Tricks of the Dead

Gym, why did it have to be Gym when our idiot of a teacher put me and Mike Newman together? I had been avoiding him with expertise every day since I broke up with Edward, the most I had spoken to him was a quick hello. Though on the whim of a teacher we were suddenly partners in dance, which somehow had become something to do in Physical Education. Though my problems with school were mostly nonexistent , well other than my Mike Newman related problems were nonexistent. I was still up most nights trying to work out how best to help Alice, but I was still nowhere near solving the problem.

"Ok now boys, hands on your partners hips." I had to move up close to Mike Newton but before either of us had said anything the teacher spoke, there was no way in hell I was letting Newman do that. His hands moved and I was an inch away from slapping him,

"Bella Swan?" a voice called out from across the Gym and the entire class turned to see two men in the door, both looking around from stretched rotated necks and pointed faces which looked almost identical, from their chin to forehead it reminded me of a pincer. Ones which contained thin lips, dark shades and continued a sickly unnatural flavour of skin.

"Can I help you?" The Gym teacher asked the question with a curious look, the two men pulled out identification.

"Special agents Phillips and Wilks, FBI." The FBI? what the hell were FBI agents doing looking for me? It dawned on me less than a second after a muffled shockwave ran through the class, these men were not FBI. They weren't even from the government, I had a very dark feeling I was now dealing with agents in Death's world.

"Bella Swan we need to ask you a few questions." One of the near identical men asked,

"What about?" I asked trying my best to look innocent, I have no idea if it worked. Instead the man took off his shaded glasses to reveal shallow, quizzical, eyes.

"We just need to ask you a few questions." He told me in a smooth, refined voice and with all eyes on me I slowly walked with the two, just until we were outside of the Gym.

"What do you want?" I asked trying to act like a girl playing up to authority, the two looked at me in a strange way. I wondered if they knew I wasn't technically alive,

"What's your relationship to Alice Cullen?" The other man, on my right, asked immediately

"She's my friend." I stated simply, there was no doubt about it; they were here from Death's world, but I doubted he sent them.

"And Jasper Cullen?"

"Friend's boyfriend, why has something happened to Alice?." I answered hoping to sound like a concerned teenager,

"No she's fine." the answer was surprisingly blunt and tactless. Then again both of them were blunt and tactless but I needed to be very careful, one wrong move and I'd wind up incriminating Death or worse, me. I wasn't sure if I could get into trouble with these people but I wasn't going to test them.

"So why are you asking about her?" I inquired, this time a slight smirk entered the conversation, I did know who they were after all.

"We just need some information, has anything happened to you recently Miss Swan?" I had no idea which agent was which.

"Call me Bella and no, nothing interesting. Unless you count breaking up with a boyfriend." I said it casually, it was no big thing.

"Your boyfriend being Edward Cullen Miss Swam?" The next question ignored my instructions to be casual but hey these people didn't do casual.

"How do you know that?" I asked, if these men were pretending to be FBI then they would not be getting away with spying on me, the two didn't say anything yet again.

"We've asked around, Miss Swan has anyone of an unusual nature approached you?" Were these two seriously going to ask if I'd met Death by asking if he was of an unusual nature? I had to hold back a laugh.

"I know a lot of weirdo's but unless you're going to arrest most of the boys in this school then no." I told them and one sighed very deeply, as if was trying to work something out. I just hoped that something wasn't if I was telling the truth or not.

"Thank you Bella, we have no further questions for you. If you or your friend Alice are approached by someone you think is dangerous then call us." The one on the left handed me a card with a number and Federal logo. I wondered just where this call would be redirected to in the real world.

"Sure thing," I promised and with that, and a smile, the two turned and walked away. They were out of sight in less than a minute.

I spent the rest of Gym saying I had no idea why those "Feds" wanted to talk to me, by the end of the class six people thought I was in witness protection. Now while Forks would be an ideal place for someone to hide, I was not one of them.

By the end of my next class the entire class thought I was wanted criminal or fugitive, that was easy to dispute. Though it didn't work. By the time lunchtime had come around all eyes were on me in the cafeteria and the whispers ranged from me being a witness to a crime, to be being a mob boss's daughter. I supposed it would be an interesting change of career for Charlie but one I had a feeling he had not undertaken.

