"All things truly wicked start from an innocence."

(Hemingway, A Moveable Feast)

18 September 2162

GRAND FORKS

10.30

The mayor's office was grand indeed; it dwarfed all the other official buildings nearby along Columbia Rd in the more prosperous southern end of the city. But the entrance to the city records that was attached to it was much less obvious, and in fact did not even bear a label. Charlie, Edward and Bella only found it due to the description of its location that Jacob had provided. Charlie and Edward went off then to attempt speak to the mayor himself. Bella was happy to be left alone in the archives for a while; secretly she thought she was far more efficient at this kind of work anyway. She even enjoyed it, though she tried not to let on about that either.

It made sense to send the lie detector to do such a sensitive interrogation, but it didn't make Charlie any happier to have to do it. The Mayor had always given him the creeps. Edward insisted that their powers together were an unbeatable combination, and their huge file, proudly labelled "Swan & Cullen: closed cases," proved him right. But something told Charlie that this case would continue to frustrate them for a while. Nothing felt solid; nothing seemed clear.

Mayor Sendall's personal office was just as lush and imposing as the building it was contained in. His secretary was also imposing, her large frame and improbably tall pile of blond hair looming behind her small desk as they entered the waiting area.

"Do you gentlemen have an appointment?"

"Jacob Black said he would get us put on the schedule." Edward began to sit down when the secretary held up her hand and said, "Edward Cullen and Charles Swan?"

Charles? Jacob called me Charles? Charlie was amused.

"That's us," Edward said. The secretary buzzed her intercom, but did not announce them. "Go on in then," she said. They walked through the massive door, which had opened a crack. The mayor was standing, arms folded across his chest. He did not look happy to see them.

"Mr. Cullen, Mr. Swan. Welcome." He remained standing, and didn't offer his hand to them. "Please do be seated," he went on, gesturing with his eyes to an old, surprisingly ugly sofa. Charlie immediately went to sit, but Edward continued to stand for a moment.

"I believe you met my wife," he said. The mayor looked flustered at that.

"Did I? I meet a lot of people," he continued to stare at the sofa, as if by glaring he would will Edward to sit.

"Yes. She said she ran into you in Jacob Black's office."

"Oh, oh. Yes. That's likely. Is she…"

"Bella Cullen? I'm sure you've heard of her, Mr. Mayor, no need to play coy about it."

Charlie chuckled in his head. The Mayor, on the other hand, appeared to be genuinely struggling to remember his meeting with Bella at the IC. Eventually, he saw the image of Bella offering her hand to the mayor, and felt his sick dread as he shook it. Silly boy, Edward thought.

"Yes, of course. She was making Mr. Black late for his meeting with me, in fact," his laugh was hollow and dry.

"Well, mother-in-law privilege is strong," Edward joked. The mayor's thoughts were panicked. Black is married to their daughter? But why hasn't he ever told me that? That's seriously bad. What will they say?

Hmm. "Yes, yes. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit this morning, gentlemen? I do have a great deal of work to do today. As you may know, there's a major IC public meeting tomorrow…" He's in a total panic, but no lies yet, Charlie confirmed Edward's own analysis.

Edward took the lead on the questions, as per the usual S&C routine.

"As Jacob may have mentioned, we've been retained to investigate the Tom McGarry incident. Since the v-police refuse to be involved, and the human force continues to refuse to question vampires…"

"I had heard you were looking into it. I also heard you'd been unable to uncover much. I'm inclined to think it was an isolated incident, a minor feeding accident…"

Lie, Charlie nodded.

"There's no such thing as a living human feeding accident, Mr. Mayor, as you well know." Edward took a subtle step forward and the mayor recoiled instinctively. The fear is strong in this one…

"I'm afraid I don't know how I can help you," the mayor crossed his arms over his chest again.

"It would be very helpful if you could tell me if you know anything about any connection this might have to the Blood is Life church." Edward had thought of starting with the breeding program accusation, but decided that was a better follow-up.

"Blood is Life? I don't know much about them." Lie.

"I don't believe you," Edward heard in the mayor's thoughts. What have those idiots done now? They can't have been involved, I thought we made sure…

"OK, I admit to knowing about them. They are a bit of an embarrassment, really."

"That's not something I'll disagree with you on. You can see why we might think they were involved, surely? McGarry awoke near there, they have an unhealthy obsession with making humans more like vampires, they seem totally unconcerned about getting in trouble with the authorities…"

What does he know? The mayor's heartbeat began to race. If Bella was here, she would be mentally salivating, Edward thought. Fear and panic were the best condiments, she liked to say. Thinking of this saying of hers made Edward smile a bit, which only made the mayor even worse.

