Edward stopped just outside the house with no small amount of trepidation. His siblings knew he was there; they had heard his approach, and he could hear their frantic thoughts.

He knew he needed to step through:move into the house so they could discuss the situation aloud and begin to plan their possible courses of action. They surely needed to tell Carlisle. Alice needed to try and find Esme's future, they could attempt scent tracking, or maybe the manipulate the GPS in her cell phone.

Could they even disregard the possibility of either the Volturi or Victoria or even a rogue? She'd never been directly targeted by any of them...but there was the mysterious Harry, Carlisle clearly wanted to keep the two of them apart… Esme had been feeling down lately, had she left? Why didn't she tell anyone then? Victoria wouldn't target Esme, it didn't serve her purpose. Victoria was unstable though. The Volturi were cunning, what if this was an elaborate plan? Carlisle wanted to keep Harry and Esme apart, but why? Where was the threat? Was there even a threat?

The thoughts swirled faster and faster in his head, sloshing over the muddy bedrock of worries and concern that had been building in his mind for the past several weeks, growing higher and walling off his rationality. The angry and constant influx of others' thoughts were icy shards in his already numb river of thoughts.

His eyes squeezed shut in a desperate attempt to block out external stimuli, the dim light too bright, the fresh snow too sharp, the dusty bricks to detailed, everything too too much. Edward was drowning under the overwhelming amount of stuff sloshing around insistently and turning his brain to dust, like the persistent pounding of ocean waves against strong isolated cliffs until the crumbled and turned to sand.

Against his will, a low moan of pain escaped his throat, and his hands came up to clutch at his head. As soon as he made the noise, much of the insistent pounding in his brain eased up, as his siblings worriedly came to the truly concerning and unexpected realization that they'd been overwhelming him with their barrage of thoughts. They couldn't stop thinking, but they could stop deliberately directing their thoughts at him to make it easier for him to block them out.

"Edward?" Alice called out quietly, hesitant to disturb him until he'd regained total control of himself. She, like the rest of her siblings, was exceedingly worried: for her father, her mother and now her brother. Jasper's hand tightened on her shoulder and she felt a fresh surge of worry rush through her veins, now for her mate.

She had a brief but fierce battle with herself to get her worry under control. She knew, logically, that worrying about Jasper would in fact hurt more than help her mate. It was his empathy that was bothering him, the high tension in the room swallowing his own emotions and and spewing them out tenfold. The best thing she could do for him would be to wrestle her own runaway emotions in check and regain a clear head.

It was difficult to do though, with Edward having an apparently telepathically-induced fit, something that had never happened to him in all the time she'd known him. Of course, she also knew that the best way to help Edward was to regain control of her rampant thoughts, just like her emotions.

Alice took a deep, calming breath to help her recollect herself. As she took a moment Rosalie and Emmett had already sprung into action, pulling their eldest brother into the room and out from the cold. Rosalie slipped in front of him, laying gentle fingers on him and applying pressure to Edward's throbbing temples.

Emmett vanish for a moment and reappeared holding a laptop that quickly began producing a low buzzing noise that Alice found quite annoying. She would have snapped at Emmett to turn it off, but she realized it was white noise to help Edward refocus and drown out the thoughts.

The group stood in silence until the tension in Edward's shoulders finally began to fade, and he was able to pry his clenched eyes open, reintroducing the visual stimulus of the world. After some time he took a shallow breath in through his nose, reintroducing smell.

"Thank you," he murmured mutedly, one of his hands reaching up to clasp one of Rosalie's, still resting in its position on his temple. He gave it a grateful squeeze before removing her hand altogether. Emmett gave him a brotherly pat on the back, prompting Edward to give him a tight smile.

"What was that?" Alice demanded, now that it was clear the worst of it had passed. The tired eyes Edward turned on her set her aback, but not enough to deter her concerned curiosity.

"In the past I had less of a handle on my gift. It was easy for me to become overwhelmed by the thoughts of others," he informed her matter of factly. "It would induce incidents like the one you just saw." He punctuated his explanation with a humorless laugh, not quite meeting her eyes.

