"Somebody's always watching …"
A Twilight / W.i.t.c.h. Crossover
By: A J
(Standard Disclaimer Applies)
Chapter 2
Their turboprop landed without fanfare under the perpetual cloud-cover that engulfed the Olympic Peninsula.
They were greeted in Port Angeles by a group of the most beautiful people Cornelia had ever seen. The shortest woman among them came pelting forward, her flyaway brown hair in total disarray as it fanned behind her. Ignoring everyone else, she jogged past the landing party and fairly threw herself at the pilot still at the top of the steps to the plane.
Turning back to the rest of the waiting group, Cornelia was nonplussed to see she'd missed the approach of the girl with black pixie-cut hair, who was now as entwined with her dad's cousin Jasper as the other girl was with their pilot.
"That must be Alice," Harold Hale said, admiring their relative's choice in partners.
'What was your first clue,' Cornelia thought, rolling her eyes. She heard the pilot snicker behind her, and smiled that he'd heard her father as well.
"So where's Nessie?" Emmett asked. The girl hugging their pilot groaned, and all the other Forks folks laughed.
"Where else?" the only blonde woman in their group asked. "Finishing the day's schoolwork and driving her pet dog to distraction."
"Who's Nessie?" Elizabeth asked Jasper.
"Edward and Bella's precocious daughter," he replied, with a smile. "She's actually about Lillian's age." He looked down at the wobbly girl following her parents, and grinned. "We home-school her because she's … well, a handful, frankly …" He stopped as his fiancé gave him an elbow to the ribs.
"Don't let him kid you. He's just sore because he's not her favorite uncle this week," Alice sang, reminding the Heatherfield Hales of Hay Lin, Cornelia's flighty Chinese friend.
"A handful, hmmmm? Her and Lils should be best friends as soon as they lay eyes on each other … if they don't rip each other apart first," Cornelia chuckled, ruffling her sister's hair. She was too busy laughing evilly at her sister's whiny retort to see the strange look of fear the beautiful crowd passed between themselves.
"Alright, kids, we've still got a long drive ahead of us, so let's get on the road," The man at the back of the group from Forks said. "This way, everyone." He turned to lead them all towards a long stretch limo that was waiting at the edge of the tarmac.
"Wow," Lillian breathed, at the sight of the car. Cornelia ruffled her hair again, but more gently, and she was giving her sister a warm smile this time.
"Couldn't have said it better myself, kiddo." Hefting her three bags, (Cornelia could tell her sister was on her last legs, even though they both got a revitalizing boost from fresh contact with their Element,) she nudged Lillian forward. The exhausted Heart of Earth made an end run for the open door of the limo, her own small bag banging into her legs as she went.
Emmett relieved her of the luggage when she got there, in a sweeping move that lifted Lillian up as well when she didn't let go of the handle right away. He gave a laugh, and with his free hand, gently pried her loose and set her back on the ground before setting the suitcase into the trunk.
"Oh, they're going to get along fine, our girls," Bella the brunette said from behind Cornelia. She and Edward were still cuddled together at the bottom of the plane's steps.
"Not coming?" Elizabeth asked, grabbing her own suitcase and her dress-carrier.
"Tell the others I'm going to square away the jet, and I'll take our regular car back," Edward told her, nodding toward a sleek British-green TVR-6 sitting at the side of the nearby hangar. Cornelia gawked. One thing finally dating an Earth boy had done was teach her the basic appreciation of fine automobiles.
"That's your regular car?" she gushed. Edward chuckled, and Bella growled. Cornelia turned to look at her. Yep, she wasn't imagining it, Bella had growled; in fact she was still growling, although it was kind of hard with the smoldering kisses Edward was delivering to the back of her neck.
"Just because you've never appreciated the finer points of automotive engineering, love," Cornelia heard him murmur to her, and turned back to head to the limo with a smile.
T/w.i.t.c.h.
The limousine was huge, all right; Lillian had the backmost seat all her own to pass out on, and the other couples all became obvious as they took their own seats throughout. Emmett and the tall blonde were sitting all the way forward, conversing quietly with their foreheads together. The oldest of the Forks crowd settled himself in the second seat back, a gorgeous redheaded goddess curled up comfortably against him. Jasper and spritely Alice sat on the left hand seats by the door, with Harold, Elizabeth and Cornelia across from them. A small entertainment center was set in the middle of the car, though the Heatherfielders noticed it was stocked only with bottled water and fruit juices that didn't require refrigerating. At Harold's wordless questioning look, Alice chuckled.
"Well, we knew you were bringing children along," she said, while Cornelia helped herself to a warm bottle of strawberry-kiwi. "Besides, we only ever take this hulking thing out of the garage when we're going somewhere all together, and we prefer to keep temptation out of Renesmee's sight as well." The other adults all had a chuckle.
"Most of us drive our own cars, which, sad to say, almost all look a bit like Edward's newest toy, which you saw back at the airfield," the oldest man said.