Why is he smiling? Oh god, he probably knows everything…

"Tell me something, Mr. Mayor, or I'm going to assume you are a part of whatever is going on. As you mentioned, there's an important public meeting tomorrow. I don't think you'd want — "

Suddenly the office phone rang. The Mayor sighed with relief and picked up, only to become a mask of horror once again.

"Yes, he's right here. Here — "

He held the phone out to Edward.

"Hello?" Edward was somehow not surprised that Bella had managed to get a call through to the mayor while they were meeting with him.

"Hi, babe," she said. "Ask the mayor about the records for the establishment of Blife. I am absolutely striking out, I can't find them anywhere. They've got to be hidden for a reason!"

"Sure thing, honey," he said, and hung up. Maybe a change of tack was exactly the trick to get the mayor to slip, verbally or mentally.

"Mr. Mayor," Edward was all smiles now, "My wife is currently doing some research in the city archives. She was wondering if you could point us in the right direction to find the foundation documents for Blood is Life. They aren't, apparently, where they should be."

What have they been doing? "Well, that's too bad. I'm sure they are all filed properly. They were founded long before my time, of course. I'm pretty sure it was just after…"

Not a lie, not the whole truth, Charlie thought.

"Yes?" Edward continued his "encouragement" mode.

"It was just after the 2060 attacks. It — well, you should know better than me, I think — it was a difficult time. Total chaos. Grand Forks was no different, not then."

"Why should any humans have wanted to worship vampires after 2060?" Edward was genuinely shocked.

"Well, from what my grandfather told me… he wasn't even born then, but his father was… here in GF, the feeling was that we'd all be killed if we didn't start to convince you — convince the vampires to keep us around…" Complete truth, Charlie confirmed. Edward hardly needed the confirmation, though, as he saw the images in the mayor's head. The stories told about 2060 were legion; the ones running through the mayor's head had the aura of cinema about them, but from what Edward knew, they were horrifyingly accurate.

"I see," Edward nodded. "I wasn't really up on the news back then."

"It makes a twisted kind of sense," the mayor went on, his honesty very obvious at this point, "you know? We'd just found out we weren't top of the food chain any more. And I guess some people thought, well, humans haven't been all that good at being in charge…"

Edward laughed at that. "I appreciate your candor on this, Mr. Mayor. But where should we look for these records? It may have been a chaotic time, but surely something this important would have been filed eventually?"

"I think… I think they might have filed them under 'charitable foundations'." Not a lie.

"Charitable, huh?"

"Well…" Suddenly, Edward was assaulted with an image of himself, biting the mayor's neck. What? He looked at Charlie. What's wrong? Charlie thought at him. Why was the mayor imagining Edward biting him? How bizarre humans were.

"We'll certainly have a look there. I hope we find the records, though, or we will have to have another visit." Edward smiled, picked up the phone without asking, and told the secretary to call the archives. Bella received the information and assured Edward she would find the files in no time.

"Is that all, gentlemen?" the mayor was hopeful. And scared again.

"I'm afraid not," Edward said.

"I just wanted to say, before we get into anything else, Mr. Cullen, I didn't have anything to do with the mission your wife just returned from."

What? That was a weird non-sequitur.

"I wouldn't have dreamed you did, sir," Edward said. Thank God, the mayor thought. But now Edward was curious. Charlie thought, what was that about? Why would the mayor feel the need to clarify that right now? Obviously he would have to ask Bella what that was about. Great, she had been so eager to have that conversation so far. Involuntarily, images of Peter and Charlotte's thoughts at her birthday party flashed through his mind. He felt a little sick.

"Anyway," Edward decided it was best not to challenge the mayor about Bella any more for now. "We do have a few more questions. If you don't mind."

He minded. But he swallowed and nodded. "Please, let's get on with it."

"One possibility has occurred to us that it seems the authorities have been unwilling to consider," Edward was back to his hardened PI persona. If the mayor didn't think Blife had anything to do with their case, whatever his reasons for being cagey about them, they needed to find out what else he knew. Bella's story about the mysterious package of blood had sent Edward's mind in one direction only: illegal blood sales. As weird as it was, he saw Mr. TRUTH's little message as more helpful than anything. Maybe someone on the inside knew what was going on and wanted to stop it. It wouldn't be the first time someone trapped in a bad situation had reached out to Swan & Cullen to help them.

