Just when they arrived at the bedroom Isabella suddenly stood still, confusing Marcus, who did not understand what had made the child stop. When the king wanted to ask what was wrong the girl let out a small squeal before she turned around with an excited look on her face.

"They are here!"

Chapter 10 - Child

With these words Isabella started skipping away from her bedroom, leaving a stunned Marcus behind. When the girl was at the corner and she noticed no one was following her she looked over her shoulder.

"Are you coming?" she asked as she cocked her head to the side.

Marcus quickly shook his head, as if to shake away his thoughts before he smiled. The king sped over to Isabella at vampire speed, appearing at her side in less than a second, though it did not faze the girl at all.

It was one of those things that they, again, did not quite understand about the child; usually humans at least jumped a bit, or their heart beat would accelerate when they witnessed the quick movement of the vampires. Isabella appeared to be an exception to that rule, as well as to many others, which was something they had found out in the months that the girl had lived in Volterra.

The three kings and their mates had had quite some discussions about Isabella at night when she was asleep in her bedroom; they had tried to figure out why her behaviour was so different from others. The kings had re-read all books they owned on human behaviour, child development while the queens had even read their unique copies of books about the different supernatural races.

It had taken them weeks, but they still did not have any idea why Isabella behaved like she did; there were, not surprisingly, no books on happy little children who seemed to know things they could have never known all while at the same time defeating on of the most gifted person. Neither was there any information on children who were able to unite an entire guard within weeks or humans who could not be confounded by anything related to the supernatural. The only thing they had concluded was that Isabella must be some kind of clairvoyant, and if not she at least had some great instincts, but they were not able to explain the other happenings.

The Volturi had briefly considered Isabella to be a human-vampire hybrid, but they dismissed this idea when they noted the girl grew at normal human rate and her heartbeat and temperature were what would be considered normal for a human. They had also noticed during one of the many games of tag with Felix that the girl did not nearly run fast enough to be a hybrid, which only confirmed that this was not an option.

Now the kings and queens still came up blank; they had no idea what made this special child act so differently or what it was in her that attracted others towards her. They had found out that other than her sometimes unusual behaviour Isabella behaved like any other child her age would. In the end they had come the conclusion that she must be an extraordinarily gifted human who they would maybe never be able to fully understand.

Isabella took Marcus's hand as they walked through the hallways together. The girl was skipping forward happily, not even pausing to admire the paintings on the walls and the statues like she usually did. As they approached the throne room the king stopped and turned towards Isabella. "Are you still sure this is the wisest thing to do?"

The girl chuckled and sighed in exasperation. "Yes, I'm sure. I know it will be all right.

Marcus nodded once before they walked the last few feet towards the throne room. At Isabella's indication a guard hesitantly opened the door and the king and the girl entered the room.

Right in front of the three thrones was a group of seven vampires, who all turned around when they heard the doors open. Shocked expressions quickly appeared on their faces when they saw Marcus and a little girl walking into the throne room; this was not at all what they had expected to find when they had decided to visit Volterra.

A beautiful vampire with long, wavy caramel-coloured hair gasped and grabbed her mate's arm when she noticed the precious girl next to one of the most powerful leaders in their world. What on earth had transpired for this tiny human to end up here, in the castle of the Volturi?

"What on earth?" the tall blond woman uttered silently with wide eyes as she too clung to her husband. Her mate was stunned to silence, which was not something that happened very often. The bronze-haired vampire next to them seemed to be concentrating very hard on something; Isabella secretly thought that he looked quite funny like that, with his face all scrunched up. Lastly the small pixie-like woman looked confused and elated at the same time while the man at her side was watching the child with a scrutinizing gaze.

"Hi!" the little girl said as she skipped forward. "I'm Isabella!"

Isabella's words broke the vampire family out of their stupor and the women quickly plastered a smile on their faces, while their leader stepped forward. "It's nice to meet you, Isabella. I'm Carlisle and this-"

"- is Esme." Isabella finished. "And Rosalie, Emmett, Edward, Jasper and Alice. I'm so glad you're finally here! You kept me waiting long enough."

