Jacob's POV
"Better… but try again."
Leah spoke into my brain, her thoughts shifting, the volume changing, as she showed me again.
I focussed. Pictured my brain as a theatre, with a huge pantomime on the stage.
"Yesss." Leah's satisfaction leaked into my own thoughts, giving me confidence. "Make 'em big and flashy."
So the thoughts on my stage were loud. Lights lit up big puppets, caricatures of our wolf selves, romping through plywood forests. An orchestra played in the pit, crashing cymbals and squealing violins… with all that action on the stage, no one would notice what was happening in one of the private boxes.
The thoughts in that box were quiet, private. Here, I had My Bella. The place was small, dark. It smelled of dust and the heavy velvet curtains that hid us from prying eyes. The seats were old, creaky, with wrought iron frames and threadbare velvet seats. Curled into my lap, I whispered my fears into Bella's neck. I took strength from the memory of her skin…
"Your stage is fading." Leah warned, but she was happy. "You're getting better, though."
We shared a little bristle of pride.
On the second day in Louisiana, after the thrill of movement had calmed down a little... I'd realised how quiet Leah was. She was always there, of course… but her thoughts were so simple. Not the messy chatter that everyone else had.
I'd asked her about it, and she'd shown me. How she – out of necessity – had taught herself to project the safe thoughts, and hide the secret ones. How she made some thoughts loud, and then we couldn't hear her quiet ones.
I hadn't even realised we could do that!
She pictured her thoughts as layers, almost like a 3D rainbow. The upper layers hiding the ones beneath… but that didn't work for me. It had taken a day to come up with the theatre thing, which was instantly more effective than anything else I'd tried, though Leah had laughed at my flair for the dramatic.
But even with the theatre, it was hard work. Which was good, because I needed something to concentrate on so that I didn't tear my hair out.
Finding Bella was taking WAY longer than I had thought it would. I'd imagined we'd just be running, and chance upon her, or the leech… but it wasn't like that at all. We combed every hopeful area, searching for old or faded scents, checking houses under the cover of night.
And the terrain itself wasn't easy. There were little pockets of land tucked between swamps and lakes, and we had to check each one of them, which meant long runs around obstacles, and long runs back.
And we still had to sleep, and eat.
I thanked Sam every day for partnering me with Leah. We'd been looking for a week, and had barely covered any ground, but it would have been even less with any other member of the pack. She was fast, and smart, figuring out run paths that would cover more ground in less time.
I got the feeling Sam had put me with Leah as some sort of punishment, but she was actually really cool. She had a kind of fierce loyalty, and she was extremely thorough. She was kinda funny, too, which you didn't see much back at La Push.
It was being away from Sam that loosened her up. The hive-mind thing had weakened with the long distance, and though we could still speak to the rest of the pack if we concentrated, they weren't in our heads anymore.
It was like knowing someone was home, being able to hear them shuffling round the house, but not being able to hear what they were saying unless they shouted… and it was a relief, for both me and Leah.
Sam was pissed about Charlie. Obviously. Cool thing was, he heard it from Dad, who was weirdly happy about the whole thing. He'd been keeping these secrets from Charlie for decades… must have been hard.
But Sam was seething. His Alpha crap didn't work this far away… or maybe it just didn't work on me anymore. I didn't know, and I didn't particularly care anymore. But he knew something had changed. They all knew something had changed. Our dynamic was off, and Sam was struggling to keep it together.
I'd feel bad about it later. When I had Bella back.
"Hey, guys?" That was Seth. I immediately felt Leah's rush of affection, and paid attention to how she structured her thoughts. She was so good at it, she didn't even think about it anymore. Just let Seth know she loved him, then projected pure professional interest. But I knew where to look, and I could see how she was assessing him, making sure he was OK.
He was surrounded by the leeches, after all.
I tried to follow her lead. We'd stopped running, so I sat panting, and organised my thoughts.
The stage held what they'd expect. Frustration, excitement, hope that whatever Seth was contacting for would help us find Bella.
But in the box, I was holding back despair, the fear we wouldn't succeed. I held back my weird resistance to Sam's authority, and how grateful I was to have Leah at my side.