"Do you know anything about illegal blood enterprises in Grand Forks?" Edward asked, figuring the blunt approach would be most reliable here.

"We don't have anything to do with that in this town!" Lie. Of course, Charlie editorialized.

"That's not true," Edward said. He always hoped that his interogatees wouldn't ask how he could be so certain. They never did. Most caved immediately; the mayor of course could know about Edward's gift, though he had done his best to keep that under wraps as well.

"OK. Yes, we catch someone every now and then. But the illegal blood trade is almost entirely confined to those who sell outside the city limits. We do what we can to stop them taking the blood here, but there's only so much we can do. If a person wants to sell their blood, especially if they are desperate for money, they'll find a way to do it." No lies, but I don't think he's swearing on a stack of Bibles here, Charlie reported.

"Is that the whole truth?" Edward asked, trying to emphasize the last word a little.

Bingo.

A panicked vision came through to Edward, in which he saw Bella, with Peter and Charlotte in some kind of bunker; the TRUTH logo — not just on a package, but repeated over and over, covering everything; some men in Volturi-esque capes walking down a long white hallway; a Shadow meeting; a caravan of trucks; a number of images of humans screaming, crying and collapsing to the ground; and even the mayor himself at the edge of a river, bleeding from his neck and wrists. Each image flashed by for just a nanosecond; these weren't memories, Edward realized, they were imaginings, imaginings of a terrified man. The mayor was sure something awful was going to happen, but he didn't have a clear idea of what. But the fact that he seemed to connect his horror-visions to Bella, and to the TRUTH logo on that package, made Edward very concerned.

"Wh- what did you say?" The mayor clearly didn't realize all he had just revealed.

"Are you telling me everything?" The mayor's panic receded at the rephrasing of the question.

"I'm not able to tell you everything about the bloodsellers we've caught — that's privileged information, for the sake of security."

"So, then, you know something, but won't tell us?"

"I didn't say that. Blood is Life is definitely not implicated in any illegal blood selling, though, I can tell you that." Truth.

"Just an illegal hybrid breeding program then?"

More panic, but no horrorshow this time. Deny deny deny, the mayor's thoughts chanted.

"I don't know anything about that." Lie lie lie lie. But Edward knew that well enough already. It looked like Blood is Life might not be as connected to the McGarry case as they'd thought. Sure, they were doing all sorts of shady things, possibly even with their grandson, but it was in illegal blood sales they should be looking now, that was clear.

The Mayor clapped awkwardly then, and was about to dismiss them, when his burly secretary flung open the door and rushed in.

"Mary, you can't — "

"I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, but you must come now. There's been a development." The Mayor took one last look at his guests, his eyes wide, and turned to follow his employee.

"See yourselves out, gentlemen?" He called over his shoulder. The door slammed behind him.

"Charlie, we've got to get Bella and get out of here." Edward was still trying to process everything the mayor had given them, and now this…

"What is it? What happened?"

"They've found another body. And it's someone we've met before."

Bella had finally tracked down what passed for the foundation documents for Blife — a paltry two sheets of treepaper, smudged with ink. The church land had been signed over to an organization called Protecting People through Promise of Service, PPPS. Bella thought she remembered hearing cheesy, peppy, optimistic ads on the radio from them, for a year or two after the attacks. They never explained who they were, or why humans should promise service, or even to whom they should do so (perhaps knowing that the Big Reveal would take its time to reach places like Alaska), but they were jingly enough to have stuck with her. But other than this deed, the only other document was a request slip from 2141, asking the city to allow the church to connect its solarium to an underground tunnel. The documents were quickly committed to Bella's memory, though she doubted they would be of much use, when Edward and Charlie burst through the door and told her they had to leave immediately.

"We'll explain on the way!" Edward promised, practically dragging her out of there.

On the way, the three investigators shared all their relevant information with each other. Edward omitted only that he had seen Bella in the mayor's visions; that would need to be a whole different conversation.

The new body was found not very far from where McGarry had found himself. More effort had been made to hide her; she was half-buried under a tree in Bringewatt Park. When they arrived, she was being removed with care from her resting place, and placed on a black tarp.

The three agreed to their usual crime scene routine. Charlie would approach the Veeps, drawing their attention and getting what information he could. Edward would hang back, try to get a vista on the scene, pick up any interesting, especially guilty, thoughts. The old truism about the culprit returning to the scene of the crime was accurate a surprising percentage of the time. Bella would speak to witnesses, especially humans who seemed anxious around the cops. This three-pronged approach almost always meant they avoided arousing the attention the cops as to what they were doing, and sometimes had led them to solve the case immediately. That usually got the cops' attention, and not in a good way. But they got results, and thus relatively little actual trouble from the authorities.

