A/N: Last time I checked, I was not Stephenie Meyer so I don't own the Twilight characters.
Chapter 10
Meeting over Skype
EPOV
Alice and Jasper had been traveling all over the old continent for two months now, and they weren't due back for another three. Esme had been very specific with her requests, giving them a list of places to go to find the antiques that she wanted to furnish the compound. Every Friday evening, for the past eight weeks, we had been communicating with them via Skype.
Most of the time my chats with Alice had been very short, since my sister wanted to have a word with everyone in the house. We often ended up talking for only five minutes, sometimes even less. But tonight it would be much longer than that… it had to be: so many things had happened since the last time we had spoken. I would also need to be patient and wait my turn. I was sure Alice would want to chat with Bella first. All the family was reunited in the mansion's living room, including Emmett and Rose, who were spending the night with us for a change, to be ready to leave first thing in the morning for our hunting trip.
Carlisle was trying to establish the communication. I was just behind him when Jasper's face appeared on the screen.
"Hey! Carlisle, Edward. What's up?" Jasper asked.
He seemed incredibly relaxed and peaceful, the total opposite of how I felt at the moment. However, in theory, he should have been under much more stress than I was. Esme had instructed them to start their journey in Russia, where she had already made arrangements with some antique dealers over the internet and the phone. They just had to go to the places Esme contacted, evaluate the items wanted, and buy them if they were in pristine condition. Nothing complicated there, except for the fact that the number of such antique dealers they had to visit in the former communist republic alone exceeded fifty. So tonight, Jasper was Skyping us from a hotel room in Moscow.
He didn't let Carlisle say a word before going on, "Did Esme receive the last shipment we sent her? Fifteen items from five distinct places located in three different towns. Man, I thought Customs would give us a hard time with such a huge load of furniture to check before giving their approval. But you know Alice when she decides things are going to be the way she wants them to be. At some point I just stopped asking her how much she had to bribe. I guess it doesn't matter to Esme, right?"
"With all the money she has already spent on the renovations, no, I don't think she minds, Jasper. Give the Customs agents whatever they want," Carlisle replied.
"Are you all right, Edward?" Jasper asked, seeing me right next to Carlisle at that instant, "You look overly concerned…"
Nothing could go unnoticed by Jasper, even over a web cam. Darn it.
"I'm fine, man. Just been through a lot this week, that's all," I answered evasively.
"Get a grip, boy. Bella will need you more than ever during those first weeks of college, you know that," he said.
"Actually, Jasper, Bella is doing quite well so far. She is angry at me about the science courses she has to take, but other than that she is amazing, really," I reassured him.
He was probably afraid of her reactions towards the humans we were in contact with on a daily basis. Yet he was the first one to admit that the way she was behaving was almost beyond normal for a vampire. I was about to tell him that Bella was acting exemplary at Dartmouth, but then Emmett, who was making out with Rosalie on one of the blue velvet couches, suddenly put an end to what he was doing and came closer to the computer.
"Jasper, bro," he boomed, "can't you and Alice speed things up and come back here before Christmas? Hell, Edward and Bella are so absorbed in the whole college shit, that they are not doing anything else but studying their ass off!"
"You need to find a better excuse than that, Emmett," Jasper said, suppressing a laugh. "I really don't think Edward needs to study much, especially since he's already gone through all that stuff before. Last time I checked, physics' laws were still being unchallenged…"
"It's not my fault if Professor Sterling gave us twenty books to read before the end of the semester," Bella remarked, a little offended by Emmett's comment.
"Professor Sterling is still teaching at Dartmouth?" Jasper asked. "God, he must be almost as old as Edward. He used to teach nineteenth century literature back in the sixties. Remember, brother?"
Yes, as a matter of fact, I remembered Professor Sterling perfectly. He was extremely old now, and hopefully his memory wasn't good, otherwise that could become a problem. There was a reason why we waited many decades before returning to a place that we had attended previously: it was to limit the chances that a professor who had been teaching us then was still teaching now. It was one thing to cross path with someone who had known the Cullens as a family among many other families. It was entirely another to meet a person who used to be our teacher and knew a little more than just our surname.