"I've never seen that happen to you," Alice remarked with narrowed eyes, not willing to let the issue lie. As the two with the most powerful and mentally challenging gifts in the coven, Alice was under the impression that they'd shared everything with each other about their gifts. This secret made an uncomfortable twang of doubt and isolation resonate in her chest.

She scowled for a moment, not liking the self doubt settling on her because of an offhanded comment from Edward. She hated that her emotions were so vulnerable Edward could manipulate them so unintentionally, that others had more control over her than she had of herself. Jasper's hand came up to to cup the back of her neck comfortingly, but he made no attempt to soothe her with his gift. The irony of their mateship didn't escape them: Jasper, a vampire with the power to control others' emotions, and Alice, someone who couldn't stand for her emotions to be at the mercy of others.

"By the time you met me I had the fits pretty well under control. Rosalie and Emmett have helped me through many of them, but I eventually started to get a better handle on my gift, so I haven't had one in several decades," Edward explained abashedly.

"That doesn't explain why you never mentioned them before," Alice pointed out, masking the hurt in her voice, and willing herself to forget that he could pick it straight from her thoughts. She even comforted herself with the hope that, as he was still recovering from his loss of mental control he wouldn't be paying any mind to her thoughts at all.

"Yes well," Edward began in a voice so delicate and halting she knew immediately he had indeed been listening to her insecurities and was trying not to further provoke her. He flinched as her scowl deepened. He rushed to continue, "I found that the more I thought about and worried about the fits the more likely I was to provoke one. So I did my best not to think about them at all." He hesitated before adding, "You never seemed to have quite the same problem with your gift, so I never thought to mention it to you."

Alice, still not satisfied wanted to launch a barrage of questions at her brother. The sudden upset this secret had caused mingling with with her continuing anger at him for the situation with Carlisle made her unwilling to let him in peace.

"Get over it," Rosalie snapped with a poisonous glare. Despite her own anger at Edward, she'd always been quite close to her brother, and his recent relapse into the fits they all thought he'd left behind stirred all the sisterly instincts in her body. Though Edward had been a vampire longer than her, and outranked her in their family hierarchy, she couldn't help but view him as a little brother. As much as she loved Alice, she wasn't about to let the little pixie kick her baby brother when he was already down.

With softening eyes she turned back to Edward. "What triggered this one?" she asked.

"Whether you believe it or not," Edward began drily, "I'm also worried about Carlisle and Esme. Plus, I've been using Bella's mind a lot as a focus to anchor me away from the thoughts of others. Being away from her has weakened my control more than I like to admit. Your thoughts have been a little frantic since we've gotten here, and it's a little more than I'm able to handle." His siblings didn't care to point out that he'd been able to cope just fine before Bella, for which he was grateful.

"Well whose fault is that?" Alice asked snidely.

"I know you're upset that I brought you away from Carlisle without an explanation, but I'm not the cause of this problem. I was just following orders from my sire. I didn't have a choice Alice," he told her firmly, no longer willing to be the scapegoat for his siblings' anger. He was just as concerned about their sire as they were, probably even more so considering he was the closest to Carlisle, having been with him the longest.

With the exception of Alice, his siblings didn't blame him, not really. They understood how difficult it was to disobey a direct order from a sire, and understood Edward's reluctance to even try. Carlisle was a fair coven leader, who did things in their best interest. He rarely ever asked anything of them, so they all took care to obey him when he did. Some vampires had sires that abused the bond between them, manipulating the sense of loyalty all vampires felt towards their sires.

Rosalie and Emmett had both felt the power of the bond with Carlisle. Jasper, though he hadn't been turned by Carlisle, remembered the feeling of it from his time with Maria, and the near devastation of killing her. So while the three of them had spent the last two weeks grousing and grumbling, attacking Edward for his actions as an easy target for their unpleasant feelings, at the end of the day they didn't truly blame him for obeying Carlisle without question

Alice was a different story entirely. She'd never known her sire and never felt the power of the bond. Though it could be explained to her she could never truly understand how Edward could leave Carlisle alone with a stranger like that. Her inability to see Harry made her distrustful of him. On top of that the chronic headaches from her continued attempts to see Harry and Carlisle's future made her grouchy and hostile, leaving her misplaced anger with Edward a dangerous thing indeed. The only thing that stopped her from going back to Forks at all was Jasper's watchful eye.

