When people described Alice, there was one word that they always used, every time, without fail. Pixie.

She never minded—it made her smile and giggle and want to watch "Peter Pan". Of course she never minded, Alice never minded anything. I minded. Not because she didn't have a pixie-like quality to her—a way of moving like she should have wings. It was just that the word "pixie" implied a certain preciousness, a harmless cuteness. Alice was not cute. Alice was beautiful.

She was, quite simply, the most stunning woman I'd ever seen, dead or alive. She was breath-knocked-out-of-you beautiful, impossible modern art. So small, and that also implied cute, but you couldn't look her in the eyes and say it. Because of the curves of her that your eyes slid down. Because of the color of her hair, so black it made you blink to look at it, and at such angles. I'd had a theory in the nineties that the entire Punk movement had been inspired by her. How could you look at her and not be inspired?

Too often I took it for granted, like my own beauty. But sometimes, just turning around too fast, or coming around a corner, it hit me so hard I saw stars. Like now—just seeing her sitting there on my bed made me pull my breath in hard, stop to catch my balance. Because God she was beautiful, and I told her so.

"God, you're beautiful," I said evenly. Statement of fact.

"Aw," she said, not moving. "I bet you say that to all the girls."

"I only mean it with you, doll." Teasing tone, but I was actually feeling very serious. I suddenly felt like an idiot for running off without her. If I thought bloodthirst was bad, I just had to try going twenty-four hours without Alice.

I'd known she would come, but only in the vague sense—in the way that I couldn't have stood to be without her, that if she had gone running off to Texas, I would have come after her. I didn't know exactly what she was doing here, but I could wait to find out—I flickered across the room and pulled her up from the bed, one hand on the base of her neck and one on her hip as she wrapped her leg around me. I kissed her like I hadn't seen her in years—and her kiss said, silly boy.I've always been here.

"I killed her," I said against Alice's mouth as we kissed. The closest I'd come to saying it out loud yet. "I killed her."

"Shh," she said. Judging from her actions so far, Alice was going to take the Denial road on this one. She did that sometimes—she almost had to. There were dark spots in me, things that made me not good enough for her. She wanted me anyway and so she ignored them.

"He's never going to forgive me."

"Shhh!" She pulled my face back in, frustrated.

I jerked away out of her grip. "Alice. There's no way you came here just to make out with me."

"What, like that's not a good enough reason?" Another reason why 'pixie' didn't apply to her—when she got mad, she was scary. She looked vaguely dangerous on a normal day, anyway, and when her eyes flashed like that—you half expected her to pull out a switchblade and slash your jugular, then fist-pound a guy named Spider and ride off on a motorcycle. Pixies didn't ride motorcycles. "Are you doubting my motives, Jasper Hale?"

"Not doubting," I said calmly. "Just wondering."

She sighed, tucking her chin into the hollow of my shoulder. "Just—got tired of arguing about what we should "do" with you," she said, airquotes and all. "It was like you were on trial, it was ridiculous. Like none of us have ever screwed up before."

"No offense," I said bleakly, "but I think I take the trophy."

"We'll have in inscribed," she said, trying to joke her way out of my mood. "Jasper Hale, First Place, National Screw-Ups Grand Prix."

"Very funny," I mumbled into her hair. "How did you beat me here, anyway?"

"I took your bike. It's outside."

She was about the only person I would trust with it. "I can't believe you even set foot in this hotel. You must have seen it in your vision."

"Don't remind me," she said blackly.

I hope they have fire insurance. "So," I said, "I don't suppose you happened to bring any sort of a…plan?"

"Not really," she said, kissing my jaw lightly. "You thinking a plan for fixing the family, or a plan for running away forever?"

"Did you see the way he looked at me?"

"Oh, so that's just it then?" That sharp tone was back in her voice, disapproving. "A hundred and ten years of being a family and suddenly, poof, that's all gone? He's your brother, Jasper."

"Yes," I said flatly, "and I killed his fiancée." Even humans got mad about that sort of thing.

"He'll forgive you."

"He won't."

"He'll forgive you, Jasper."

"Maybe he shouldn't."

"Would you stop with the self-pity? Everything will be fine. Edward will—"

She broke off suddenly, her eyes going wide and shallow. I knew the look.

"What is it?" I asked, taking her by the shoulders. "What do you see?"

"Edward—" she said, then closed her mouth again, like she was trying not to say something, or not to see it.

"Edward what?" I fished. "What is Edward doing?" Her pupils dilated back to normal, and suddenly it was me she was looking at again. I could feel her pity, but that had been there—what was new was the sudden fear. "Alice, tell me what's happening."

"It's Edward," she repeated. "He's coming here."

"What? Why?"

The pity and the fear kicked up in equal doses, fear just barely outracing it. I knew it couldn't be fear for herself, Alice wasn't afraid of anything. So that meant it had to be—

Her hand wrapped around my wrist, tighter than she probably knew. "I guess you were right," she said wryly. "He's not going to forgive you."

"He's—what?" Alice usually tried to be fairly direct about her visions, but I wasn't getting it this time.

"He's coming," she said grimly, getting off the bed, pushing a set of keys into my hands. "You have to go now. He's very angry, and he's going to do something he'll regret."

"What do you mean, me?" I said, trying to hand the keys back to her. I recognized them, it was the keys to my motorcycle, but the fact that she was handing them to me made me suspicious. A motorcycle was generally a one-person transportation.

"I can't come with you," she said, still brisk and busy, halfway to panic. "He's picking up on my visions of where you are and where you're going to be—if I'm this close to you I won't be able to prevent myself from seeing your future. I need to get far enough away—"

"Alice." I'd lost a lot of things in my life, and I was starting to get the hang of it. I knew where my limits were. I could lose my home and family and it would hurt like hell, it would close to kill me, but I would make it. I would deal. I could not lose Alice. She was my limit. Especially now, when I was spun half out of control, needed so badly to have something to hang onto. "I need you, okay? I need you. Can't we just—"

"Jasper, if I stay here, you will die," she said sharply. "I can see it." I stepped back, hit by the harshness of her tone. She stepped forward to close the gap I'd just made, putting her hand on the side of my face to kiss me. I kissed her back too hard, bending her spine—searching for something in her, some part of her I could anchor to when she was gone.

"You leave first," she said when she pulled away, half-breathless. "He won't kill me. Get out fast, take your bike and just get as far away as you can. Try to find more vampires, or even people, a group you can hide yourself in. It'll make it harder for him to hear you. Now go."

My body wasn't crazy about the idea of walking away—just keep looking at her for a few more seconds, it argued, just so you can remember the exact color of her eyes, after she's gone. Just a few more seconds. Alice saw my hesitation—she put her hands flat on my chest and pushed me away.

That got me all the way to the door, walking quickly, flipping the motorcycle keys up into my hand. I looked back as I opened it, just in case somehow things had changed in the last two seconds, but her eyes still looked the same. "Go," she said firmly, and with such force that I might have been offended if I hadn't been able to feel her fear and worry and pain at not leaving with me. "I'll find you as soon as it's safe."

I smiled the biggest smile I could manage. "Love you, doll."

"Love you, babe," she smiled back, ironically. "Now would you please get the hell out?"