Though Edward had told her who the victim was before they reached the scene, it was still unpleasant to see, and made Bella angry. She wanted to say "I told you so," to Edward, but it wasn't exactly true. On the tarp lay the body of the sixteen-year-old they had rescued from the fake vampires last week. She had wounds in her neck and thigh, just like McGarry, but it looked like the thigh wound, in particular, was arterial. She wore the same white dress she had on when they "met" her, though now it was mostly stained dark red. The blood was not fresh; it had barely any smell at all. A large pattern, like a handprint, stained the bare skin between the girl's collarbones. As Bella made her way to the small group of human girls at the edge of the park, she realized that was why there weren't even any tape barriers set up. No vampire was going to be attracted by this scene.

"Did you know the girl who died?" Bella asked the girls as she approached them. She stopped, out of respect for their human space, twenty feet away. The long-distance no-preamble approach was the most reliable with addled human witnesses, experience had taught her. It was only worth bringing coherent and possibly knowledgeable ones to Edward, anyway.

The girls all nodded. One of them looked at Bella and saw who she was. Her tears stopped, and she broke into a small smile. She whispered to the girl next to her, who was resting her head on her shoulder, and pointed, subtly. Then she gestured at Bella to come over.

"We didn't believe her," said the girl, who was strawberry blond and freckled, tall for her age, which was younger than the dead girl. "She told us she met you, but we told her that she was telling lies. Nobody sees you…" and lives? Bella wondered if that was the unfinished sentence. It made her shudder a little.

"I did meet her, last week, very briefly," Bella admitted.

"She said you saved her."

"I guess — not enough," Bella was, she found, genuinely sad at the death of this girl, and the grief of her friends. That's different.

"What happened to her? Is it that serial killer?"

"Are you all members of Blood is Life?" Bella decided that giving them direct answers was probably not a good idea.

The girls nodded.

"Why are you dressed like that?"

"It's supposed to make us more… attractive to vampires. It's kind of a uniform. To show we are not afraid."

You obviously are afraid, though. "Why would you want to show that?"

The girls looked at her in surprise. "To show we are willing to be around you — to serve you."

Bella had a feeling this would be the last chance she would have to help these girls. And she felt, suddenly, that that is what she needed to do.

"The absence of fear is not attractive to vampires. The opposite, actually. Fear is much more attractive. But that's probably not the kind of attraction you're looking for."

The girls were suddenly shy, looking down at their feet and clustering even more tightly together.

"Vampires don't want humans to serve them. Especially not willingly. Don't listen to whoever is telling you that we do."

The girls looked very unsettled. But it seemed to Bella they had nothing more to say. She doubted Edward would get much useful from them.

"What are humans for, then? Why do we even exist?" One of the other girls said, dreamily.

"Well, I don't think that it's time for an evolution lesson right now," Bella was getting exasperated.

"Just promise me, girls," she said, "stay away from vampires, or humans who claim to know all about vampires. It might be the only thing to keep you alive. You don't want to end up like your friend, do you?"

The girls all shook their heads, but the overwhelming sense Bella got from them was disappointment. Then, a loud cry went up from closer to where the body was being loaded into a coroner's van. Bella saw Edward and Charlie standing with several Veeps, holding back a crush of people, some of whom were holding cameras, clipboards and microphones. Various questions were shouted at the Veeps as the large and growing group of humans surged forward:

"Is there a serial killer at large in Grand Forks?"

"Is there a cover-up? Is the government killing humans? Is the President involved?"

"Why are the police refusing to comment? Is the Interspecies Council involved in the investigation?"

"Is this a statement of intent by the non-humans of GF that humans are not welcome here?"

"Is the experiment in co-operation over?"

And more. Bella hurried over to assist in crowd control, only to find that Edward and Charlie had retreated to the northern edge of the park. They were shaking their heads.

"I got nothing. Whoever did this is long gone. And the police aren't even going to investigate! They still think this is some human bullshit." Edward was furious.

"The only thing I got from the dead girl's friends is that the breeding program seems to be going on. Not that they realize that," Bella said. I hope I convinced them to get out…

"Put Blood is Life to one side for now," Edward said. "This woman's blood was drained manually. It's easy to see that whoever did it to McGarry did it to this girl, only he got better this time. We've got to start looking at the blood trade. After the IC meeting, that's our next plan. If we have to come down hard, we will. I'm mad now."

