Thank you, Dalonega Noquisi, for that heart-warming review; that's exactly what I'd hopped to achieve with this story. You keep me writing!

Here's the next chapter. I double-timed this one, so... mind the typos. Hope you like it.

-Scarlet

Day Four: Sunday

*E*

"Jeez, this stupid blizzard won't leave us alone!" Emma cried, worming deeper into her warm sleeping bag.

Eva, scribbling tiny numbers on something at the desktop, hummed in agreement.

The space heater in the office whirred on drearily in the corner of the room. Eva sat at the small office desk, balancing the checkbook again. A mug of jet-black coffee sat on an old copy of the yellow pages, next to the huge pile of paperwork, next to the dinosaur computer monitor. Eva stuck her pencil behind her ear and began tapping on the palm-sized, Texas Instruments calculator to her right.

Emma stared bordly out the small office window, which was completely white. It was Sunday, so the shop would be closed all day. And, being in a class-3 blizzard, Irondale didn't have much Sunday entertainment. Unless you counted the ladies club afternoon Bingo tourney at the First Baptist Church, that is. Sighing, the girl shifted her gaze from the bleached window to stare at the glowing red heating coils of the space warmer.

*J*

"How long has it been?"

Rosalie looked at her watch for the eleventh time that half-hour. "Nine hours, twenty three minutes."

Emmett sighed in response, reloading his assault rifle with the right bumper on his controller. "I'll give him six more hours... then we've got to do something."

Rosalie turned the 121st page of The Scarlet Letter. "You heard Carlisle – we're not going to do anything. Besides, Jasper is better off with things like this if he's left to himself."

Emmett leaned forward in his seat. "I know but" – he strafed forward to hit an Elite with the blunt of his pistol – "Edward's already harped on him enough and" – he switched weapons to a plasma rifle and sprayed across a line of Grunts – "Alice isn't contacting us and" – he threw a plasma grenade onto the back of an unsuspecting Hunter and jumped out of the blast-radius – "we should make sure he didn't buy plane tickets to Italy or something stupid like that..."

Rosalie scoffed and turned another page. "Don't be silly. Edward will take care of it. And Alice would never let something like that happen."

Emmett punched the glass of a window as he jumped through it, ambushing the sleeping grunts on the other side. "Uh-hu, sure. You said that last time..."

Rosalie's head shot over to his direction. "What do you mean 'last time'?" she snapped.

"There!" Cortana shouted. "On the landing above us!"

"Aw, crap!" Emmett jumped away, but it was too late. The plasma smoke from the grenade on his shoulder blocked half of his view. After the explosion, the camera zoomed out on the bloody, lifeless body of the Master Chief.

Emmett growled and flung his controller across the room. "You know I can't play on 'Legionary' without Jacob!"

Rosalie caught the white handle of the Xbox controller just an inch before it struck the white drywall of the opposite wall.

"Don't play Halo when you're worked up, babe. It's not good for Esme's psyche." Rosalie threw the controller at Emmett's head, and he caught it without looking.

"Yeah, fine," Emmett grumbled. "Just lemme save it... I want to see how far ol' Jake can get on Level –"

Just then, the 72" plasma screen went pitch-black, leaving only a white, snowy glare from the glass window on the opposite wall.

Emmett's cries of despair filled the house.

*E*

Emma thought her hearing was going. Slowly – like an old, dying man – the warm air coming from the space heater whispered quieter and quieter, until finally silence remained. The neon-red heating element slowly faded back to a cold, dead brown.

"Eve... Eva... Eva... Eva... Eve..."

Eva dropped her pencil impatiently and glared down at her sister. It was at least the tenth time she had forgotten the remainder of thirteen and seven. "What, Em? You know I have to concentrate with numbers!"

Emma dug a hand out of her sleeping bag and pointed at the heater. "I think it died."

"Hu?" Eva leaned over to get a better look at the machine. She rolled her chair out from the small desk and stood in front of it. "Oh." She knelt in front of it and flicked the power switch on and off several times. Soft sparks could be heard from somewhere inside the contraption. "I don't think it's supposed to do that…"

"Arrrg!" Emma groaned, plastering her face into her pillow.

"What are you? A pirate?"

There was an angry reply, muffled by the pillow.

