Disclaimer: Of course, I own nothing but my own words. The characters belong to Ms. Meyer and a very small number of the words do, too.

1949

Chapter 3

The girl stumbled against him for the second time. She did not apologize for her clumsiness, nor did he apologize for his speed. In fact, neither of them had said anything since the girl had directed him toward her apartment. He had taken hold of the girl's arm when they left the diner, ready to control her if necessary, but she had offered no resistance at all. He had not even sent out acceptance or submission to her after the first initial panic at the diner.

Panic was not a word Jasper wanted to think about right now. He was trying very hard to live in the moment so that he could avoid thinking about the choices he was about to make. He did not like killing girls like her. He tried to pick out hardened men, men like he used to be, men like (he feared) he was still, when he had to eat. Feeling what they felt as the life bled out of them was a just punishment on him. He knew what his own death would feel like if justice ever fell on him. But there were only a few possible ways this current situation could play out and eating the girl was the most likely.

A part of him wanted to drink her blood. The part of him that was constantly aware that it was 3 weeks since he last fed and that while he could probably last another 3 weeks, it would be so nice to feed now.

But he really didn't want to feed off of this girl. He hadn't killed someone like her since he left Mexico.

The girl pulled suddenly toward a building and he might have thought she was trying to get away if her emotions had changed in anyway. It appeared that they were at her apartment.

He carried two chairs into her bedroom for them to sit on at her request. There were only two small rooms and the girl did not want to stay in the front room for some reason. Another slightly puzzling thing about her. Jasper was starting to think that perhaps the girl was truly strange and that he would not find other humans so confusing. She was certainly the only human he had ever heard of with a vampire bite.

"Alright, little girl, tell me about how you got that bite."

She felt a mild bit of hesitance.

"I will tell you, of course, but I don't understand why you care. Why not just take me to Victoria? Why waste my time and yours?"

Jasper interest increased and his confusion lessened. They were starting to move into his area of expertise. Clearly a vampire was chasing the girl. How this had happened in the first place was unknown, and the vampire may simply be trying to make sure no human who knew the secret was left alive. It might also be some kind of revenge. How the girl had managed to get away form whatever the vampire would be interesting. She was not even more than moderately afraid of him. The girl was unique.

"I think that we are talkin' at cross purposes. I don't know Victoria. I have my own reasons for asking which I will explain if you request it of me. But first, I have asked that you tell me about the bite. Explain. Continue on to this Victoria if she is not the one who bit you."

The girl had been astonished and disbelieving when he said he did not know Victoria, but something about what he said seemed to convince her that he might be telling the truth. She looked at him appraisingly, something she had not done before.

The story stumbled out of her.

"I met Edward at high school in a small town, Forks, in Washington State. I had just moved back there and his family had moved to Forks the year before. He reacted strangely when I met him and saved me from being hit by a truck before school one morning. He held the truck back with his hands. I figured out he was a vampire and I thought I was in love with him. He told me he loved me. I met his family. Edward refused to turn me, but his sister said I would be a vampire and I thought he would change his mind.

"The family took me with them for an afternoon to a clearing where they played baseball. I had a picnic lunch while they played baseball. It was the most incredible thing I had ever seen. I couldn't even see the bats swing except as a sort of blur. Alice was suddenly terrified and three nomad vampires came out of the trees. We were all standing together by then and so the nomads did not realize for a few minutes that I was human. When they did they started to attack, but backed off and left. We ran toward their house because Edward said that one of the nomads, James, was a tracker and was intending to come after me. I'm not sure the details matter, but Alice took me to Phoenix where my mother lived until recently. I thought James had her so I went to him so that he would let her go. He didn't have her at all, and he hit me several times and then bit me. Edward and the family arrived and killed James. Edward sucked the venom out of my wrist. He really did not want me to be changed.

"On my 18th birthday, Alice—Edward's sister—insisted on having a party for me at their home and I cut my finger on some butcher's paper they used to wrap a present and bled. Em, Emmett, Edward's brother, was overwhelmed and attacked me. I didn't see any of the family after that night except Edward. He and Alice didn't come to school for three days and then he met me at my house after school. He took me for a walk in the woods and told me that I wasn't good for him and that he didn't love me and he left me there. I ran after him and got lost. I was found a many hours later and brought home. The whole town had put together a search party." The girl's monotone voice did not seem to break even when she took a breath.

"I didn't go to school again. I hardly left my room over the next two weeks. It hurt so much that it had all been lies, and there was no one I could talk to honestly. I was starting to pull myself together again, cooking again, and I went out shopping for dinner. When I returned home, my father was dead. There was a note from Victoria taunting me about his death and promising that I was next. She and Laurent were the other two nomads, you see, who were with James. I think she wants revenge. I don't know why she let me go. Maybe she didn't think I would run? But there was nothing left for me with my father dead. I've been moving around since September 1945. I don't know if she's been watching me the whole time or if I've lost her. I thought she sent you to take me."

The girl's emotions had been as flat as the expression on her face throughout the story except when she told me of the vampire whelp leaving her in the woods. Was the boy a miserable coward or did he play with his food? In that case, why had he not fed from her at the end? Why had the rest of the coven left her alive? Had he perhaps fooled them into thinking he had eaten her? The story did not add up. The part with the nomads made sense, but the strange coven was virtually impossible. The girl was telling the truth, though, at least so far as she knew.

