Disclaimer: This isn't mine, except what's mine.

Chapter 14: URO

She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her ...

-The art critic Walter Pater on the "Mona Lisa" in "Studies in the History of the Renaissance" (1873)

In the end, Carlisle came to me.

But first, there were many more things to do in Paris. To give my feet a rest, Edward and I rented bikes from a Vélib station one morning before a rainy afternoon and rode in the nearest big park, the Bois de Boulogne. I'd never seen Edward on a bike, but he was as graceful at riding as he was everything else, even too much so. We stopped for a kiss when we were alone in a wooded section where not even prostitutes lurked, my helmet knocking harmlessly into his head, and realized only afterward that he had never put his feet on the ground. A few minutes later, as we approached a bridle path, he had me stop.

"You'll want to see this," he said, "and I can't be too close, even downwind." I looked at him behind me in bafflement, then turned back to the bridle path to see a dozen preschoolers, shrieking with laughter, bouncing and clutching the manes of tiny shaggy ponies roped together and trotting vigorously.

They were adorable. And I would never learn how to ride a horse.

As the children and their instructor disappeared, I twisted round again to Edward, who had retreated quite a distance down the road, a hint of wistfulness on his face.

"I was on a horse once," I said, and he looked retroactively alarmed. "I hit my head on the saddle horn and had a bruise on my cheek for days. I don't need any more equestrian experience," I assured him.

I had to make two return visits to Mme Coigny for bra fittings, glaring at Alice the whole time. Edward offered to be my translator in her stead, which was such an alluringly unwise idea that I told him that I'd let him give me a private fitting when I returned.

And, of course, I ate. I ate tiny pastel almond-paste cookies in a Belle Epoque tearoom. I ate sweetbreads and scrambled eggs with truffles at a tiny new bistrot. I ate an obscene number of oysters and little snails that Edward winkled out of their shells for me with a pin, holding his breath, in a giant 1930s restaurant gleaming with brass. I ate couscous in the Marais and pho in Belleville. And when I couldn't abide sitting at yet another table, I ate crepes and roasted chestnuts from street carts. The mild nausea that I'd experienced since my lunch at Taillevent persisted, disappearing while I ate, but a vaguely annoying background presence between meals.

Fortunately, there was so much to see that I was able to ignore that.

We visited the Musée d'Orsay, and I barely suppressed my giggles as we paid the reduced admission for 18- to 25-year-old non-Frenchies. "You really should get in free as an under-18," I observed when we were safely away from the ticket booths.

"No, I should get a senior citizen discount," he responded. "Or I could show my French passport."

"You have a French passport?" I asked as quietly as I could, momentarily arrested in my gawping at the barrel vaults and glass gridwork in the ceiling that showed the rainy sky above. The old train station had been turned into a stunning background for art.

"I have many passports,' he said just as quietly.

"How Jason Bourne of you," I teased him. "Have you often had to sneak across borders and smuggle out dissidents?"

"Not for several decades," he said. "You should ask Jasper to show you your passports."

I contemplated that in silence for a moment before he went on, "Come, let's look at some truly wretched paintings."

"Don't hold back, Professor Cullen."

By now, it was no surprise to find that vampires despised the French Academic painters. Cabanel's "Birth of Venus" seemed to cause Edward physical pain – he rubbed his temples and even clutched his stomach as I examined the goddess slyly lounging on her seafoam. And sure, maybe the painting had no higher aspirations than to be a really pretty, very racy illustration, but it was impressively done.

When we came to the Bouguereau version of the same subject, Edward simply turned his back. Unfortunately for him, he still had to hear our fellow visitors exclaim in all the languages he knew over how charming the painting was, and wonder mentally why the poor model's body hair had gone to Brazil. Edward told me how a Victorian British art critic, used to seeing similar paintings, had been so shocked on his wedding night that he had been unable to consummate his marriage.

"So you see," Edward concluded without any justification, "the Academic painters were evil."

I laughed (and was silently thankful that my own marriage was able to be consummated), but after more paintings and a ballroom full of naked-lady statues, I was ready to agree that French art buyers under Napoleon III would have been just as happy with a copy of Playboy. We both breathed a little more easily when we got to the smaller, plainer rooms that housed the Impressionists.

Our visit to the Louvre involved all the Cullens, and I was grateful that better minds than mine would be navigating the museum's maze of buildings. Our first stop wasn't what I would have predicted, though.

Alice led the way to the tall stairway rising to the headless "Nike of Samothrace" (second-century B.C. Greek Winged Victory, remarkable treatment of drapery, thank you Art History 101) perched on her limestone ship's prow. I started ascending in Alice's wake, but Edward held me back, and I turned to see that the Cullens were waiting in a cluster next to a massive pier.

