Persephone 2: Pact

I stand there staring at my petite raven-haired repast and try to figure out a good first move. I mean, clearly this will end in me enjoying her blissful-smelling blood, but I just have to unpack her other treasures first.

I shoot a glance at Jasper to see if he's caught on to how disoriented I am. He's giving me a tiny smile and raising his eyebrow, but his thoughts are tied up in how Jamie was thinking about sampling my meal on the drive here.

"Deal with it," I say to him, just to get him out of here. I mean, I trust him, but I need to be alone with this little ball of teenage mystery.

He nods and passes me on the way to the elevator. He turns and nods to her, "Miss Swan," he says, and then he's gone.

She's had those big brown eyes fixed on me this whole time.

And she smells soooo good.

But I can't just eat her. I have to figure out how she's keeping me out of her head. I'm just grateful she's tied to the chair because, if she was moving around or I had to keep her from running, I'd lose control and drink up that marvelous blood that's taunting me like a playground bully hopped up on fruit roll-ups and chocolate milk.

I pull up another chair and sit down facing her from about 10 feet away. She still hasn't said anything, just fixed me with that baleful glare. Which stands to reason, because I've got her tied to a chair. It's not the sort of thing the modern girl goes for, or so I hear.

"What's your name, Dear Heart?" I ask, finally. "Jasper called you 'Miss Swan', but I don't stand on formality like that old Southern gent. Tell me what your near and dear call you."

She just clenches her jaw and continues to glare at me.

"This is stupid, Angel. You have no idea who you're dealing with." I get up and begin pacing the apartment. She watches me stalk back and forth from the dining room to the living room. Her infuriating silence is testing my patience and universal goodwill.

Finally, I walk back to the kitchen and, moving deliberately, I pick up the chair I was sitting in and throw it against the far wall so hard that it shatters like glass and the pieces explode across the room. She shrieked once, in terror, and then looked down at the bits of wooden debris in her lap.

"Well?" I said, leaning on one arm on the table and glaring at her. "Are you feeling like warming up to me now?"

"Bella," she said quietly, looking down at her lap, her shoulders shaking.

"See, Bella," I purred her name, feeling it on my tongue. "That wasn't so hard now, was it?" I grab another chair and pull it just a little closer this time. "Now tell me, Buttercup, how are you keeping me out of your precious little noggin?"

She frowns at me, because, of course, she has no idea what's going on here. The Cullens have surely not told her what they are, because to do so is to break the only law we have. Telling this little dreamboat of a girl would bring the wrath of the Volturi on them. And fearing the Volturi is the one thing that the Cullens and I have in common. Because they are scary, even scarier than yours truly.

The sound of "Sympathy for the Devil" breaks into the romantic mood I'm trying to establish here and I see Jasper's number on the screen of my phone.

"Jasper," I growl into the phone. "This had better be good. I'm trying to spend some quality time with my girl."

Bella's eyes widen at this, because I am that irresistible.

"Carlisle's called to say he's coming to Seattle. He knows we have her." My immortal man Friday says, like the good soldier he is. I say some impolite words and tell him to get up here to watch my little human honey.

So I tell my new friend that Jasper's going to untie her and let her have the run of the place, but that it's easy-peasy to find her if she gets lost. And I take my leave to go set up a little tête-à-tête with Fork's freakiest.

I make sure that Jasper gets my warm little obsession some food and that he's keeping an eye on her so she doesn't fly away. He's really the only one I can trust with a job like that; it's so hard to find good help these days.

I arrange to meet Carlisle away from our respective fiefdoms; neutral ground and what-have-you. We sit at the covered outside tables of an El Pollo Loco in Port Angeles, poking at our chicken tacos like a couple of golf buddies.

He's the picture of concern about the penthouse pajama party I'm having with his kids' friend.

"Edward, I wish you would let Isabella go. She's innocent, and if my children knew they had endangered her they would be horrified." Carlisle wrings his perfect hands and frowns at me mildly. I try to convince him not to get his cardigan in a twist.

