8.

A/N: Not mine; no copyright infringement intended.

Thanks to my superbetas Kitzni-Killer (And the day I spell that right, I will rejoice much) and Felicity Deadwood. I strongly encourage you to go check out their stuff. I promise you, you won't be disappointed!

~Edward~

Bella's new home was shockingly easy to enter. Does the Chief of Police really leave a spare key to the front door right there under the eave? For Bella's sake, I hoped he was a light sleeper and possessed a soft trigger finger. Didn't he know how evil the world was? Maybe he thought because he had firearms and a Taser in the house that knowledge would warn off the malcontents, but there are things in the world much worse than common burglars.

Vampires, for example.

Vampires that can slip in and out completely undetected.

Then again, there aren't any human security systems that can keep vampires out. Not a comforting thought right about now.

I wandered silently around the lower level of the house for a bit, familiarizing myself with every nook and cranny, the exact placement of every piece of furniture, the scents, the shadows, the sounds. The ticking of the mantle clock, the hum of the refrigerator, the green glow of the microwave clock; all were the sights and sounds of a quiet house at night.

My family thought I was hunting. And, of course, I did hunt before I came here. Chief Swan was sleeping now and his presence in the house was the only assurance I had that Emmett wouldn't show up and find me here. Eventually, I was going to have to come clean regarding my feelings for his sister, but I would rather come clean with Bella first. Which I would do, of course… eventually.

I pulled open the refrigerator door. There didn't seem to be a lot of food in there. Didn't Bella need more food than what I saw? There were a lot of Styrofoam containers. It looked like Chief Swan got a lot of meals to go. Emmett said Bella was a pretty good cook, so maybe she could improve on her uncle's diet a bit.

I scanned the living room. There was a locked gun cabinet in the corner. It looked like Chief Swan was quite the hunter. I saw his pistol holster hanging by the front door. I certainly hoped he had another gun upstairs in his bedroom with him. He'd never have enough time to get downstairs and get to this one, should some sort of renegade take over the house in the middle of the night.

My thought process was clearly deteriorating. I spent entirely too much time lately obsessing over all the horrible things that could happen to humans, things I never really gave too much thought to before. Right at that moment, Bella and Chief Swan had the best security they could in the form of a vampire that had taken human lives before and would not hesitate to do so again if Bella were in danger.

And I worked for free.

I smirked as I caught sight of Jasper's handiwork on the mantle. That was a pretty convincing picture of Emmett in an Army dress uniform. Chief Swan was obviously proud of his nephew as the picture was displayed right between two truly horrid school pictures of Bella and Emmett that clearly looked like they were from elementary school. Was Bella vain enough to make them disappear after she settled in? Somehow, I suspected not.

When I had truly covered every inch of the first floor, I finally gave in to my real reason for being here and started upstairs in search of where Bella slept. I heard her clearly up the stairs and to the left, but before I indulged myself, I poked around Chief Swan's bedroom. He was snoring peacefully, sprawled out across the bed like a man that hasn't had to share it in a while.

If you're keeping track, I did locate a second gun in the drawer of the nightstand next to the bed and another one on the top shelf of the closet.

I poked in the hall closets, noted a drop down door for an attic in the ceiling that I would explore at a later date, the bathroom and then finally, the second bedroom.

The quiet, steady metronome of Bella's heartbeat brought me forward. The door creaked quietly as I opened it just enough to peer in at first. Bella was sleeping on a double bed in the middle of the room, tangled up in the sheets. Her heart beat softly in my head, soothing me just as much as it aroused the monster that I kept hidden deep inside.

The bedroom window was wide open, which made the room comfortable, though I still found it odd that she had the window opened like that in a strange place. I would have to ask her about it…eventually.

I knelt down quietly in front of her and studied her face. It was puffy and red, like she had recently cried herself to sleep. So she did finally break. I was curious how long she could maintain the strength she had shown so far. It looked like she was able to hold it exactly until she was truly alone and finally let herself breakdown. I was both happy and sad to see this. I was happy that she finally had her time of catharsis, but sad that there wasn't anyone there to comfort her. Even if it was her brother that comforted her and not me I would have preferred that someone be with her.

