Jasper POV

"Thank you so much, Jasper. I really appreciate this." Bella said quietly as she left my study, not bothering to close the door behind her.

I turned to my laptop and quickly sent an email to J. I was pretty sure he would be able to get back to me very soon; the Cullen's being top priority customers and all.

I wouldn't tell Bella to her face, but I was very doubtful that I would be able to find much about Charlie Swan's ancestry. It's not easy going past the 16th century, and for Bella I would have to dig much deeper, go further back than I have ever been able to go.

I considered contacting Santiago in Italy. He knew Bella from her time in the Volturi, and he may be able to dig up some things about Bella's past. It would be great if I could find anything at all about her human life. It would be the best Christmas present I could ever give her.

I quickly wrote out a letter to him and put it in my satchel.

I needed to be careful in my correspondence with Santiago. He was still a member of the Volturi guard, and was therefore under the constant supervision of Aro. I needed to be EXTREMELY careful in what information I shared with him, and what I held back.

It would be very bad if Aro decided to send someone to check on Carlisle and Bella after all this time, especially given Bella's precarious relationship with Edward.

I did feel pity for her, but I still felt that she should be more cautious. She had only known him for a short time and yet her feelings for him were already very strong. I bet she wouldn't admit it aloud any time soon, but that girl was in love.

"Hey Jazz," my wife greeted me from the door. She came and sat in my lap and began playfully twirling her fingers in my hair, "I'll let Emmett know that we need to stop by the post office on the way to school."

"Noted." Emmett called from downstairs.

"Thanks. So are you going to tell me what they are going to find out? It would save me the trouble of waiting for them." I asked her hopefully.

"No cheating this time, sweets." She smiled coyly at me and pointed her right index finger into my face. I sighed dramatically. "Besides, you won't have to wait very long." She added.

I glanced at my watch and saw that it was 6:30. Perfect. "Would you like to come on a quick hunt with me?"

"Sure." her eyes clouded for just a moment. I reached around her and began the process of shutting down my laptop when she squealed "If we head 3 miles east we will find a huge herd of elk!" Then she jumped off of my lap while grabbing my hand. I didn't struggle as she pulled me from the room and down the stairs. Carlisle was waiting for us in the Kitchen.

"May I join you?" He asked, while he closed the book he had been reading and placed it gently on the pristine countertop. It was a book that I recognized from my own library. I hadn't realized he had taken it.

"Sure," I replied, "and yes it's ok that you borrowed that," I added, gesturing towards the book. It was my copy of The Iliad in the original Greek, one of my favorites.

Carlisle stood and gestured towards the back door. "After you," he said, a smile playing on his lips. Alice bounced past him and out the door; Carlisle and I followed her at a slower pace, both of us chuckling at her exuberance.

Bella POV

Edward knew I was a vampire. I confirmed his assumption as I drove him home. He took the news surprisingly well. We spent an entire hour sitting in my truck talking about our reading and music and movie preferences. I was surprised to learn that he shared a lot of my tastes in these areas. It was nice to know that we at least had some things in common, and that it wasn't just our mutual attraction for each other that drew us together.

The rest of the week flew by and it was finally the last day of classes for this year. I had made plans with Edward to pick him up on Saturday morning so we could go to the library in Port Angeles. I also planned on taking him to my meadow at some point, to show him what I looked like in the sunlight. He was very excited when I told him. I also told him that he could interrogate me during the trip, and so he had kept the majority of his questions to himself for the past few days. His patience was admirable.

I was sitting with my family at lunch today, instead of with Edward. We both agreed that we should take things a bit slower. Of course, he still didn't know that I made up for it by visiting him while he slept. I thought that that little piece of information could wait.

"I heard back from J." Jasper said, breaking through my musings about this weekend.

"And what did he say?" I asked in a low voice.

"He said he couldn't get much of anything. The Forks Police Departments has multiple firewalls and fail safes set up on their databases," Jasper said. "He said it is more secure than the Pentagon, which implies that there is information there that is worth finding," he added in a hushed tone.

"Did Santiago have any information for you?" Rosalie asked. She was intrigued by the possibility about having information on my human life. We all were.

"Santiago told me to take a hike," Jasper replied with a sour look on his face. I thought about that for a moment. Santiago was always the nicest to me out of all the Volturi guard. When Jasper told me he had contacted Santiago, I felt for sure that he would have some information to share.