Not that I had been close to that particular literature teacher. For obvious reasons, proximity to any of the faculty members who taught me one subject or another was impossible. I had always kept a low profile, trying to sweep the attention away from me. But try as I might, my face was not easily forgettable. And the essays that I had done in Professor Sterling's class in the sixties had never been returned to me. I was an arrogant scholar at the time, and I wanted to impress and get the highest grades I could. Heck, what was the point in going to college if it was to fail horrendously? To this day, I didn't regret my efforts. However, the fact that one of my former professors was still teaching meant that while I could sit in on his lectures, I couldn't do the assignments: I could only help Bella with hers.
Then again, what were the chances that he would remember me? If I had been absent every other day back then, as Jasper had, the chances would be slim-to-none.
"The question, Jazz, is how you remember Professor Sterling, considering that you missed half of his lectures, too worried about your lack of control and about attacking someone right in the middle of a Jane Eyre quotation," I responded.
Suddenly, I saw Alice in the corner of the screen, coming from an adjacent room of the suite she and Jasper were occupying at the Hilton Leningradskaya. Apparently, she had just realized that Jasper was Skyping. She jumped into his lap and smiled broadly at me.
"Oh! Carlisle, I need to talk to Edward privately, if you don't mind," she said in a high pitched voice.
Well, maybe she had seen something after all. Carlisle made a move to give up his seat to me and said, "I must warn you, Alice, that whatever it is you want to discuss with Edward, will likely be heard by the rest of us, unless Edward has developed the capacity to read your mind over the internet lately."
Ha, ha! Carlisle was definitely in a better mood than me tonight. I hadn't told him that Vickie knew about my gift yet. He was about to learn it at the same time as Alice and everyone else.
"Actually, Carlisle, as long as Edward doesn't mind, I don't have any problem with you listening as well," she replied. And then she addressed me. "Edward, I've seen you and Bella making friends with a girl on campus. Why would you do that?"
What exactly had Alice seen to ask me such a question? It was not as if I had been going up to all the students and introducing myself so that I'd be voted the most popular guy at Dartmouth. Christ, Vickie had acted as if we were old acquaintances from the first moment she saw us that second day on campus. She seemed totally oblivious to the fact that we were different from the other people around her. She could have been blind, for that matter. Maybe it was all part of her strange condition.
"If you are talking about the girl who looks like a Japanese manga, Alice, she came to us, not the other way around." I was amazed that Alice was so attuned to me that it was almost as if she was both in Europe and in New England at the same time.
"Edward, you told her about your gift! What were you thinking?" she demanded, getting straight to the point.
"You did what?" Esme asked, the panic altering her voice. I ignored her reaction and pretended it was just between Alice and me.
"Alice, do you know about the girl's condition?" I asked.
"That she's regressing in age? Yes, Edward, I know about it," she responded.
"Since when?"
"Since I saw her husband explaining it to you this afternoon," she retorted.
"Well, Alice, why are you blaming me for revealing my gift to her? Bella told her, not me," I said.
Instantly, I regretted my response, because Bella didn't deserve to be blamed for this messy situation. All she wanted was to help the human girl.
However, it was too late. Rosalie hissed, "Is that true, Bella? You told the stupid mortal that Edward is a mind reader?"
"Yes, Rosalie, because it was the only way she was going to tell us her secret," Bella stated, trying to justify her actions.
"Who cares about that girl's secret, Bella?" Rosalie growled angrily.
"And who cares about Edward's gift, Rose?" Bella replied with the same infuriated tone.
"Ordinary people don't read minds!" Rosalie almost screamed at the love of my life.
I would have set the sofa where Rose was lying on fire at that moment if Emmett hadn't intervened.
"Calm down, Rosie. You are taking this whole shebang way too seriously. I don't want you to think that you have to go on a crusade against Bella's friend. The last time you thought we'd been exposed, you were ready to kill Bella yourself and…"
Emmett stopped mid-sentence when he saw the expression on my face. Bella was looking at the two of us, frowning.
"Emmett is talking about that time when you almost got killed by Tyler's van, love," I started to explain. "To be honest, all of us thought that you were going to tell everyone at school that I had supernatural powers after the incident. Rosalie was so afraid that our cover was going to be blown up, that she wanted to make you disappear before you had time to spread the rumor."