"Careful guys, don't let little Miss Mobster whack you." Alice's greeting made me chuckle, everyone except Edward was at the usual table. It was strange the only people I knew who didn't believe rumours were Vampires, then again even me being a criminal was more plausible than the truth.

"Yeah Bella, I've got a little trouble going on, maybe you could send a goon to sort it all out?" Emmet asked slyly and I sighed, why did those agents have to pose as FBI? I mean were they just trying to cause something like this? Then again they did work for Death so being malicious wasn't entirely out of the questions.

"Great any more of these coming?" I asked putting my head down with a sigh.

"No, but you can tell us why the feds would want to talk to you, I mean there are much more interesting people in this world." Rosalie smiled bitter sweetly, thankfully cutting of any further jokes. Though everyone did lean in, even Jasper, to find out why.

"Nothing, they just wanted to ask me a few questions about someone Charlie knew, some sort of police thing." I reasoned, having rehearsed and cited that answer almost a hundred times. Rosalie's eyes darted to the side, she didn't believe me. Though thankfully everyone else seemed to.

"Oh that's boring." Emmet dismissed with no more than a shrug of the shoulders.

"You're right, Bella pretend to be something interesting." Alice instructed, oh so I wasn't interesting enough; being more immortal than her? I was half tempted to tell her but it might not be a good idea with agents of Death skulking about.

"Oh tell you what I'll pretend to be a teenage girl who's met a vampire coven." I smirked,

"Trust me one of those isn't that interesting." Alice retorted, sticking her tongue out slightly, the sultry wink that followed made me shiver; giving me flashbacks to the picture I still found myself looking at.

"I'll have to prove you wrong." I winked and my eyes fell on Jasper who was looking at both me and Alice with an odd look, though he said nothing ultimately.

"Aww look at you two, exchanging quips. I'd say it was cute if it wasn't so boring." Rosalie interrupted though I noticed her eyes also frowned on Jasper. Just for a second.

"Hey at least we have cuteness. Someone needs to around here and now I have another person to be cute with." Alice beamed back at her, Rosalie just short her a dark glare and flicked her long blond hair with evident irritation. Alice simply nodded her head and turned back to me.

"So Bella when's our next shopping trip?" Alice interjected, changing the subject entirely.

"Don't overwhelm her." Jasper spoke and tried to pass it off as a smile, and I noticed ever so slowly Alice's face fell, like she was either embarrassed or ashamed. She looked ready to apologise and suddenly anger was flooding through me, my veins were alight and my urge to kill Jasper had to be suppressed. A very common feeling now.

"How about Saturday?" I offered with a determined look ,putting aside my shopping opinions and just trying to piss off the bastard who was trying to manipulate her. I almost jumped for joy when Alice lit up and Jasper, well he looked like someone had thrown him off a building.

Night

I was half asleep, the day had been long and little by little the entire town had become aware that two supposed FBI agents had been looking for me. Charlie was furious and wanted to lodge a complained, thankfully I talked him out of it; he couldn't complain against agents who I doubted even existed. Though eventually after an uneventful night I had gone to bed,

"What the hell did you do?" This time I nearly screamed as the usual cold voice of Death filled the room, the light switched on and there he was. The pale skinned, sunken eyes and stressed dark hair of Death. I took deep breaths to recover.

"What is it with you and scaring the life out of me."

"Not a problem you can't die. Look I just got a call, Fate wants your file and she also sent two of her idiots to talk to you. Then I get a notification saying I've been called up for Judge duty. Judge Duty!" The last words took me a while to take in, what was wrong with Judge duty.

"What's so bad about that?" I asked when I had calmed myself down enough to process what was going on.

"Judge Duty means for the next three weeks I have to listen to cases in the Fate Criminal Courts, its three weeks of sitting, listening and sentencing. You have to listen to those stupid arguments about every idiot was predestined to commit crimes." I thought he made everyone's file? Death confused me, both the man and the institution.

"Ok what does that have to do with me."

"Fate only ever puts me on Judge Duty when she thinks something's going on." Ahh, so she knew something was going on.

"Ok, how has she found out?" I asked in a voice lowered to a whisper, I wanted to keep it down in case I woke Charlie up.

"Talk as loud as you want, for the next three hours your father is in a virtual coma." Oh great now he was putting people in comas. It's an ideal solution to problems of course!