Edward could feel that his normally mischievous but sweet sister was itching for a confrontation, which between vampires without their coven leader would prove disastrous. He tried to get his family back on track.

"Who was the last person to have seen Esme? I saw her last yesterday, around 8PM."

"I saw her around 2 AM," Emmett chipped in.

"I think I saw her last. This morning around 7 she was sitting by that damn window again. I didn't stay long; she was too… melancholy for me to stay near her for any extended period of time," Jasper admitted quietly.

"She didn't say anything to anyone?" Edward asked, a little desperately considering he already knew the answer.

"Nothing," Rose confirmed. "We all knew she was upset, but she hasn't told anyone why, and she didn't mention to anyone that she was going out tonight."

"Isn't it possible she was just going hunting," Emmet suggested, ever the optimist. "I mean, she hasn't fed at all since we got here. Maybe she thought a nice bite of wolf would cheer her up and she went out for a snack. We're getting all worked up over nothing."

"Except she's disappeared from Alice's visions and the stash of money is gone," his mate reminded him, distinctly unimpressed.

"At least the fact that the money is gone means she left of her own free will, so we can probably rule out Aro or Victoria, not that either of them would have had much of a reason to take her anyway," Jasper reasoned.

"If she was leaving of her own free will and took the money with her maybe she went to town for a little retail therapy," Emmet suggested guilelessly, thinking of his own wife's preferred method of stress relief. Rosalie let him know her opinion of that suggestion with a look.

"I don't think that's it Emmett," Alice commented, finally having calmed down enough to rejoin the conversation. "When Esme is upset she paints, not shops. Plus she wouldn't have needed that much money, and it still doesn't explain my visions."

"What if Esme was going back to Forks?" Jasper pointed out the obvious. When every eye in the room turned and riveted itself to him he continued, "Naturally she wants to see her mate and get to the bottom of this whole mess. She wouldn't have told us because because she knew we would try to stop her. She took the money to either get a plane ticket, or maybe to stop us from going after her and beating her there. Plus, if she's headed to Forks and meets that man Harry, that would explain why she's vanished from Alice's visions. For whatever reason, he and the people he's with are clearly blocked from her sight. All the pieces fit."

"We need to stop her," Edward told them urgently.

"If she's going to see her mate then we don't really have any right to stop her." Alice responded with a frown.

"You don't understand," Edward grimaced, "Carlisle didn't want Esme to get anywhere near that house under any circumstances. He implied it would be dangerous for her. Carlisle will never forgive us, forgive me, if we let her go and she gets hurt."

"We need to track her somehow. With this snow her scent is long gone," Jasper murmured, pacing the room. "Did she take her phone with her?"

Rosalie sprinted to their mother's room to check. "It's missing, so she must have taken it," she confirmed, rejoining her siblings.

"Then we can try to track her by GPS," Jasper noted. "Emmett-"

"On it." The lumbering vampire pulled a laptop off a desk and plopped on the couch with it, already typing as he spoke.

"We need to go to Forks, see if we can't get there before she goes to the house and sees Carlisle," Edward told them, though their chances of catching her with her head start were slim.

"Anything babe?" Rosalie asked Emmett who'd stopped furiously typing.

"Nothing," Emmett sighed. "Her phone is either off or out of range."

"That settles it then. We need to go and tell Carlisle that his mate is missing," Jasper decided. Sensing the group's reluctance, he continued, "Esme is his mate. However angry he may be at us for disobeying a command he'll be even angrier at us for not trying to stop her. Plus if she's not going to Forks then he needs to know that his mate is missing. She's his mate."

It was enough to convince them. Now it only remained to decide who would go and who would stay.