How alone she must have felt. What was it like to have lost a mother, have no father to speak of, and be moved all the way to the other side of the country and placed in the care of a monster, live through what she had, only to be uprooted and brought to another corner of the country? Of course she had Emmett, but not in the way she used to. He wasn't constantly with her in Chief Swan's house. Was she close to her uncle? Were things comfortable on her first night or awkward? Did she want to be with us? Did she miss us? Did she miss me as I missed her? Was she aching like I was?

We were to start her security rotation that night, beginning with Alice, which was why I dared to come here. She would have seen it anyway. With the exception of Emmett, who would be accompanied by Rosalie, we were each going to take a shift watching the house. I, of course, planned to take my evening turns indoors. I suspected Alice did, too. After all, she was very excited about the girl that would soon become her best friend.

During the day once school started, Alice, Jasper and I would be with her there. We would take the weekends according to Bella's plans. Emmett assumed she'd spend a lot of her time out at the house with us. Maybe it was one of those weekends that I would teach her to dance. For now, we were doing longer rotations. Alice would still be watching in the morning and would be relieved in the afternoon.

Silently, I pushed away from the bed and moved around the sparsely furnished room. There was a bed, a dresser and a rocking chair. That was it. She would need more, of course; a desk to work on, a modem line for a computer, book shelves, art for her walls, a stereo with CDs. All I saw now was her iPod on the nightstand next to the bed. It was nice that her brother thought to grab it out of the house, but he clearly didn't take the time to find the charger, or take a computer for her to download music from.

I decided I would take that on, as well as bring her any books she might want from the library at the house. Carlisle was an avid book collector, but because of his perfect vampiric memory, he rarely read a book more than once. However, he needed to be surrounded by them, as it seemed she did too. He'd like Bella to have whatever she wanted. I smiled as I thought of how they could bond over their love of literature. It was important to me that she have things in common with each of us; that she fit in. Quite frankly, I really didn't see how she couldn't.

Bella had asked Emmett to get her desk out of storage. Perhaps he'd go get that for her sooner rather than later. I recognized his scent in the small room, so he had already checked out the room she would sleep in. Maybe he left through the open window? I supposed that could be possible if Chief Swan came home while Emmett was still inside the house. I was uneasy with the window open like that since there were now, and would be more soon, many vampire scents around the house. Surely it would attract any nomads passing through.

But once again, a closed and locked window wouldn't stop a vampire from getting in…or any other supernatural creature that might live in the area, but that was a totally different conversation we had to have. Or maybe not. It didn't seem like it was an issue anymore as we didn't smell anyone other than ourselves in the area.

Bella shifted position and my attention was drawn back to her. I moved silently to the rocking chair in the corner. I would leave the window open for now just in case I needed to leave quickly. She might be startled to wake up and find one of us in her room. She settled down again and I sat silently in the rocking chair facing her bed, ready to start my evening vigil.

~Bella~

I was a little chilly when I woke up on my first morning in Forks. I fell asleep with the window opened last night. At first, I merely opened it to air out the room after I sobbed my eyes out. The cool air felt restorative then. I was going to close it, but I remembered how Emmett jumped into the window in New Hampshire when I was in trouble and though I felt confident that Uncle Charlie posed no threat to me, I thought… 'just in case' and left it open.

When I sat up in bed, I had a very eerie feeling that I wasn't alone. I got the distinct impression that someone else was in the bedroom with me, but I didn't see anyone and chalked it up to paranoia. I probably just wasn't used to the shadows that were cast by the trees outside yet. New place, new life; that'd freak out anyone, right?

Uncle Charlie said he'd go to the bank this morning and get money from our trust account so I could go shopping for whatever I needed for school. He registered me yesterday afternoon and got a supply list from the office. I had already read everything on the English literature list. There wasn't going to be much of a work challenge there. Maybe when Emmett went to get my desk out of storage, I could see if he'd grab my folder of essays from my boxes. I'm sure I could reuse them. That was probably considered cheating, but Emmett wouldn't care.