"Anyway she hasn't found out, you see there is an office on the lower floors of the building, uniquely there are two guards and two phones in this office. One phone connects directly to me, the other to Lady Fate's office. That office is responsible for monitoring Alice Cullen, on Friday her readings changed." Ok, what did that mean? Wait had something caused the influence over her to waver? I was hopeful.

"Today I got the call, they changed again and I was summoned before Fate. Fate was already getting ready for a potential emergency, then she found out I got a copy of the Alice- Jasper dilemma, from there our guards tell us you were the disturbance and then she wanted your file. It's gone missing remember? " Death explained and looked at me with a concerned expression . Ok , this didn't sound good but maybe it could be fixed?

"Ok so what's she going to do?"

"She's going to look for your file, when she can't find it she'll take further action, most likely try and find out exactly what's going on."

"Maybe she'll help sort everything out?" I suggested and Death scoffed,

"I told you not to help, take it from me the only way to help Alice is to take Jasper Cullen into custody and reverse the process,. This is however against our higher laws, meaning inabsence of mate or any actual overpowering strong feeling then it would be impossible to break his control." Death was saying.

"I didn't try to help, I was just trying to.. wait a moment." The way Death said that, it was almost exactly like the way that note was worded, the handwritten note.

"Look Bella somehow Jasper's control over Alice was weakened, so I don't how you got the idea to use your connection romantically..." Wait a moment when did I ever do that? You let her pick your underwear, talked to her about her marriage with you half naked and looked at that picture time and time again nasty voice inside my head answered the question.

"I'm not a moral man, and trust me I want Jasper Cullen to get a harsh punishment but..."

"How do you know I did that?" I asked cutting him off there, something was wrong here.

"What do you mean? I'm Death." He answered but I ignored him, there was something else.

"You gave me that file with the Jasper- Alice dilemma in a place I would read it, you gave the files without much trouble and inside was a note and a picture. Now I don't know about the note but that picture is not something for a courtroom." He had set this up! He gets called up for Judge duty and he wants to see Jasper punished.

"I haven't done anything." He stated quickly, too quickly.

"Yes you did, you wrote the note, you gave me that picture. Death!" he looked slightly awkward.

"You care." I stated with a chuckle, he actually cared. I thought he was just trying to get all this out of the way, but he was the one pulling the strings. I was amazed, blown away and taunting him with a smile on my face.

"Ugh, fine ok! I care, Alice Cullen has been kept imprisoned for years, Jasper Cullen has committed gross offences and ok maybe I wanted to see him fall," Death sighed losing his sarcastic tone for just a moment.

"So you did organise all this." I had just managed to outsmart Death himself, I had never been so happy.

"A little bit, look when you become immortal I realised that because of who you were and the fact you were so close to Alice, there was a chance someone could demand your file at the next hearing so..."

"So you handed me the file and set me on this course to save Alice, Death! I don't believe, you care about something." I was shocked, seriously I had always seen Death as a unfeeling boss who no one liked.

"It was a way to solve the dilemma, everyone would have been so happy no legal conclusion was reached you would have been ignored, also it would have found you an immortal life partner." He confessed looking caught out.

"Immortal life partner?" I questioned, what did he mean by that.

"You're kidding me! Bella how many times have you been drawn to that picture over the last few days?" He asked with a smile, he was back on top of the conversation now as was his sarcastic tone. Well at least he was back to normal.

"A few."

"You also want Jasper's balls in a vice because he hurt Alice?" Death asked and I nodded in vicious confirmation. I wanted him to suffer a lot.

"And your going out with Alice at every opportunity, despite she's doings the thing you hate. Shopping to you Bella is what peace was to Nazi Germany." Well that was a tasteless metaphor.

"Bella I hate to break this to you, you are in love with Alice Cullen." Death spoke the last few words so loud I was glad Charlie was in a coma.

"I'm.." I tried to deny it, I trailed off. Death just chuckled and rose to his feet.

"Bella, you were the one who started trying to free Alice, you're the one who's been pursuing this and you're the one who can finally end this thing and have Jasper Cullen brought before me in chains. You, I may have started you on the path, but you leapt forward and now; we both know why." Death spoke slowly, softly and he was enjoying every second if it Then he stood to his feet.

"Fate won't act for a few days, you might get another visit from her agents. We don't have long so you need to act quickly, get Alice away from Jasper for good, bring that bastard down." Death half ordered and with that he was gone. Leaving me speechless.