"I told you I wasn't going to tell anyone!" Bella replied, staring at me with indignation. "Gosh! Up until now I knew I was lucky to be still alive, but I didn't know the extent of that luck," she added sarcastically.
"But thanks to Alice, we decided to just wait and see what was going to happen, and it all ended up well," I concluded.
I didn't want to reminisce about my life in Forks before Bella had entered our lives; I wanted to find out why Alice was so worked up about our friendship with Vickie. But, evidently, Bella wasn't done with Rosalie.
"Rose, if you think that Vickie Villeneuve is about to figure out what we are, you're wrong. She has no clue whatsoever," she stated quietly.
"Alice," Carlisle interrupted, attempting to stop Rosalie from escalating the situation any further, "what did you say about the girl regressing in age?"
"Ask Edward about the details, Carlisle. That's not what bothers me right now," Alice replied harshly.
"Alice!" Jasper interjected at last. "Why are you being so rude to Carlisle? Sorry, guys," he said directly to the web cam, "Alice has been anxious ever since she had her visions this evening."
"Is there more to them then just our conversation with Vickie and her husband?" I asked, beginning to feel anxious myself.
"I will come back to you when you are done enlightening Carlisle about your friend's condition, Edward," Alice answered flatly.
"All right, then," I said, turning to my father, "Vickie will die because she is getting younger every passing day, Carlisle."
"I have never heard of such a disorder, Edward," he responded in his head.
Why didn't he want the others to know about that?
"Oh!" he exclaimed out loud. "Well, now at least I know what the consequences of the mutation are. But it still doesn't explain why her blood is odorless."
"I will try to get a sample of her blood, Carlisle. I'm curious too," I replied.
"If only analyzing her blood could lead you to find a cure, Carlisle," Bella sighed.
"Edward," Alice called out, "how can you be sure Vickie won't start to connect the dots now that she's aware of your gift?"
"Because she doesn't see the dots, Alice. Trust me, everything is going to be all right with regard to our cover-"
She cut me off, "Then why the hell do I keep seeing all of us going to the Volturi, Edward?"
No one talked or moved for seconds after her last sentence. It was like she had dropped a bomb in our lounge: Hiroshima at the Cullen house. And a conundrum for which I had no answer, not a satisfying one anyway.
"Oh, God! Tell me I heard it wrong, Edward!" Rosalie snapped, breaking the deafening silence after a minute.
"Whatever it is that you saw, Alice, you know as well as I do that it's not sealed in concrete. It can change," I tried to reassure her.
"Edward, you'd better do something about it for the sake of your daughter!" she said abruptly. Then the screen went black.
"All of this is my fault!" Bella started to apologize.
"Darling, you did what you did because you care about that young mortal. We all understand your reasons," Esme said gently to comfort her daughter-in-law.
"I'm at a loss here, brother," Emmett admitted to me.
Of course, they had yet to hear about what had transpired on the campus, so I relayed what had occurred earlier that day. I informed them that we had caught Vickie in a deep embrace with our astronomy teacher, who turned out not to be her dad, but her husband, making her the mother of his sons, not their sister. I explained that Vickie was willing to explain why she was married to an older man, but that she wanted to know first why I was investigating her. Bella helped me explain the events, stating that she didn't think Vickie would react badly if she knew about my gift, and she was right: our friend barely reacted when I had admitted I was a telepath. This then led to the revelation that she had a mysterious disease and she knew she was dying from it.
"So, it all started because I thought I was the subject of Vickie's visions. Then we discovered that she had a brother who looked exactly like me, who committed suicide more than twenty-five years ago. Finally, it turned out that Vickie is actually a forty-year old mother who used to be a math teacher and a scientific journalist. The only thing that remains a mystery is the fact that Vickie's blood doesn't have a scent, which is why Carlisle and I want to analyze it. The next time I see her, I'll try to convince her to give me a blood sample, in case we can find a way to help her. For now, if it's okay with you, let's not think about it anymore while we are away on our hunting trip," I concluded.
All of my family agreed with my suggestion, except Rosalie, who grabbed Renesmee in her arms, and took her to bed still outraged. I thought the week had been long. Now I knew the weekend would be even longer.
My chapters have been improved lately thanks to my betas LadyMacKenzie and Just4ALE.