Charlie was going to take the morning shift at work today so he could leave early and take me up to the mall in Port Angeles; then we'd go looking for a car for me. That was a strange idea; I'd never had a car of my own. I didn't know what happened to the one Emmett had in New Hampshire, but he'd driven us everywhere we had needed to go.

Uncle Charlie was really great last night. He didn't hover over me. He explained some things about the house and where things were in town. We decided since I could cook and he could only order out, that I'd take over the responsibility of preparing dinner. I was alright with that. It made me feel useful. And I needed things to do, especially since I knew nobody here and other than the cell phone Emmett had given me, I had no contact with the outside world. Charlie didn't have a computer and so was baffled by my asking about a modem connection. I guess it didn't matter anyway, since I didn't have a computer either.

I had given Charlie a shopping list for the supermarket in town and he promised to go on his way home. With no other real direction to my day, I grabbed the toiletries I had and headed for the shower. That took up all of half an hour from the moment I got out of bed to the moment my hair was completely dried.

I wandered around the house a bit, poking in cabinets, looking at the movie collection and flipping through the channels on television. I settled on a documentary about raising sunken ships.

No matter what I did though, I couldn't shake the impression that I was being watched. I'm sure it was because Emmett said that I'd never truly be alone and so that was stuck in the back of my mind, but where were they? Who was out there now and why wouldn't they come in? It couldn't have been Emmett or he would have come in.

I felt ridiculous when I realized I was hoping it was Edward and if it was Edward, I was disappointed he wasn't coming inside.

I thought about him all the time. He was beautiful, inside and out. He seemed so attentive and curious. I knew he could never be interested in me in the way I was in him, but it didn't stop the girlish fantasies. I never had a boyfriend before and I doubted Edward was interested in stepping into that role, but still…

I wondered what the Cullens would be like in school. Edward, Alice and Jasper were all going to enroll in the local high school. It did make me feel better to know they would be there and I really wouldn't be alone. Would it seem weird to the other kids that I knew them already? Did I have to pretend I didn't? What kind of story were they going to give to the other kids? How were they going to explain their lack of parents? They all dressed liked they stepped off of a runway, so how were they going to explain that? I was sure the kids here were just as normal as the kids in New Hampshire and Phoenix, but I doubted they dressed in designer clothes. Weren't they worried about standing out?

It was strange to think about vampires lurking in America's high schools. But then I supposed there wasn't too much else for them to do. I wondered if Buffy the Vampire Slayer was still on TV. I'd never watched it before, but now it could almost be considered research. Emmett had yet to show me what he meant by not being allowed to show himself in the sunlight. That was pretty suspicious. And so what did they do about school on nice days then? Not show up? How did they explain that?

I was surprised when Charlie's police cruiser pulled into the driveway. My thoughts had kept me occupied all morning. I saw he had an armload of grocery bags and it looked like there was more in the trunk, so I pulled on my shoes and ran out to help him.

"Hey! How was your morning?" He greeted me cheerfully. I loved Uncle Charlie's smile. The smile reached his eyes and when he smiled, he looked so much like my mother.

"All right. I just sort of lounged around and watched TV."

"That's good. You deserve a lazy day. I think I got out enough money for what you need today. One of the guys at the station was telling me about the laptop computer they got last year. Kind of sounded like something you'd like for school, maybe you could email your friends back in Phoenix or something, talk to Emmett more. The guy told me how much he spent, so I got enough to buy one of them too if you want."

"Wow. Well, thanks, Uncle Charlie."

"I know coming here is kind of a culture shock, Bells, so I just want to make it more comfortable for you. Forks is a small town, but it's not quite the end of the world."

"Kind of feels like it," I muttered.

"That's what I like about it."

I blushed when I realized he'd heard me, but he didn't seem offended. This small town suited him. He was real outdoorsy. He liked hunting and fishing. I could see how my mother wasn't that fond of it though. She liked the sun and warmth. They grew up here; my mom, Charlie and Lou. I involuntarily shuddered at the memory of Lou. Was he always horrible? I didn't really remember him being so horrible when our mom was alive.

