Chapter 16

The next few days were not very pleasant. I was nervous and jumpy, and sorely missing Edward. Alice and Jasper came to see me everyday, and alternate family members would accompany them occasionally. Alice kept a close eye on my future trying to anticipate any move Henry might make. Jasper was busy planning for my hearing. He was frustrated, because my case was obviously one of self defense. He would have a hard time convincing the court of it though due to all of the negative press I had been receiving.

In the interest of a fair trial, he had tried to get it moved to a different state (one where my beloved father-in-law had little influence). Unfortunately, that possibility had been blocked as well. As the hearing grew closer, Jasper grew more frustrated. In the end, I think he had resolved to just use his power to influence the jury. It wasn't exactly fair play, but we were out of options.

The thing that upset Jasper the most was our abundance of evidence. We had tons of documentation of the extent of my injuries, a police report which clearly stated I was trying to remove myself from the situation, and even an old girlfriend of late husband's who was willing to testify to his violent drunken nature. This shouldn't get past a hearing. Alice's visions however, told her otherwise.

No matter what decisions we made, and what we planned to do, it had no effect on the outcome. Our biggest hope right now was that Edward and Emmett would manage to remove the congressman from the picture beforehand. I hoped for this sooner rather than later, because I missed Edward terribly. Emmett could come and go, but since Edward had the extra talent of mind reading, he was afraid to stop tailing Henry for fear of missing something important. The man was surprisingly sneaky.

Two days before my hearing, I entered the room that I had been regularly spending all of my days in. Alice and Jasper were there as usual, but the third person seated at the end of the table floored me. It was Rosalie. Alice and Jasper were grinning ear to ear, and Alice was in danger of bouncing out of her seat. Rosalie stood up gracefully and approached me.

She then did the last thing I had expected from her in a million years. She put her arms around me and hugged me very gently. I stiffened from shock before I was able to compose myself enough to return the hug. I wondered if Rosalie had been possessed. If there were vampires and werewolves, who was to say there was no such thing as demonic spirits who possessed people (or vampires)? It would make sense that the demon was nicer than Rosalie.

She stepped back from me and smiled at me…affectionately? Now was I was really confused.

"Bella," she began, "I've been horrible towards you, and I feel terribly about it. I thought you would destroy our family and for that I hated you. However, when we left, our family fell apart, and it was never the same again. Now that Edward has you back, our family has gone back to better than normal and for that I am profoundly grateful. I understand if you don't want to forgive me, but I still feel terribly about the way I treated you. So I guess what I'm really trying to say is, I'm sorry."

My mouth dropped open. Rosalie had just humbled herself enough to apologize to me. If she wanted to be friends, I was more than willing, but part of me was still considering the 'possessed by a demon' idea. On the off chance it really was Rosalie, I thought I'd better say something back to her.

"It's okay Rosalie; I know you just wanted to protect your family. Friends?" I asked as I stuck my hand out to her. She smiled and took it.

"Friends."

"Great!" Shouted Alice. "Now we need to get down to business. I've had another vision Bella." I nodded, encouraging her to continue. "It wasn't a pleasant one; I keep seeing you in the hospital vomiting and unable to move. We don't know what this means, but I'm betting it has something to do with Congressmen Brandon."

I stared at her. How could she still be so excited and perky if she kept seeing me possibly die?

"Oh!" She exclaimed seeing the look on my face, "but don't worry, as soon as we decided to leave Rosalie here I stopped having that vision."

"How are you going to leave Rosalie here?" I asked looking back and forth from Rosalie to Alice. "It's not exactly as if I'm allowed to have a slumber party at the jail."

"Don't worry about that silly, we've got it all taken care of! That's why we decided to leave Rose rather than me or Esme; if she gets caught she can just flirt her way out. Which she won't get caught, so it's not even an issue." Alice looked very pleased with herself. I just felt dizzy. Alice had been talking incredibly fast and my brain was still trying to catch up.

"Okay then," I said.

"Okay!"

Later on that evening I was awkwardly sitting in my cell with Rose. Just because we had agreed to be friends didn't mean we had anything in common to talk about. She was amazing though, she had slipped into my cell unnoticed, and every time someone came by she disappeared. I wasn't sure where she disappeared to, considering we were in a small open room, but I didn't dare look around for her.

I wondered exactly what she was protecting me from; it wasn't as if Henry could just waltz in during the night and shoot me. That would be too obvious. Finally, later on in the evening a guard brought me my dinner. I was starving, having forgotten about lunch today. When he left, I sat down to eat was joined by Rose. She sat next to me and wrinkled her nose.

"That can't actually be good can it? It smells worse than normal human food."

"It's not that bad," I said as a poked it with a fork, "It's just canned beans and some sort of beef." I raised my fork to but a bite in my mouth.

"Wait!" Cried Rosalie. My fork stopped midway to my mouth.

"What?" She had better have a good reason for making me stop, I was starving.

"Something isn't right about that food..." She trailed off thinking. I put my fork down.

"He wouldn't try to poison me would he?" That would be too obvious. Rose snapped her fingers.

"He would! I know what's wrong with that food, it smells like botulism. I remember from a guy in medical school."

"Do you think Henry did this?" It seemed like something he would do. A suspicious botulism poisoning, couldn't prove a thing.

"I don't know," Rose said thoughtfully. "I know it can occur occasionally, kind of like a freak accident with canned food. That would explain Alice's vision, vomiting and paralysis are two of the symptoms."

Now I almost wish I had let Emmett kill Congressmen Henry Brandon. The jerk had tried to poison me.

AN: Guess what? I'm visiting a new magical place where Internet service may or may not be available. I only found out today that I'm leaving for Huston tomorrow. Sooo...I will try to post tomorrow, but if I don't get a chance I won't be able to post until next tuesday. For all your nice reviews I'll make a chapter worth waiting for though!