Leah. I could feel her in my thoughts. Not quite in my box, but in the audience, in the buffer zone… she sent me a little pulse of approval, then shifted her attention to her brother.
I could hear the rest of the pack, they all kind of blipped into earshot when we started listening to Seth. Everyone was accounted for, which was pretty rare.
I could see Alice through Seth's eyes. Looking all tiny and strange, with even more nervous energy than normal.
"Can they see?" She asked Seth, and the picture bobbed as he nodded.
She stared straight into his eyes. "The Volturi are coming. Something's happened, and they're coming. Here." She took a step forward. "This is very, very bad. I can't see everything, there are… gaps. So I think you're going to be here too. And Edward will be here… but I can't see Bella."
My heart throbbed, a ripple of red washed across the stage, and I could feel the pack cringe away from it.
"That might not mean… anything." Alice gasped. "The gaps you cause in my vision…" She held up her hands in a futile gesture.
I struggled to contain my sudden surge of helpless anger. I reasoned that it didn't matter that Bella wasn't in the vision… she'd just be somewhere else, somewhere safe, somewhere away from a hoard of vamps.
"I'll let you know if I see anything more, or if I can pinpoint some kind of date…" Then she bolted. Poor Alice. It was so much easier to pity her when I didn't have her stink in my nostrils, and with Seth's bleeding heart leaking all over us, making us feel sorry for her.
I felt Leah again, kinda… nudging me. It was a weird sensation.
I reached out to her… tasted… doubt. Did Leah think Alice was lying? I didn't think so… I put that out, and she shushed me. How did she even do that? She kind of pulsed towards Sam, urging me to pay attention to him.
It was easier to filter his thoughts out from everyone else when we were so far apart. The other voices just dropped away, and I listened to him, making sure that confusion and anger were playing out on stage.
He was scared, and confused, and tired. He was trying to project calm assurance, but I was so far ahead of him in that game, I could easily see through to his insecurity.
He was wondering if the Cullens had any allies we could recruit, more vegetarians…
"No." I forced myself into his train of thought, winced at the hatred that pushed against me. He was sick of me, sick of my insolence… but under that, he was afraid of me.
Oh, Sam… I softened my thoughts, mentally rolling over to show him my belly. "We can't risk other Quileute turning when you're not there to guide them."
Secretly, I thought Embry could probably do a pretty good job… but it would be hard, and unfair… and patrol would suffer.
But Sam's mind relaxed a bit, he got a bit of swagger from my obeisance - which was the aim - and I felt Leah nudge me again, almost chuckling. She'd love this little bit of manipulation.
"We wait a week. If Alice can't give us a tighter timeframe by then, we head back, and find Bella once this shit's resolved."
I didn't have time to gather myself, another pulse of red anger had the pack cringing…
"We can't have vamps running 'round Forks, Jake." That was Embry… "We have to protect them…"
I didn't throw anything back at them… what could I say? They were right. But it didn't stop me from fuming at thought. Just stop looking for Bella?
Evidently, my theatre was collapsing, I couldn't keep my stupid ramblings to myself. "Jake, man, if Edward's there, and you're there, Bella will be there. And she won't be a bloodsucker, right? If Alice can't see her?" That was Quil… "Maybe this is how we'll find her! That shithead will bring her back to Forks himself!"
No one had much faith in that statement, not even Quil himself… but I appreciated the effort. I reined myself back in, throwing big thoughts up onto my stage and huddling up in the box like a wounded dog.
"Keep running… I'll… I'll have to think about this." Sam sounded weary, and wary. "If anyone has any bright ideas, throw 'em at me. We're sleeping rough tonight, so I'll be here."
And everyone faded away, a defeated kind of anxiety pulsing in their wake.
"You did so well." Leah beamed pride at me. "WAY better than I thought you would."
If there was a way to grunt in thought, I managed it. I couldn't take it anymore. I slumped to the ground. I knew I needed to get up and keep looking…
"Aw Jake." The throb of tenderness that Leah pulsed at me was almost shocking. I'd never felt that kind of affection from her for anyone but Seth. She chuckled again, her wolf form grunting in that husky huff we had. "What can I say, you're growing on me, Little Alpha."