They agreed a small group would be best, to minimize the number of people disobeying Carlisle. Edward wanted to go alone, since Carlisle had made the whole thing his responsibility. Jasper argued that if it was a dangerous situation as Carlisle had implied, then Edward would need both he and Emmett just in case things escalated. Plus he and Emmett had already resolved to go to Forks within the next few days anyway. Of course Alice wanted to go, but without her sight there wasn't much she would be able to do for the situation. Rosalie of course didn't want Emmett to go, both out of worry for her mate and well-placed concern that he would escalate an in-control situation into a confrontation due to his ever-present itch for a fight.

Ultimately it was decided they would all go to Forks. Only Edward and Jasper would go into the home to inform Carlisle of the situation. The others would stay within a few miles: out of earshot but in easy running distance.

The siblings made one final, desperate phone call to Carlisle. When the called failed as expected, they took off running into the night.

The brothers stood at the forest line, shrouded by the trees, but with an unobscured view of the house. There were no lights on, but as it was early morning still this wasn't entirely surprising, nor did it give them any insight as to who might be in the house.

The smell of the human lingered, exotic and tangy, but notable unappetizing, a summer fruit that had been left out just a little too long in the sun and was just beginning to rot. They couldn't make out the sound of a heartbeat, but were wary to draw any conclusions from that. They both remembered how on their first encounter with Harry neither of them had been able to hear his heartbeat until they were directly in front of him.

They approached the house quietly, breathing deeply, scenting the air for any trace of Esme's floral aroma. They exchanged grim looks when they didn't catch anything, finally able to acknowledge that Esme hadn't come to Forks as they'd expected. In an ideal world they would be able to turn around now and Carlisle would be none the wiser. Neither of them would get reamed out for disobeying him and they wouldn't be putting themselves in a potentially dangerous situation.

The matter remained though. Carlisle's mate was still very much missing, and their concern over Carlisle's uncharacteristic behavior was still very real.

Edward sought out Carlisle's thoughts and found them muted. Muted in the way of a vampire in a meditative rest. Though their kind couldn't sleep, some vampires liked to pretend by closing their eyes and letting their minds go blank. Carlisle had never been one of those vampires though.

"He's in there," he told Jasper, comforted by the thought that at least one thing was going right.

The pair moved slowly towards the front door, slipping through the unlocked entryway. This gave them both pause for a moment, but they ultimately disregarded it. For a house full of vampires in the middle of nowhere, a locked door meant virtually nothing.

They took a moment to decide how to proceed. With a quick progression of thoughts from Jasper and some sharp gestures from Edward, they agreed to move quietly up the stairs to Carlisle's bedroom where Edward could hear his thoughts. They wouldn't try to mask their presence, but neither would they be indiscrete with their approach. Carlisle's meditative rest would have him in a state of obliviousness, making it easy for them to sneak up on him without making it obvious that was their intent.

They slinked up the stairs and, exchanging one final look outside Carlisle's room, pushed open the door. Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw.

Edward flinched back from the sight before him, feeling his throat constricting and the ghost sensation of his stomach churning. His anxiety compounded tenfold as Jasper lost control of his empathy and started projecting his own emotions onto the rest of the room.

It was like the perfect bubble of contentment that their life had always been had just been burst, and Edward and Jasper were the ones at fault. In this very moment, Edward knew that his whole life was going to change, right as he just found what he thought was happiness. The sense of loss rang strikingly in his chest, but he pushed it aside, determined to mourn later, for now he had to focus on the scene before him.

There, in the center of the room, in the bed that Carlisle normally shared with Esme, Carlisle, his sire, mentor and father lay tangled with Harry. His arms wrapped around the pale slim body and a mop of inky black hair pillowed Harry's gaunt cheek on his chest. Both men were topless. Though the covers shielded their bodies from the waist down from view, Edward spied a pile of clothes on the floor that included Carlisle's trousers and boxer-briefs, informing the brothers that the resting pair were likely completely naked. Harry was clearly asleep, his breathing shallow and even, his heartbeat slow and quiet. he didn't even stir as they entered the room.

Carlisle's eyes snapped open, wide and furious, the moment he heard the door swinging open. His angry gaze locked with Edward's horrified stare. Edward fell into his sire's mind, watching his racing thoughts as he was consumed with the need to protect Harry, to look after him, to shield his mate…

Mate.