"Is that right, uh ..?" Harold stumbled verbally, and Alice slapped Jasper on the arm. The impact echoed strangely in the limo's interior.
"Jaz, how could you? Or you, Emmett?" she aimed a dark glare at her brother all the way up front. Leaning forward, she apologized to the Heatherfield Hales. "At least he told you my name. Emmett's my brother, sorry to say at the moment," she said with a wicked grin. "His gorgeous wife is Rosalie. You already got to meet our other brother Edward, and his wife Bella. She's my best friend from high school, and they were immediate sweethearts. The two in the middle are our parents," she beamed. "May I introduce you to Doctor Carlisle and Missus Esme Cullen; aaaannnnd," she paused, continuing only after they went over a bump (barely-felt thanks to the suspension of the limousine) in the Olympic Peninsula Highway. "Welcome to Forks, Washington."
"Doctor Carlisle Cullen?" Elizabeth breathed. "Sh-surely not the same Doctor Cullen who …" (Author's note: A Twilight tale I may get around to, eventually! A J)
"The very same," Esme said proudly, giving her husband's arm a squeeze. Cornelia had to look away for a second. Between her red hair and his dark brown, they reminded her too much of Will and Caleb at the moment. The pair of leaders were natural together like she and the former rebel never had been, but it still stung to see.
"Wow," Elizabeth murmured.
Cornelia looked back around again, and Jasper gave her quickly-buried frown a quizzical look. She shook her head slightly, and mouthed 'Later.' She smiled brightly as she remembered just what Doctor Cullen was famous for. She'd have to remember to rub it in to Irma that she'd actually gotten to meet the man behind the miracle cure that had saved the Water Guardian's bratty little brother. Chris Lair was the same age as Lillian, which (much to the two Guardians' horror) meant they spent half the day together in the same school, and got to concoct new and interesting ways to torture their older sisters together.
"Hey, Doc. I'd like to pass on some personal thanks," she spoke up. "There were three cases in Heatherfield, one of 'em my friend's younger brother. Without you and your last-minute save, he'd have been a goner." There; thanks delivered, and it even sounded like she'd been channeling Irma herself there for a second. Certainly her grammar wasn't that atrocious. At least, she hoped not. Lord, Lair-on-the-air's mouth was contagious; she'd have to start bringing her I-pod to lunch again.
"Where're we?" Lillian mumbled from the back seat as they took a large curve.
"Almost there, sweety," Rosalie said from the other end of the cabin. "We just pulled onto our driveway." The Heatherfield trio (Lillian just grunted and rolled away from the rest of them) looked out the forward panel and saw a large white house come into view through the trees. Elizabeth and Cornelia both 'Aaaah'ed appreciatively, while Harold gave it a Real-estater's admiring appraisal.
As they were pulling into the well-travelled stretch of gravel in front of the garage, a lithe shape came streaming out of the house, large brown eyes sparkling with joy.
"Daddy! Daddy Daddy Daddy!" she cried over and over, scrambling to a halt just outside the back door. Her wide smile was short an incisor on top and bottom, neither matching, so she had two holes peeking through. Cornelia laughed. This had to be Renesmee. As the girl with a permanent nickname she couldn't stand, thanks to Irma, she meant to make sure first thing which one this little girl preferred. Jasper opened the door, and the bronze-haired ingénue scampered inside, only to come to a too-still halt. "Where're my parents?"
"Edward stayed to put the airplane away, Nessie. He and your mom'll be back … Oh, never mind, here they come." Emmett was looking out the back window as he said this, and the rest of them turned just in time to see the green blur that was the TVR come to a screeching halt, millimeters from their bumper. Renesmee and the others were still piling out of the limo when their driver went barreling past to pull the other car's driver-side door open with a furious expression, which fell apart as Bella stepped out.
"Why thank you, Seth. That was very gentlemanly of you," she said with an impish grin. Edward climbed out of the passenger door.
"Women drivers, eh, Seth?" he said affectionately. It still got him death-glared from six different directions, to which he only smiled, and knelt down just as Renesmee went around the car at a run, somehow managing to pass between the two vehicles without a break. She leaped into his arms with a happy grin and set her hands on each side of his face, and the two's smiles were such an exact match, missing teeth aside, that Bella sighed and stopped glaring within seconds.
"HEY, WHO'S DRIVING THE …" The party all turned to face the latecomer from the house, an impossibly tall red-skinned native American who was staring dumbfounded at the girl in question. "Bells," he moaned, ashen-faced.
"Oh, don't have kittens, dog-boy," Rosalie said teasingly. "She was safe in the limo with us."
"Still IS," they all heard in a sleepy whine. "What's all the noise about?" Lillian Hale poked her head out the driver's-side back door and looked blearily around. "Hey, Corny," she groaned. "Can ya tell all the vampires real people are tryin' to sleep here?"
Harold and Elizabeth were both too busy laughing, and Cornelia was too busy trying to scramble back through the crowd to strangle her sister over the use of her verbieten nickname, to notice how impossibly quiet the rest of the people around them had suddenly become.