"Why bother with the IC?" Charlie's anti-government grousing was always reliable.

"It's our chance to put pressure on Jacob when he can't use our relationship with him to get out of answering questions. Plus, it'll be nice to watch him squirm a bit."

Bella had trouble imagining Jacob in a position of authority, and was eager to attend the meeting for that reason alone. But she more than anything, she wondered how much authority he really wielded. And on whose behalf…

14.00

Pastor Dominic stood, his head down, his eyes closed, as he had always been instructed. The room was bathed in grey light that seemed to bleed in from the walls, and hummed with some technological noise, like a refrigerator that is about to give up. He heard the light tread of the man he had come to meet, and, as he had learned, he did not acknowledge his arrival.

"There is going to be madness, Pastor. There is going to be mass hysteria."

Dominic nodded. The rich tones of the man's voice filled his head, made him feel cloudy and unsure.

"You need to control your flock. Make sure they don't come to the meeting."

"But their beloved friend — "

"Control them! That is what your job is. Why do you think…"

"I'm sorry, sir. I understand that I need to have a better handle on this. If you could tell me something that I could tell them…"

"You humans, always needing explanations and reasons. It's a weakness. Tell them that. Eliminate the human weakness on the path to completion or some similar bullshit."

The hissing s's made his words even more sinister-sounding. Dominic nodded. The man's footsteps told him he was alone again.

Not for the first time, Dominic wondered, or rather knew, that he was in way over his head. But there was no way out now. He wasn't in control of his own life, much less those of his congregation. Just like he had always told them, the only way to survive was to obey.

19 September 2100

CANADIAN WILDERNESS

06.00

"Your daughter misses you," Carlisle said. He stood well away from her, as if afraid even to inhale her scent.

"And we miss her too." She stood still. There was no point in moving.

"Why don't you come home then?"

"We'd love to. But you have your rules. And Ren won't leave Jacob with you."

"You think she'd adapt to your… lifestyle?"

"We wouldn't force her. It's not up to us. She wants to get out into the world, though. Every letter she sends to us, makes that clear."

The wind howled ferociously, carrying the strong scent of a few elk nearby.

"Hungry?" Bella asked Carlisle. "Those elk might give you a good fight." Carlisle looked away from her then, and casually backed into a tree, which cracked under the force.

"You are so cavalier about the taking of life," he started again, "I never thought I'd see you this way, even after you returned to us, after the plague…"

"How's that going? Helping those humans a lot up there in interior Alaska, population twelve?"

Carlisle shook his head. He was angry, but as always, he refused to show it in his voice or body language.

"Rebuilding society is going to take time." Bella laughed.

"Something we can agree on."

"Please come home," Bella was surprised that he was willing to ask, even to beg.

"We've got a few more weeks cleaning up the trash in Vancouver, and then we were planning to make our grand return, again. We'll try to get our eyes back before we do, so it'll depend on if we can even find any animals…"

"I'm not going to bar the door."

"Have you told your wife that?"

Carlisle launched at her then, knocking her to the ground. "How dare you talk about her!" He realized that he had lost control in less than half a second, and recoiled from her, smashing another tree trunk in the process.

"I just don't get it, Carlisle," Bella said, as she dusted herself off and stood up. "Why don't you go to her? You could feed her — you could have her back with you. But you won't do it, and then you freak out when anyone even mentions her name?"

"The vow we made to each other is so difficult to grasp? I know you understand an eternal promise…"

"She couldn't have known… it wasn't intentional… why would she take it so seriously?"

Carlisle shook his head again, unable to explain himself. "It was after what happened in '60, Bella. We knew that the world wasn't going to rule us anymore, so we resolved to rule ourselves. Can't you see that — the value of the symbolic sacrifice?"

"I'd understand better if it hadn't changed the way you deal with the rest of the family. You've turned everyone into fanatics!"

"No! Everyone has the right to make their own choices, I've never denied that."

"Unless they have a heartbeat, and then you get to decide for them."

Carlisle had no response to that. Instead, he turned to leave.

"The door will be open." And he was gone.

Charlie and Edward would be less than pleased that she had met with Carlisle without one or the other of them, but she was tired of relying on their gifts. Sometimes all that was necessary to handle a situation was strength.

She was nothing if not strong, mentally and physically. So why did every conversation with him make her feel so weak?