The word struck Edward like a mallet crashing harshly on a gong, knocking the wind out of him and sending vibrations throughout this body, practically knocking him over with the force of it.

Mate.

Carlisle moved quickly, hands shifting Harry's head onto a pillow and pulling the coverlet further up the bed to shield his mate's body from the unwelcome eyes. He handled the small whimper of loss Harry made with a only a small tightening of the skin on his forehead.

Mate, if only he'd known...

Edward raised his hands placatingly and averted his gaze submissively, not wanting to further provoke his sire's wrath as he stepped from the bed, slipped into his underwear and stalked toward them menacingly. Jasper was stiff and frozen next to him, not understanding the situation, not able to process the situation, but knowing from Edward and Carlisle's emotions that he had every reason to be afraid. Jasper still hadn't figured out that Harry was their father's mate, that Esme…

Why hadn't he told them?

Carlisle grabbed both of them by their shirts, shoving them harshly back in the hall, both of them going willingly. The door swung shut behind them.

Nobody breathed.

The brothers watched Carlisle's eyes dart back and forth between them, furiously, waiting to see what he would do next.

Finally, ever so slowly, he unclenched his hand from the destroyed material of their shirts and took a step back, his shoulders still tense.

"What are you doing here?" he asked stiffly. Neither of them knew how to respond, feeling more filled up with questions than reasonable answers. "Well?" he prompted, eyes flashing.

Edward noted for the first time that his eyes were black with rage. "You disobey my orders, come into this house where you have no business being, disrupt my privacy and disturb Harry's sleep," for even through the door they could hear the human stirring restlessly, "And you have nothing to say for yourselves?"

Carlisle's muscles bunched angrily, growing more and more tense the longer he spoke, his voice rasping harshly until it was more of a growl.

Carlisle's mind rushed and surged with anger, Threats, his instincts told him, flooding his rational thoughts out with the need to protectdefendprotect. Edward stared dumbly at him in shock, not able to process any of it, not able to to predict what Carlisle would do next. Which is why he received next to no warning when, as Jasper opened his mouth to let the words "Esme is-" out Carlisle lunged at his adoptive child, knocking him to the ground and attacking with a blinding need to do something (anything) to get them away from his vulnerable mate..

Edward moved immediately to help his brother, but Carlisle was attacking with a ruthlessness and precision Edward hadn't even known he was capable of. Where normally the two best fighters in the coven could have easily subdued their sire between them, now Edward feared they wouldn't all escape the confrontation in tact.

Suddenly the door behind them burst open. While they'd been distracted Harry had been woken by the commotion. He exploded from the room, panting with fright and paused, taking in the scene.

Carlisle realized immediately that his mate was too close to the fray and and perilously near the two threats in the hall. He leapt back, crouching defensively in front of the man, low snarls tumbling out of his throat. He watched the others predatorily, ready to reenter the fight at any moment.

Without warning, Harry plastered himself to Carlisle's back, his hands draping securely around Carlisle's neck and his mouth pressing comfortingly to Carlisle's neck.

"Shh, Carlisle. Look, 'm safe Love. They don't want to hurt me. They're your children Carlisle, your babies. Everything is alright. Nobody will take me from you again, everything is going to be alright," he murmured soothingly, his hand rubbing gently at Carlisle's chest. He continued whispering softly in his lover's ear until finally Carlisle eased out of his defensive posture, sweeping Harry off of his back and into his arms. He pressed his face into Harry's neck, inhaling deeply the sweet drug that never failed to calm him down.

Edward and Jasper continued to watch warily until Carlisle turned clear headed eyes on him. The remorse and guilty thoughts radiated from him, reassuring them that he was finally in his right mind. It also went a long way in reassuring them that the man before them was truly their father and not some clone.

"We need to talk," Carlisle told them solemnly.

They settled themselves downstairs in the living room. The sun had fully risen, filling the space with natural light.