Everyone was silent for a few moments, thinking about these new developments that Jasper had shared.

"So how come you're not sitting with your lover boy today?" Emmett teased, while wagging his eyebrows dramatically. Rosalie quickly smacked him in the back of the head, while muttering "idiot."

"We decided that we should take it slow, since we barely know each other," I explained.

"You mean since he barely knows you," Emmett corrected me.

"Since he barely knows me," I conceded. I stole a quick glance at Edward at that moment, and was rewarded when his beautiful green eyes met mine. We exchanged smiles before he quickly returned his attention back to Angela, who was talking about an assignment they had been assigned in English. I was happy that he had befriended Angela, Ben and Tyler. I would have warned him about Mike, but Alice and Jasper already told me that the friendship Edward had with Mike was purely superficial, and that it would amount to nothing.

"So you and Edward are going to Port Angeles on Saturday?" Rosalie asked conversationally, surprising all of us.

"Yes. We have that project due at the end of the break, and the library here is terrible," I answered.

"But you already have a PhD in Biology, Bells," Emmett exclaimed. "What do you need to go to a Library for?"

"Edward does not know that yet. Besides, my PhD in bio is from 1972. I think they might have had a few scientific advances since then," I said with a wink. Regardless, I knew that I could complete our project in less than ten minutes, but I thought it would be unfair to Edward, to not get the full benefit of his Forks High education. I continued to destroy my slice of pizza while my siblings continued discussing my plans with Edward.

I was really surprised by Rosalie's genuine effort to accept my "relationship" with Edward. Out of all the vampires I had met over the past 600 years, she was the one that suffered the most with our inability to reproduce. She deeply regretted not being given the chance to have children and grandchildren, on top of the horrific manner of her change. Carlisle had found her lying in a ditch, badly beaten and on the brink of death. He quickly brought her back to our apartment and turned her. After it was over she explained to Carlisle, Esme, and I that she had been raped and beaten by her fiancé and his buddies, and left for dead on the street. Shortly after her explanation she set out to kill her former fiancé and his friends. She even did it without drinking from them, which is incredible given that she was barely an hour old.

I was actually startled when the bell rang. The seven of us gathered our things and headed for our next classes. I grabbed Rosalie by the arm and pulled her into a nearby bathroom before she could head to her Calculus class.

"Thank you," I said quickly, before she could protest. She looked like she was about to argue with me, but her features softened, and she gave my shoulder a piercing squeeze with her sharp, blood-red finger nails.

"Bella, I know this is hard for you to understand, especially coming from me, but I understand what you are going through. I think the emptiness I feel about… well… the fact that I can't have children pales in comparison to the loneliness you have felt over the past few centuries. At least I have Emmett." Then she patted the top of my head lightly and mouthed "love you" before she stalked out of the bathroom.

I was in shock. Rosalie had never said anything like that to me in all the decades that I had known her.
For a moment I felt vindicated, justified even, in what I planned to do with Edward. Rosalie's blessing made me feel so much better that I couldn't help but grin at the thought of the fun times that lay ahead, and the thought of Edward as my companion for the rest of eternity put a slight skip in my step.

Then I remembered that Alice was hiding something from all of us, and that it made her sad, and my grin immediately turned into a frown, my skip turning into a trudge. It was time to interrogate Alice about those visions.

Alice POV

I was waiting patiently for the time when Bella would ask about my visions. I had seen our conversation, and I knew that that was when the cat would be out of the bag, so to speak. When the vision became clear as day I knew it was coming within the next 48 hours. I was hoping I would have more time to pin down the timeframe of my visions of our confrontation with the Volturi, and the cause of it. I could only hope that Bella would not freak out and head straight to Volterra to attempt to "handle" them herself.

If she chose to do that, everything would end.

I grasped Jasper's hand tightly as we walked out of the school building towards Emmett's jeep. He was already waiting in the driver's seat, admiring Rosalie as she admired herself in the side view mirror.

As Jasper and I walked our slow human pace I turned around and watched Bella and Edward exit the building and head towards her truck. I blew a kiss to her and she returned my loving gesture with a murderous glare and her middle finger.

Maybe it would be less than 48 hours until our conversation. I looked into the future as I settled myself in the backseat with Jasper. I looked down at myself and realized that I was currently wearing the same thing as in my vision. It did not take long for my panic to set in.

I hadn't been taken by surprise like this by one of my visions for decades, and it frightened me a little to admit this to myself.