I bristled at that, and felt her sniff in return.
"Lets finish this run, then go eat some real food, and sleep in real beds. You're burning out, Jake."
I forced myself to my feet, forced myself to remember the smell of Bella's skin, the look in her eyes when she first woke up in the morning… forced myself to remember why I was doing this. Leah was right… I was burning out. I wasn't a leech, I couldn't go on indefinitely without food or sleep…
Guilt tore at my guts, but I knew I had to rest… just for tonight.
… …
"Unf…" Leah grunted through her mouthful of burger. "This is so good. We should do this more often." She tore another bite from her meal, grinning happily and raising her eyes to the sky.
"Mmmm-hmmm." I mumbled back, still morose, but feeling so much better after getting some real food in my system.
We were sitting at a red-painted picnic table, on the porch of one of those old southern stores, in some tiny town in the middle of nowhere.
It was kinda weird, being around people, interacting with them… and it was heart-wrenching to be just sitting there, watching the sun set over the top of the buildings, and knowing I wouldn't be out looking for Bella again 'til the next morning. It felt wrong… like I was cheating her…
I wondered what she was doing right at that moment… was she listening to our radio station? Had she heard the song I'd dedicated to her that afternoon? Had she heard any of them? Was she OK? Was she hurt? Scared? Angry?
"Another round?" Leah looked about a hundred times happier. I just nodded, earning myself one of her withering looks, but she didn't say anything.
I watched her go back into the store, then turned my attention to the people wandering up and down the street. It was strange to think that Bella had grown up somewhere this hot, wearing shorts and tank tops like most of the girls walking past. I was used to her being rugged up, wrapping blankets around herself on her way to and from the bathroom in the middle of the night…
Maybe we should move somewhere warmer, once we were done with school.
I was musing on that, imagining her wandering around an apartment of our very own, in nothing but panties, with sweat beading on her skin, when three guys paused in front of the store.
I eyed them up, assessing them… that had become a habit I didn't like. But they seemed OK, talking amongst themselves about what they should have for dinner. They looked weary, like they'd been travelling.
One of them, the tallest, the quietest, with a large scar running down his left cheek that reminded me of Emily, caught my eye. "Good burgers?" He had a slight southern drawl.
I nodded. "Yup. Big, too."
He smiled his thanks and made his way up the stairs, not seeming to care if his friends followed him or not. The wolf in me liked him.
His friends did follow him though, and they went inside, leaving me to continue people watching and wonder about My Bella.
I was watching a guy swing his little boy from his arms when it happened.
The strangest feeling, like a breeze against the back of my neck, but the air was still. Goosebumps rose on my arms, and while the sensation wasn't bad, the strangeness of it had me instantly on guard.
It felt… familiar. It felt almost like when Leah was pushing around in my theatre, testing my defences… Leah?
I turned to watch her through the big front window, my whole body tense in case she needed help. But she seemed fine. She was chatting to those guys.
"Nah, we're just passing through ourselves…" She nodded out to where I was sitting. Two of them glanced out, noting how I was watching them and instantly turning away again… but the tall guy, with the scar, he kept his eyes on Leah. "But I saw a movie theatre up the road…" She pointed. "No idea what's on."
It was weird. She sounded fine. She didn't seem defensive or anything… but her heart was thumping. I could hear it. And her breath seemed kinda shallow. I frowned… was she OK?
"Thanks anyway." I couldn't see the guys face, but I could hear the smile in his voice. It sounded genuine, not mocking…
They made a few of those polite comments about enjoying their stays and alla that, which was unusual for Leah… and she sounded almost… reluctant to stop talking to him? What on earth was going on?
She came back outside, stepping over the bench and putting her face in her hands. The two guys inside were giving the tall guy a bit of shit about flirting with the babe…
"Did you feel that?" I asked, still creeped out by how the hairs on the back of my neck were tingling.
"Of course I did…" she groaned, then jerked her head up. "Wait, you felt that?"
"Yeah. Like someone walked on my grave or something… what was it?"
"Oh god, Jake." She put her face back in her hands again. "I just imprinted."