Edward and Jasper seated themselves heavily on the sofa. Carlisle sunk into the love seat. Harry attempted to squeeze next to him, but Carlisle quickly tugged Harry into his lap where the human perched stiffly, clearly not comfortable under the piercing, accusatory gaze the two brothers were sending his way. Jasper pulled out his phone with the intention of sending a quick text to Alice, summoning her and the rest of the siblings.

"So," Carlisle began with a tired sigh.

"Not yet," Jasper stopped him. "Lets wait for the others, so we can all hear at once."

"No," Carlisle snapped. Jasper glanced up at him, startled. "Harry's not ready yet to meet everyone."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry asked him a bit incredulously.

"Harry," Carlisle sighed exasperatedly, "You're still exhausted. You need your rest." He smoothed a hand over Harry's back as he bristled at the words.

"I only slept twelve hours yesterday. That's practically normal for a teenager," he muttered petulantly.

"For a teenager yes, but not for you. You're going to need plenty more sleep in the next few weeks. Once everyone gets back in this house there'll never be a moment's peace."

"Carlisle-"

"No. They can come back at the start of next week, and that's the earliest," the blond vampire said firmly, putting his proverbial foot down. "Now I believe you two have a lot of explaining to do," he continued, turning the conversation back to his two sons.

"We were worried about you," Edward confessed after a moment of tense silence. "It's been three weeks and you haven't so much as called. Plus you implied that things might be dangerous here. We thought- we didn't know what to think."

"I expected you to respect me enough to obey my orders. I'm disappointed you couldn't bring yourself to trust that I had the coven's best interests in mind."

All at once Edward was furious. This whole time they'd been worried sick and Carlisle had been relaxing to heart's content. "How can you have the coven's best interests in mind!? You don't even know what state you have left everyone in. Esme was wasting away, and you didn't even care. Do you even remember her? Esme, your mate? While you were here, sleeping around with some-"

"If you value your life you won't finish that sentence," Carlisle more growled than said. Edward reared back and watched cautiously as Harry rubbed Carlisle's neck until he seemed to regain control.

"I'm sorry to hear about Esme," Carlisle said firmly after a moment, "She's a member of my family and someone I care about a great deal. However, she is not, never has been, and never will be my mate. Harry and I met many years ago when I was just a newborn myself. I knew he was my mate immediately.

"As I'm sure you can tell our reunion has me feeling more on edge than I can reasonably handle. I sent you away for your own safety, until I had better control over my protective instincts, to prevent incidents like the one you experienced earlier from happening. The only threat in this house is the threat I myself pose to you."

Even though Carlisle had continued talking, his sons had stopped truly listening after he said Esme wasn't his mate.

"How can Esme not be your mate? You've been together for years. You love each other," Jasper pointed out, choosing to ignore the agony he suddenly felt coming from Harry at his words.

Carlisle glared at Jasper for upsetting Harry, but answered his question anyway. "Jasper, you of all people should have realized that my partnership with Esme was entirely platonic. We never held an inkling of romantic love towards one another, and certainly not any sexual attraction. All of you kids know that we never consummated our mateship. I've also never referred to Esme as my mate out loud or in my head," he added with a pointed look at Edward.

All of the points Carlisle ticked off were certainly true. He had never claimed Esme as a mate, but he'd also never corrected them when they'd assumed the two were mated. But all the same…

"If Esme doesn't love you why is she so upset?"

"I'm not a mind reader," their sire joked humorlessly, "but I'm sure she's feeling a little uncertain of her place in the family, not that I'd ever ask her to leave it. She might also be feeling the absence of her own mate much more strongly right now."

"There's something else Carlisle," Jasper hinted, no longer sure he should he even mention Esme's vanishing act to his father at all. Carlisle's eyes were on him now though, so he powered on. "Last night Esme went missing."

"Missing?" Carlisle asked, curious but not yet concerned. "How do you mean?"

"Most of us were out hunting and when we came back she wasn't there. She hasn't been in touch since and we haven't been able to track her. We thought she might have been on her way here, except she clearly wasn't."

"Esme is a grown woman and a hundred-year old vampire at that. If she wants some time to herself she's entitled to take it," Carlisle pointed out.