Alice's eyes widened and she squeezed Jasper's arm.

"How did this happen?" she whispered as she shook her head. "Hoe could I not have seen this?"

Just when everyone turned towards the vampire couple a phone rang. Jasper cursed as he took his phone out of his pocket, looking quite embarrassed and angry.

"That little fucker, I swear..." He trailed off when he saw the pointed look on Esme's face. The vampire glanced at the girl who was watching the events unfold with an innocent look on her face, though her emotions betrayed that she was very amused.

Jasper sighed and went to click away the caller when Isabella shot forward. "No, you should answer that!"

Confused the tall vampire stopped, while his phone continued to ring. He just decided that he was going to ignore the girl's advice when Marcus interrupted. "Please take the call; I gather this will be important to you."

Though Jasper was thoroughly confused he decided it was better to follow the king's advice and he begrudgingly answered the phone. "What do you want?"

"Well, aren't that the most heartfelt words of welcome I've ever received! Good afternoon to you too! How're you doing brother of mine?" the voice on the other side of the line said with a Southern drawl.

"Get to the point you-" Jasper shut his mouth when he saw Esme's look. "-never mind. Why did you call? You knew I would not be able to get in touch with you for the next couple of days."

"Always so happy to hear from me, I wouldn't have expected any less." the voice said. "Since you asked so nicely I'll tell you the reason of my call; you have to know you should listen to the girl, she's important. Now that we're speaking about her, how about you give this phone to the little one there, I'm sure she is bouncing and waiting for you to finally shut up and hand her the damn phone."

Everyone turned around and sure enough Isabella was jumping up and down, barely containing her excitement. Jasper hesitated for a moment, still confused, but he was used to his brother's antics and he held the phone out to the girl. Isabella looked at it for a second before she carefully took it, held it to her ear and squealed. "Petey! You finally called!"

Peter groaned and chuckled before he replied. "What did I say about squealing into my ear? I'm nearly deaf because of your happy sounds Bells, you should watch out!"

A slightly guilty expression appeared on Isabella's face. "I'm sorry, won't happen again!"

"It's alright, darling, I get you're happy; who wouldn't be when they get a call from me?"

Jasper groaned.

"Anyway, happy birthday! I'm sorry I couldn't come to your party."

"It's quite alright, I'm having a good time and now I still have guests! We were just heading to the gardens to play tag when they arrived, maybe they want to come too now they are here?"

"I'm sure they would love that. Now tell me, any new hints to our great friend who got us into all of this trouble?" Peter asked.

"Nope," Isabella answered. "But it's better now the Cullen family is here. You were right about me being safer here, but I know it won't be too long until..."

"I know Bells, and I will come to you as soon as I'm needed, but Char and I are not on particularly good terms with the vamp royalties. We had a little quarrel with the twins some decades ago and we do not wish to repeat that encounter, so we will wait for a little while longer."

"But they're not even here right now," the girl mumbled before she sighed. "It's all right though, I get it. Now I'm going to play in the garden with my new friends, see you later!"

"Bye bye, Bells!" Peter said before Isabella ended the call and handed the phone back to Jasper.

"You know Peter Whitlock?" Aro asked as he walked over to the little girl. "How?"

Isabella looked at the king before she smiled wistfully. "He sent me here after he helped me when someone thought I would be a nice afternoon snack. Or pet." she said. "But who wants to go and play some games? And I want to try out my new bike too!"

-oOo-

"You're it, Emmett!" Isabella shouted as she ran away from the burly vampire as quick as she could. Emmett grinned as he sprinted after the girl and into the big garden, pretending it took him quite some effort to do so. When he caught up with Isabella he snatched her from the ground and he spun her around as she squealed.

"Gotcha!" Emmett said grinning and placed the little girl on the grass, quickly steadying her as she wobbled and almost fell over. When Isabella regained her balance she slowly turned towards the grinning vampire as she sent him an - almost evil-looking - smirk that Marcus could have sworn she learnt from Jane, before the girl sprinted away again. "Hey!" Emmett shouted as he followed Isabella. "Not fair!"