"Carlisle, I have no intention of hurting her, " I lie. "She merely intrigues me with the silence of her mind. I've never encountered anything like it. I just want a chance to find out how she does it." This was mostly true. Except the part about having no intention of harming her. That part was pure balderdash.

"We have always had an agreement to protect each other from the Volturi," Carlisle spoke deliberately. "If I were to alert them as to the size of your coven, they would surely have objections." All this was true; Carlisle and I had a sort of uneasy détente to protect the other from the Volturi's paranoia.

"How can I prove to you that I mean her no harm?" I gave Carlisle my most earnest look. He shrugs and I get an idea.

"Give me a month. In thirty days she'll be unharmed. If she's missing an ounce of blood, you can notify the Volturi that I've been stockpiling talent. If she's happy and healthy, you'll let me keep her." I figure I can hold off on munching on her until then. I am a disciplined man, I mean beast.

"I don't feel comfortable just handing her over to you…" I am getting a little nauseous being this close to his morals, so I cut him off at the pass.

"If you chose not to accept my terms, I'll tell Aro that you not only are befriending humans but that you've added to your coven." Carlisle opens his mouth to correct me and I put my hand to my mouth dramatically. "Oh, my bad. Your 'family,' I mean." Carlisle frowns at me but lets it go.

"I'm not thrilled, Edward, but I guess you have me backed into a corner." He reaches a chilly hand out to shake on our deal. I shake his hand with a smile, and even give him a friendly pat on the back and send my love to the Mrs. as we leave our disheveled chicken tacos and diet cokes on the sticky table.

I know I have to keep my fangs out of the lovely Miss Swan for the time being, so I am extra careful to be well-fed before I visit with her. I have every intention of eating her after I crack the code, but Carlisle doesn't need to know that. I find myself spending more and more of my valuable time with her, but get no closer to the secret of her silence.

What I do realize, though, is that she is utterly entrancing inside and out. I mean, I already thought she was dead sexy and lovelier than a million flowers, but she's also quite intriguing, sweet, funny and smart. And brave? After that first night when I pulverized the seating arrangements, she displays not a lick of fear around yours truly.

Bella's was the one mind I couldn't manipulate, but she gave me her attention and the pleasure of her company anyway. She should have hated me, but instead she accepted our closeness by coercion with grace.

She tells me all about her lonely, drab little life before I whisked her away to a life of luxury. Her stoic but sincere policeman father, her absent mother, her boredom with the small-town Lotharios of Forks High and their Saturday-night-at-the-movies backseat fumblings, copping a feel of my precious girl's assets while pinning on a wilted rose corsage on prom night. She glows as she tells me of her love of books and her earnest desire that there be more to life than just growing up, getting old and biodegrading in the ground.

In turn, I tell her about my humble origins and rise to power. Pre-Great War pickpocket changed by a preternatural pedarast who quickly regretted telling me how vampires get dead. My struggles while I learned to control my ability to steal thoughts the way I had lifted wallets as a mortal man. How my decades of wandering had gotten boring and fueled a desire to settle in one place, and how I had built a denizen for the undead and convinced my eternal associates to join my little pack of predators.

"It must get lonely, though," my fresh-faced little fixation asked. "I mean, spending all your time viewing people as something to manipulate. Never being able to get close to someone just to be close. Never knowing whether someone likes you for who you are or because you are manipulating them."

I have to stare at her innocent little face in surprise. Truth-be-told - and it rarely is around here - it had never occurred to me that there was anything missing until now. I had everything I wanted. Power, good-eatin' and all the women I could charm. I had never even imagined that I would be interested in having someone care about me for the contents of my non-existent character and long-submerged soul.

Until my sable-haired main squeeze showed me how blissful it could be.

Plus, she was smart enough to keep up with my brilliant conversation; stupid enough to not be afraid of me. I was in love.

So smitten was I with my delectable little chocolate-eyed goddess that I began to plan how to make her mine forever.

a/n: Betham betas this, thank God. The patient and generous WriteOnTime pimps it like a…well, like a good smelling virgin, I guess. Thanks for reading and reviewing and re-tweeting and all those other "r" words! Xoxo JuJu