"Was Victoria mated to the one who died? James?"

For the first time, the girl did not seem to know how to answer. "I don't know. No one said. There were two sets of mates in Edward's family, and Edward said I was his mate, but I don't know what that means anymore."

"I expect she was his mate. Once vampires have mated, they have a hard time livin' without each other. Most vampires who have a mate die are either vengeful or suicidal. It's not clear to me why she blames you stead of this Edward—did he kill James or was it another member of the coven?—but she may have come back after Edward's coven left and found only you to target. It was sloppy of them to have left the other two nomads alive even if none were mated. Not only might they have come after the coven, but both vampires knew about you."

"Why would that matter?"

Jasper felt himself getting angry. The incompetence of this coven went beyond cruelty. It was a mess. The girl saw his anger and finally started to fear him, thinking he was angry with her. She should be fearful. She should have been more fearful all along and she might not have been up a creek without a paddle like this.

Well, he was her paddle now. He just wasn't sure if he would be saving her or beating her to death. His preference at this point was to keep her alive just to spite Edward and his coven, but he saw no other option but turning her. He couldn't leave her alive. Even if he found and killed the nomads, other vampires might see her scar. She would always be in danger. Either way, he would take responsibility where others had not. Starting with giving her real information.

"Did no one tell you of the Volturi?"

"The vampire rulers? Yes, but why do they matter? Would they stop Victoria?" The girl's ignorance was astounding.

"They would help Victoria. The Volturi do not care about revenge one way or the other. They do care if humans know that vampires exist. Your life is forfeit if they find out and they would see it as the job of every vampire to kill you. Edward's coven would likely be punished or killed for leavin' you alone with knowledge of our kind." Jasper stopped speaking, waiting to see if she would think through the implications of what he had just said. Would she finally be afraid of him?

The girl looked at her hands in her lap. One hand casually atop the other. Ladylike. Her feelings flashed anger outside of the vagueness they had contained before. Anger was good. Anger and fear had been missing from this girl. They would help her survive.

"They knew. They must have known. They left me there knowing that at some point the Volturi would come for me. Or that Victoria or Laurent might."

Jasper realized that the girl's anger could be focused on specifics if her helped her analyze the situation. "It is so unlikely as to be impossible that a coven with 5 vampires in it did not have enough information about the Volturi to know that they were breakin' the law in telling you the secret. It is also unlikely, but not as impossible, that they did not know that Victoria or Laurent might come after you. However—"

The girl cut him off.

"They knew about the Volturi. Carlisle lived with the Volturi for years. They knew." The girls' mounting anger was hardly showing in her voice.

"There you go. They may not have thought about the nomads. This coven seems incompetent to me. They should have killed the nomads immediately the mindreader heard their intentions. Anythin' else was foolish. And Victoria or Laurent is more likely to go after the coven than you, unless they felt they had no chance against 5 vampires, one a mindreader. Did they know of his talent? The coven may have left you behind as an offering. That's just speculation."

The girl looked sick to her stomach. She spoke more to herself than to Jasper.

"Would they really do that? That does explain why they didn't kill me when they knew the Volturi might punish them."

"I think it's more likely they didn't really understand the threat from the nomads. It's more consistent with lettin' them go in the first place. Taking you out in the woods and leavin' you is a real dastardly act, though, and that's consistent with leaving you for the nomads."

The girl did not seem to know how to respond to this. Jasper supposed there really wasn't anything to say. Without more information, which the girl did not appear to have, they could not draw conclusions about the coven's motivations.

She looked him in the eye for the first time. "There were 6 vampires in the coven, not 5. You've said 5 twice."

"Two mated couples and Edward. Who's the sixth?"

"Alice wasn't mated." The girl went on to explain what she knew about all 6 vampires, including the coven leader's time with the Volturi and how each of them was changed. Only one, Alice, had been changed by someone other than the leader, and she, too, was gifted. Jasper told the girl that might explain why they seemed incompetent or ignorant about how nomads might behave. Most of them had never lived anything like that lifestyle and they'd certainly never experienced anything like what Jasper had.

The coven still did not make sense to Jasper. How could humans believe so consistently that these were all fellow humans living and working with them? How (and why, for God's sake!) did they all attend high school? How could the coven leader be a doctor working at a hospital and performing surgeries? No matter how well fed they kept themselves, people would have noticed the eyes. And living in a small town, with only a city the size of Seattle nearby was a surefire way to make the humans notice someone was killing them off. There was something wrong still with the shape of the coven as described by the girl.

"I get why they wanted to live in Forks since it was overcast enough that they could go outside most days. But how could 6 vampires live in a small town without people noticin' the deaths?"

The girl stared at him for a moment.

"Didn't I explain about Carlisle? He wouldn't feed when he awoke as a vampire. He'd been hunting vampires and he wouldn't be the thing he hated so much. It took him a long time, but after trying to kill himself over and over, he ended up in a forest and lunged for a deer and ate it. He's never fed from a human and only tasted human blood when he turned Edward, Esme, Rosalie and Emmett. Except for Edward, they've each only killed a few people since they were turned, and always by mistake as far as I know. Eating animals makes their eyes yellow."