Eva laughed, crawling on her knees to her sister. She pulled the pillow off her face. "What was that, Bonnie?"

Emma's face was calmly composed, obviously a ruse. "I said, 'I don't wanna be a pirate.'"

Eva burst out laughing. The combination of her sister's antics and the stress of running a business were the primary causes. She laughed until her sides ached, and Emma could help but chuckle too.

"Everything we have is junk!" Emma said as she snickered, and Eva laughed at that too.

"Everything we have… is old," Eva corrected, trying to get her breath back. She sat up and whipped a tear from the corner of her eye.

Emma smiled at her sister, who was now fully recovered. "You know, that's the first time you've laughed like that in a while..."

Eva looked at her sister for a long moment. "I know," she said sadly. Then, she smiled and put a hand on Emma's shoulder. "That's the first joke you've told in a long time."

Both the sisters sighed simultaneously, and then laughed because of it.

*J*

"Jeez, Jazz... take it easy on the critters, will ya?"

Emmett watched as his brother stood from his neigh-unrecognizable prey, wiping his hands on his white shirt. He didn't even seem to notice the handprints of blood.

"You're only here because of Edward's paranoia, Emmett. Don't feel inclined to speak." Jasper threw a pointed look at him, and stalked off in a southern direction. He still felt the echo of her scent in his mind, and the animal blood he consumed did little to slake that lust.

"Uh, correction," Emmett said, putting up a declaring finger as he followed Jasper. "I'm here because Rosalie had one of her crazy moon swings... you can't predict them, you know?"

Jasper stopped dead in his tracks and spoke harshly over his shoulder. "Do not pretend as though you don't know what's happening here, Emmett." He spun around to glare at Emmett. "You know as well as Edward that she would already be dead if you weren't here to stop me."

Emmett didn't speak; he shuffled his feet. "Man, you know this happens to everyone... like I told Edward, there's just that one time –"

"You?" Jasper demanded, angry. "Who are you to talk? The first time this happened to you, you did the sensible thing!" Jasper gestured to his brother curtly, and waited for a reply.

Emmett had none. "I'm… just trying to back Carlisle up on this one, Jazz. It's nothing personal."

"And your personal opinion would be that I should remove the problem from existence?"

Emmett didn't say anything, but his dominant emotion was consent.

Jasper growled deeply and swung his fist around at an old oak tree. The wood splintered under his blow, and the high branches rustled when a snapping sound came from the heartwood. Overcome by the conflict he was feeling, Jasper leaned against the tree with his forehead on his arm. He sighed, despondently. "Why would Alice leave at a time like this?" he wondered quietly to himself.

Emmett put his back to the opposite side of the oak, and set his gaze heavenward, as Jasper's was. The low-hanging storm clouds caressed the sky. "I can't change how I feel, Jasper, but I know what the right thing to do would be."

Emmett left his thought hanging, wondering when Edward and Bella would return with Jacob.

*E*

"Again, Ron, I'm so sorry to make you come all the way over on a Sunday."

"It's no problem, really, Eve," the young man's voice said over the phone line. "I'll be there in a jiff. Just hang tight."

Eva smiled. "Thanks so much. I'll see you soon, then."

"Yeah, seeya, Eve."

The line cut into the dial tone, and Eva set the 70's style receiver into the base on her desk. "He's coming!" Eva informed her sister excitedly.

Emma, unfortunately, did not share Eva's enthusiasm. "He's coming. Yay. Is he bringing enough food for the children?" she asked sweetly, sarcastically. She pretended to gag on her words as she turned another page of last-month's Pottery Barn catalog.

Eva frowned at her sister's attitude, and walked over to look out the window. As the morning had passed, the afternoon had become quite clear of snow. "Oh no, Emma, don't be appreciative. I've only just asked a paid employee to come over on a day-off to fix the power he doesn't even own. No, that's not selfless at all."

Emma's head jerked up. "Oh, ho!" she teased, "I see what's goin' on here!"

Eva flushed, realizing her mistake. "Don't be silly, Emma. It's not like that at all." She put her hand on the ice-cold glass of the window and watched condensation outline her fingers.

The teenager shrugged, dropping it only for Eva's sake. "Fine... be that way."