I went back out to the car for another load of groceries and felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Yes, I was being watched. I was definitely being watched.

But by whom?

They wouldn't come out when Charlie was here, I supposed. How could they explain who they were? I hoped in a few weeks they would. I wanted to see them again. I wanted to see Emmett and I found myself most especially wanting to see Edward. I wanted to see where they lived. Esme said I could go to the house whenever I wanted, but at the moment, I didn't even know where it was.

I missed Esme. I missed how motherly she was and I found myself really needing my mother. The cell phone in my pocket suddenly felt pretty heavy. I longed to call them and tell them to come and get me, but I wouldn't be able to explain where I was going, or who they were, or how I met them. I wasn't supposed to know anyone here yet.

Despite the fact that somewhere in the woods was a silent companion for me, despite Charlie's whistling in the kitchen while he was putting away the groceries, I felt very much alone.

~Alice~

"This is boring," I announced from my perch in the tree.

"What is, my dear?" Jasper replied from where he was leaning against the tree below me.

"Why can't I just go in and talk to her?" I complained. "How come Edward gets all the time to get to know her and I have to wait? She's going to be important to me too, you know."

"So you've said, darling," he dutifully answered.

"Then I should get to go in and talk to her! We could both go. Or you could stay out here, if you want."

"And how are you going to explain your presence to her uncle?"

"I'll think of something," I shrugged belligerently, though in truth, there really wasn't anything I could come up with. "She knows we're out here!" I said. "What if she's offended that we're out here and not coming in? Don't you think that it's good manners to go up to the door and say 'hi?'"

He looked up at me with sympathy. He knew how much I ached for a friend, a genuine friend and now I was going to have one in Bella. An actual girlfriend. Can you blame me for being excited? I've never had an actual girlfriend before that I could remember. Excuse me for wanting to get the show on the road!

Suddenly, the conversation inside caught my attention.

"Shopping!" I hissed and ignored Jasper's chuckling below. "He's going to take her shopping? There's no possible way the two of them are going to get this right. I have to go in there, Jazz! I have to. It's for the greater good."

"You know how I hate to deny you anything, my love, but I'm afraid I have to insist you not go in there."

I dropped down out of the tree in a huff, crossed my arms over my chest and pouted.

"Patience," he drawled. "Patience and you shall be rewarded."

"That's crap."

He chuckled and wrapped his arms around me from behind. He dropped his chin to my shoulder and we watched the house together.

My warrior. He had so much compassion in him and that bitch Maria forced him to bury it so deeply. It comes out more and more now, but he is still, first and foremost, the warrior. "She's very clumsy, Jazz," I said softly.

"So you've told me a dozen times already."

"I'm just afraid. I'm sure her blood will be shed around us upon occasion and that worries me."

"I will do my best not to disappoint you," he said softly in my ear.

"You couldn't disappoint me, Jasper," I replied, just as quietly.

"I could if I hurt her." He nodded toward the house, as neither of us took our eyes off it. "And I couldn't bear to disappoint you that way."

"She's worth it, Jasper, I promise you that."

"You don't have to convince me." He pressed a kiss to my cheek and held me tighter.

"He is too." I felt him tense a bit and then relax again. He liked Emmett enough but didn't know what to make of him. Emmett was kind of breaking the newborn mold and that's not something Jasper was really prepared for. "He's going to be our strength. He's going to be next to impossible to take down. And he's loyal; loyal to the bone."

"No kidding. We're standing here watching his human sister's house because he's so loyal."

"You would respect that attribute."

"And I do. I'm just worried," he confessed. "Having a human around, knowing everything, is dangerous. We've exposed ourselves and the penalty for that is death, Alice. I can't allow that for you. Is she worth that, Alice?"

"Yes," I said simply. "She completes our family, Jasper. She's the weakest link now and so we have to protect her."

"We can't protect her from the Volturi."

I looked back at him and grinned wryly, then looked back at the house. "Oh, I'm not so sure about that."