"How can you be so nonchalant about this?" Edward barked. "With all the problems we've had with the Volturi and Victoria lately, and you're going to pretend Esme's disappearance is no big deal!?" He was arguing more for the sake of confrontation than any real belief in the words he was spewing.

Carlisle opened his mouth to argue but Harry intervened before anything could escalate. He laid a placating hand on his mate's chest, stopping the vampire in his tracks.

"I can find out where she is if you like," Harry offered with a shy smile. Edward glared at him and his kind, caring face, about to tell him that his help was unwanted when Carlisle beat him to it.

"If you think you're going out to look for a woman who's perfectly capable of looking after herself in your condition you have another thing coming."

Harry rolled his eyes at Carlisle's melodrama. "In my condition," he scoffed, "You act like I'm dying." It must have had a more significant meaning between the two of them since Harry chuckled while Carlisle shot him a look that was distinctly unimpressed.

"You're still so tired-"

"I know exactly how tired I am or am not," Harry cut him off loudly, "and I promised you complete honesty on the matter. In fact I wouldn't mind a lie-down right now." here he paused to glare at Carlisle when it seemed like he was immediately going to be ushered to bed. "But I assure you I can find Esme with a minimal expenditure of energy and without even leaving the house."

Carlisle huffed in defeat and allowed Harry to stand and hobble over to the sliding glass door. He pushed it open and stood for a moment, staring intently into the forest. Finally, just when Edward was about to start questioning his sanity, he stuck out an arm into the fresh air. A massive crow swooped down from the threes to settle heavily on his arm. The boys gaped at the sight of it.

"That bird…" Jasper trailed off. Carlisle shushed him with a fond smile. Edward caught a glimpse of a memory of a similar bird swooping and landing on Jasper's head, though the significance of it escaped him.

They all returned their attention to Harry, who was presently stroking the creature's glossy black feathers. He gave it a couple of final pats on the back before it took off again.

Carlisle welcomed Harry back into the circle of his arms, smiling when Harry let out a contented sigh. "We'll know momentarily," the human informed them, his eyes already slipping shut.

Edward wanted to call bullshit on the whole thing. Even if the green-eyed menace was some sort of raven-whisperer there was no way he'd be able to find out Esme's location. Jasper elbowed him when he opened his mouth to speak, effectively silencing him. In all honesty Jasper feared Carlisle's wrath if they woke Harry from his light doze. Instead, Edward settled for glaring and hoped his vehement gaze gave the sleeping man nightmares. Jasper shifted uncomfortably at his malicious emotions, but otherwise said nothing.

They sat for nearly ten minutes until the crow reappeared outside the door. It pecked impatiently at the glass, the sharp sound rousing harry from his nap. His eyelashes fluttered open and he took a moment to stretch, arching his back. He was about to rise to let the bird in when Carlisle's steel arms caged him into place. The blond vampire nodded his head at his sons, commanding one of them to do it. When Edward only glared petulantly, Jasper got up with an eyeroll and pushed open the door.

The bird flew into the room with a grating caw and perched on the armrest of the loveseat where it began grooming Harry's hair.

"Stop that," he groused, but remained obediently still to Carlisle's great amusement. After a moment the bird cawed again and Harry saw fit to inform them of its tidings. "Esme is on a flight to Paris." Sensing their disbelief he quickly continued and shared her flight number with them so they could check themselves.

"How could you possibly know that?" Jasper asked incredulously.

"I have a certain affinity with crows," Harry replied in a mischievous tone, clearly not sharing the whole story.

Jasper wanted to ask more but Carlisle cut into the conversation. "That's enough for today. Harry needs rest. I'll see you two no sooner than Monday," he informed them, and ushered them out of the house.

The two brothers ran slowly back to the rest of their coven, not at all eager to share the information they'd learned, and not at all capable of answering the questions that were sure to come up.

Enjoy the extra-long chapter!

Also, I want everyone to know how much I appreciate their reviews! You're all very kind with your compliments, and I appreciate every bit of constructive criticism I can get.

I am a student at university so I don't have as much time as I would like to respond to all my reviews, but please know that I read and cherish every single one!