The kings, their mates and the rest of the Cullen family were watching with amusement as the game of tag went on and on, laughing as it turned into a tickle fight not long after.

When they had finished the introductions the Cullens had reluctantly followed Isabella and the Volturi royal family outside to the garden after the girl had asked them to come and play with her. As Emmett had quickly agreed to a game of tag the others had sat down on the benches and a heated discussion had started, in which mostly Rosalie and Edward were whispering furiously. Carlisle tried to calm the both of them down, trying to avoid attracting the attention of the kings and queens, who were sitting on a wooden bench on the opposite side of the courtyard.

"A child!? Are they crazy!?" Rosalie hissed as she watched her husband running around with Isabella. "She should not be here, hell she should not even know vampires exist! By taking her in they immediately took away all her chances at a normal human life!"

Carlisle glanced over at the other side of the grass field where the three kings and their mates were seated. It had been decades since he had last seen them and he had been waiting for a chance to catch up with them for a while now, but he had never quite found the right time to do so. The Cullens had not actually planned this visit, it had been a split second decision; their original plan had been to just travel around in Europe for a bit before they would return to the United States where they would settle down in a new town. But when they had arrived in the Netherlands, where they had travelled to from England, Alice had panicked.

The pixie occasionally looked into the future of the Volturi to see how they were doing and what they were up to. In her opinion it would be good to know if the power had gotten into their heads again and they were planning a war, or if they needed help from one of the Cullens. Carlisle had not agreed with her methods, as he knew his friends well enough to know they would never do such a thing again. Jasper also was not too keen on his wife keeping an eye on the Volturi's future, but it gave her a sense of security so he went with it. Alice was his main source of happiness and he just accepted the parts of her character that came with it.

Alice had been searching for the future of the Volturi family when she came upon a blank spot; she could still see Sulpicia's decision on what to wear that day and Aro's decision to send a few guards to the safe house to check up on Jane, Alec and his newly found mate who was currently a newborn in training. But after that the future turned up blank, she could not see anything that was happening and it worried her immensely, as nothing like that had happened before. The Cullens had talked about it and they had quickly come to the conclusion that they would have to visit Volterra and see for themselves what was transpiring.

And here they were, at the Volturi castle, watching a little five-year old girl called Isabella interacting with every single vampire as if they were all her best friends. The strange thing was that everyone reacted very well to her, even the guards Carlisle had seen behaving recklessly and violently when he lived with the Volturi seemed to be content and happy; it was quite a sight.

"I know she is only a child, Rosalie," Carlisle said softly. "I too wish she did not have to be familiar with the supernatural world, especially at this age. But from what they told us and what we heard Peter say she is significant and, even more important: she is in danger. Wouldn't you do everything to keep a child safe?"

"I get that, Carlisle, I really do," Rosalie answered as she ran a hand through her hair. "But how on earth did this girl get caught up in this supernatural mess? I also don't get why they did not search for a different solution instead of immediately deciding to take Isabella in and including her in the secret by doing so."

Her words left Carlisle thinking and he turned back to face the small grass field. He watched as Emmett and Isabella came walking closer, they seemed to have quit their game.

"That was fun Bella!" Emmett grinned as he carefully gave the girl a high five. The vampire sat down on the wooden bench next to his mate and pretended to wipe sweat of his forehead

"I know right!" Isabella said happily. "And I totally won."

"Sure thing, small stuff. You were so fast! Are you even human?" Emmett asked jokingly. Isabella looked at him with an offended expression on her face.

"No, I'm not!"

A/N: Bwahahaha I'm evil, I know ;P No, I'm just kidding; I'm actually generally a very nice person. Most of the time. Anyway, thank you for reading my story, I really appreciate it! I'll upload again some time next week, I'll write as soon as I can. Please make sure to tell me what you think of this new chapter :)

- Laura