.

"You did the right thing, Edward," he reassured the agitated younger vampire. "The only thing you could have done, under the circumstances."

Edward looked down at the now-pale face of his new brother, the skin just beginning to glimmer. His brow furrowed, and Carlisle did not have to share his son's gift for reading minds to understand what troubled him.

"My new venom additive is really remarkably effective," he went on. "The pain only lasts a few seconds, and the entire process is a matter of hours now, not days."

Edward relaxed slightly. "How soon do you think he will be able to tell us?" he asked. "Whether it is a boy or a girl - and where it is?"

Carlisle looked thoughtful. "I don't know. It might be a few days before he remembers - any of it - if he even knows. Surely you would have picked that up from his thoughts."

Edward shook his head. "Just that there was a - a child, that's all. At least all that he was thinking."

He paced nervously across the width of the Cullens' fully-equipped home intensive care unit, then turned suddenly to face his father again.

"Do we have a few days?"

"Alice?" Carlisle asked gently.

"I still can't see any, well, you know, Volturi or anything," answered the petite pixie-like girl, shaking her spiky dark hair for emphasis."

"At least I haven't yet," she amended, and resumed her deep concentration.

Edward met Carlisle's eyes. "That must mean that they don't even know about - "

"About Lily," his father nodded. "And we can be pretty sure there are no tricks involved there. If they knew anything about this, we would have heard about it long before Chuck Bass ever stepped off that roof."

A soft silken rustle and a cool waft of lavender fragrance heralded the arrival of Esme. "How is he?" she asked Carlisle.

"The pain is over," her husband answered, pointing to the complex neuro-monitor he had developed. Esme smiled. "This is really a remarkable thing you have done." A compassionate soul, Esme hated for any living creature to suffer. Even when she hunted, she took extra care that her kills be instant and painless.

Gliding to where Edward sat, lost in thoughts of the last few eventful hours, she laid a hand on her son's head, gently caressed the bronze waves that fell across the pale gleam of his brow. "Have you decided what you want to tell Bella?"

Edward sighed. He could not bear to keep anything from his wife, nor could he bear for her to be worried or afraid. And anything that involved the slightest chance of a repeat visit from the Volturi would both worry and frighten her.

"I don't even know what I should - or what I can - tell her," he admitted. "But obviously she will have to be told something." He shrugged. "She has a new brother now."

"Wait!" Alice exclaimed! "Edward, can you hear anything? From Chuck, I mean."

"Not really, just scraps of things here and there, his dad's funeral, he was drunk, called somebody a ***** - he has a girlfriend, or at least a girl he's in love with, and of course there is Lily, what she did, but who or what she is to him, he was just too drunk for me to figure out."

Suddenly realizing what he had said, he whirled to face his sister. "What? What?"

Alice's eyes were far away for an instant, then met Edward's. "A blonde woman. She is at the police station. They will tell her that he is eighteen, so they can't file a missing person report for 48 hours."

"48 hours," Edward muttered, as if to himself.

"I guess that answers your earlier question," Carlisle's voice was grim.

"Now we know how much time we have."

"OK," Alice seemed to be organizing her thoughts. "From his clothes, I'd say he almost has to be Upper West Side. Or at least that's where he shops. And from his thoughts, thanks to you, we have his dad's funeral. Carlisle has confirmed that he was extremely inebriated, almost on the verge of alcohol poisoning, and he has been "missing" less than 48 hours, which all adds up to the funeral being very recent - "

Alice jumped back, startled. "The policeman - when she goes to ask about reporting him missing - he will call her Mrs Bass!"

"He wasn't married!" Edward exclaimed. "At least, not to the girl he was thinking about as a girlfriend - so -"

"Google!" They both shouted in unison, prompting a frown and a "Shhhh" from Carlisle and Esme, though Carlisle nodded in comprehension as he waved them downstairs.

Within seconds, they had what they needed - at least some of it. The blonde woman's name was Lily, and she was Chuck's stepmother!

What they didn't know, at least not yet, was whether anyone but Chuck knew that Lily was a vampire - a vampire who had made an Immortal Child - less than eighteen years ago...