-Flower-
xxx
"Nothing fit. Most of it was kind of silly, then…" I stopped.
"What?" He stared ahead, eyes still hard and tight.
"I decided it didn't matter," I whispered.
"It didn't matter?" His tone made me look up – I had finally broken through his carefully composed mask. His face was incredulous, with just a hint of the anger I'd feared.
"No," I said softly. "It doesn't matter to me what you are."
A hard, mocking edge entered his tone. "You don't care if I'm a monster? If I'm not human?"
"No."
He was silent, staring straight ahead again. His face was bleak and cold.
The silence became more and more profound until I couldn't stand it. "You're kind and you're smart, and you're the only person I've ever found who thinks like me. I don't have anyone. I'm isolated."
Upon running out of things to say, I shut my mouth and looked ahead. I didn't dare look at his face for fear I'd lose myself in his eyes once more.
"You're angry," I finally said, sighing. "I shouldn't have said anything."
"No," he said, but his tone was incredulous. "I'd rather know what you're thinking – even if what you're thinking is insane."
"So I'm wrong again?" I challenged.
"That's not what I was referring to. 'It doesn't matter'!" He quoted, gritting his teeth together.
"I'm right?" I gasped.
"Does it matter?"
I took a deep breath.
"Not really." I paused. "But I am curious." My voice, at least, was composed.
He was suddenly resigned. "What are you curious about?"
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen," he answered promptly.
"And how long have you been seventeen?"
His lips twitched and he stared at the road. I realized I was staring at him again.
"A while."
"Okay." I smiled, pleased that he was still being honest with me. He stared down at me with watchful eyes. I smiled wider in encouragement, and he frowned.
"Don't laugh – but how can you come out in the daytime?"
He laughed anyway. "Myth."
"Burned by the sun?"
"Myth."
"Sleeping in coffins?"
"Myth." He hesitated for a moment, and a peculiar tone entered his voice. "I can't sleep."
It took me a minute to absorb that. "At all?"
"Never," he said, his voice nearly inaudible. He turned to look at me with a wistful expression. The golden eyes held mine, and I lost my train of thought. I stared at him until he looked away.
"You haven't asked me the most important questions yet." His voice was hard now, and when he looked at me again his eyes were cold.
I blinked, still dazed. "Which ones are they?"
"You aren't concerned about my diet?" he asked sarcastically.
"Oh," I murmured, "that."
"Yes, that." His voice was bleak. "Don't you want to know if I drink blood?"
I flinched. "I think I know something about that already."
His ocher eyes hardened. "Do you?"
"I – I think that's what Jacob was talking about."
"What did Jacob say?" he asked flatly.
"He said you weren't dangerous. Not to the Quileutes, at least. He said something about a pact. But…" I trailed off, my breath hitching in my throat. Suddenly I didn't want to continue.
"But?" He prompted.
"That wasn't all, I don't think. He said there was … something else. Something besides the-" I gulped. "-content of your diet that made you dangerous."
He looked forward, but I couldn't tell if he was watching the road or not.
"So he was right? About there being another reason besides food?" I tried to keep my voice as even as possible.
"The Quileutes have a long memory," he whispered. I took that as conformation.
The words came tumbling out before I could stop them. I feared the silence. If our conversation ended, I didn't know if I could get him angry enough to start another. "He didn't call you a family. He said you were a 'team'. That you worked together somehow to do something. It had to do with banks and corporations and heads of businesses. That one of the Quileutes caught you doing something and that they made a treaty with you from then on."
"We stay off their land, they don't turn us in." The sentence was short and barely escaped his tight throat.
"It isn't about your … diet, though?" Even a term as vague as 'diet' made my stomach tighten with apprehension.
"We try," he explained slowly. "We're usually very good at what we do. Sometimes we make mistakes. Me, for example, allowing myself to drag you into this."
"This is a mistake?" I heard the sadness in my voice, but I didn't know if he'd identified it as well.
"A dangerous one," he murmured. "For you more than for me."
"Because of your diet?" I asked, hoping the other, more ambiguous factor was the problem. Of course they drank blood, that was a given. It came with the package. The other thing was making me curious.
"You're afraid you'll hurt me." I guessed.
For a long minute he gazed ahead, and I began to think he wouldn't say any more.
"Your blood is-" he hesitated, and his voice was odd when he finished. "-different."
"Different?"
"It's fragrant. You have the most beautiful scent of any creature I've ever encountered."
His admission struck me. I blinked at him, speechless.
"It's almost like the smell of some exotic flower. Very aesthetically pleasing."
After a minute I began to understand. "But I don't smell … appetizing?"
He laughed, startling me. "Not at all."
"Then how could I be in danger?" I pleaded.
Now his eyes were tight and cold. "Does it matter?"
When I refused to break my stare on him he gave in. "Jacob Black was right about the treaty. It had nothing to do with what we are. It has to do with how we use it to our advantage."
"Like your mind-reading?"
Edward said nothing.
"What does that have to do with banks and corporations? I don't understand."
A long period of silence preceded his words. The sentences seemed to be carefully put together. "Finding work is difficult for us. So we liberate finances where they aren't needed."
"Liberate finances?" I wasn't keeping up. His gaze was fixed stiffly ahead.
Finally it sunk in and I gasped. "You're thieves?"
"Very good ones," he replied in a low voice. Now shock was settling in. "We only take money from the corrupt and very rich. Not enough to change anyone's status or damage reputations, of course."
"How did the Quileutes figure it out?" I asked.
Sniffing in amazement, Edward spoke indignantly. "You don't care?"
"How?" I pushed.
He looked at me for a long moment, and I felt numb. "We're very careful. We were only caught once."
He didn't have to say that it was by them.
"The reservation has more funds than it knows what to do with. They keep it at their town bank until committees decide how to use it."
"You were stealing it from their bank?"
"Yes. And if they weren't monsters too, they never would have suspected us." He cut off so fiercely that he was almost snarling. Struck by this revelation, I sat back in my seat. I hadn't realized I'd been leaning toward him.
After a long moment of processing all the information before me, the question I'm sure he'd been waiting for me to ask occurred to me. "What does all this have to do with me?"
His eyes were as penetrating now as I'd ever seen them, and they took my breath away.
"We need you, Bella. The Quileutes know our scent. They know our faces. But you aren't a monster. And because of that, you can help us seek our revenge."