The young Mr. Cooper arrived fifteen minutes later, with a toolbox under his arm and a smile on his face. His hobby was fixing up cars, so he knew a little about electrical work. He wore at least half-a-dozen sweaters and coats, but, in his mind, the trip was worth the cold.

"Hey, Eve," he said at the door, kicking the snow from his boots onto the doormat. "I've come to save the day."

Eva chuckled into her hand and waved him inside. "I can't thank you enough, Ron. I don't think we would've lasted much longer."

Ron smiled at her as he passed by into the room, and watched her back as she closed the door and relocked it. From middle school, Ron Cooper had had one ambition. That ambition was Evangeline Forest. He'd never had the nerve to ask her out, though he'd sat with her at lunch for every day of high school. And he'd never had the gut to drop a hint, even though he'd taken classes that were too far above his level just to sit by her. He had attended Edgar Forest's funeral with his family; however, his eyes had been on his grown-up high school crush, fresh back from college, rather than the casket. In his case, the saying, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," was true to a painful extreme.

"So... where's my victim? Oh, hey, Emma."

Emma had just shuffled out of the office, wrapped in three flannel sheets. She rubbed her nose, which was red from cold. "Hey, Ron." She'd always had to tendency to pronounce his name curtly. "You took your sweet time."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Great to see you too, Emma."

"You may remember that the power's split upstairs and down," Eva said, ignoring their banter, per usual. "The heater died upstairs yesterday, and now the power's out down here, too." She gestured around, sighing.

"Yeah," Emma snuffled. "Welcome to our own personal Winter Wonderland."

"Er, so... you guys slept down here last night?" Ron asked, pocking his head into the cluttered office.

Emma glanced back at him before plopping down into the chair behind the counter. "Lovely, ain't it? It's The Ritz, I tell ya." She laid her head on the cold wood of the counter and faked a snore.

Eva pretended not to hear her; she felt responsible for their misfortune, and thus, guilty. "We can check upstairs first. If you want to, Ron."

"Yeah, sure."

"Let me just grab my coat."

Ron winced. "It's that bad?"

Eva laughed humorlessly. "Unfortunately... yes."

The two young adults were huddled in the apartment's small hallway five minutes later, both examining the boiler heater in the hall-closet. The upstairs was ominously quiet and empty with all the appliances off, as they had shut off all the breakers to deduce the problem.

"I'm sure that this is some old equivalent of a fuse box, but what the hell?" Ron said, frustrated. He fiddled with a frayed wire that protruded from a small opening.

"Well… if you're right, then we just need a new wire here, right?" Eva commented, squeezing by Ron to point at the damaged copper wire.

Ron stood his ground as he felt Eva's body heat brush against his arm. This was the part he hated most: her complete obliviousness. "Uh... uh, yeah. That'd be the problem. You just" – he gestured vaguely to the heater, looking down at Eva all the while – "put it... yeah, right there."

"Well, then." Eva stepped back, shrugging. "I guess I need to make a run down to Ace, hu?"

"Er, we can go now, if you want."

*J*

Jacob stared out of the window of the fast-moving car, watching but not seeing. He knew that the pack back in La Push needed him, but he needed to be with Ness more. Poor Leah... but I guess the good of the many outweighs the good of the few...

"Or the one," Edward finished, smiling.

Jacob scoffed, pulling away from the window. "You nerd."

"Jacob," Bella warned, casting him a look from the front seat. "It's almost over." She sighed. The tension in the Volvo, with two vampires and one werewolf crammed in one vehicle, was almost tangible.

"This won't happen a lot; me leaving all the time," Jacob promised. "The pack just got jumpy, that's all."

"With good cause," Edward remarked. "If there's one thing to not take lightly – it's the Volturi."

"What could they possibly want?" Bella wondered for the hundredth time, watching the snowy road ahead of them.

"Nothing good," Jacob said gravely. "Or they're just trying to intimidate us."

"The Volturi don't sent three of their key members just for intimidation, Jacob," Edward warned.

Jacob sighed heavily, rubbing the tiredness from his face. He hadn't slept for days, being so far away from his imprint. "I guess we'll find out eventually..."

Fellow Halo fans! Did you recognize the level Emmett was playing from the first game?

I'm working on the next chapter, so bear with me.

-Scarlet