"Stand aside for a moment, because Alice loves doing this," Edward said with affectionate resignation. I lifted my eyebrows at him, but by then Alice had reached the top of the crowded staircase. She turned around and then practically flew down the steps, her stilettos clacking rapidly on the marble, arms above her head and a large red chiffon scarf streaming from her hands. The whole thing took only a few seconds, but my heart was in my throat even though Alice was so confident and indestructible, because a human who tripped doing this maneuver would surely end up a paraplegic.

Most of the museum-goers looked at Alice with a mix of bafflement and alarm, but an elderly American couple dressed alike in khakis and polo shirts joined in the Cullens' polite applause. "Just like Audrey Hepburn," the woman said in admiration, and Alice beamed and thanked her prettily.

"As you can see, no one under 60 gets the reference," Edward whispered to me to tease his sister, and Alice scowled at him.

"'Funny Face,' 1957," she said loftily. "A classic. I'll lend my copy to you, Bella."

The "Nike" was situated next to the ornate Galerie d'Apolon, and Esme, Alice and Rosalie veered off to look at the royal jewels in their glass case in the center. I followed, but the crowns and necklaces didn't hold my interest for long and I drifted away to join the men at a window on the Seine. A rare example of division by gender lines among the Cullens, I thought. Well, not anymore.

"You really don't care much about jewelry," Edward said as I nestled into his torso and looked out on the river.

"I would have thought that my failure to realize that your mother's heart charm was a diamond would have been as much proof as you needed of that," I said, and he grimaced briefly as I called him out on that gift. "Besides, gem extraction is very bad for the environment."

"Indeed it is. You should stick to vintage," Edward responded, rubbing his thumb along my engagement ring.

"Only things from 1901," I agreed.

A snicker from Emmett suggested that we were moving into sappy territory. But sometimes we couldn't help it.

When the women finished their window shopping, a quick, quiet debate ensued over our itinerary, a discussion that I couldn't follow. At the end, Rosalie huffed, "Fine, at least it's nearby," and stalked off toward the Italian galleries.

I heard a buzz of excited voices before I saw anything. A crowd was gathered in a large gallery, a guard imploring in vain, in English, "No flashes!" An opening finally allowed me to see what the focus of all the attention was: the "Mona Lisa," the much stolen painting protected by a plastic box. Edward guided me through the throng so I had an unobstructed view, and I experienced that deflated feeling of familiarity from having seen too many reproductions and parodies. That poor woman. I soon nodded my readiness to leave, and joined the rest of the family, who hadn't even bothered to come into the room.

Rosalie looked disgusted, Esme sympathetic. "Disappointing, isn't it?" she murmured.

Once we got away from the traffic jam around the "Mona Lisa," the galleries emptied out considerably. Many of the rooms for the French collection were deserted and the Cullens would scatter as they entered each one, heading straight to their favorite work, statues staring at paintings. Esme and Carlisle were both drawn to religious scenes and landscapes, but the other couples split up – Jasper, I noticed, loved paintings of battlefields and Alice portraits, Rosalie favored genre pictures and Emmett focused on hunts. Edward stayed by my side as I wandered, watching my face, occasionally asking me for my reactions, even timing, I'd bet, how long I looked at each work. I eventually reached my limit, Edward and I leaving the rest of the Cullens for my lunch, secure in the knowledge that I'd have many more opportunities to see – and remember – everything here.

A few nights later I had my introduction to opera, sitting between Edward and Esme at the Opera Bastille watching Poulenc's "Dialogues des carmélites." I had wondered why Edward thought my first opera should be this instead of "The Barber of Seville" or some other work whose famous bits I might have heard sampled in a rap song or in a movie, but it became a littler clearer to me in the last act, when Sister Blanche chooses to die with her fellow nuns marching serenely off to the guillotine, victims of the Reign of Terror. I heard the woman behind me sniffling, while Esme and Carlisle looked heartbroken. I wasn't sure I liked opera, let alone Poulenc, but there was no denying the emotional impact of Blanche's decision. Through my own tears, I gave my husband a dirty look.

"I have to try," he said under the applause as I handed him back his freshly damp handkerchief. "Death, even a chosen one, is sad. And frightening."

"But Blanche is noble in choosing it," I pointed out.

He paused for a moment. "I may be guilty of sending a mixed message," he acknowledged.

The siblings were just down one of the boulevards radiating from the Place de la Bastille, at a concert by the band we'd seen a few months ago in Brooklyn at the club where the Georgian vampire tried to toy with me. We all joined them for the tail end of the show, in a former theater with peeling paint and decaying woodwork, and it was a rare chance to see Carlisle act like a 23-year-old. Tieless and jacketless now, his ivory shirt untucked, he looked a bit like an extraordinarily handsome first-year law firm associate cutting loose after work, moving effortlessly to the music with Esme next to him glowing in her silver-gray sheath, an otherworldly creature among all the black and boots of the crowd.

"I didn't know that Carlisle was such a fan of shoegaze," I couldn't help whispering to Edward.

Carlisle leaned over to me to say, "Reminds me of the madrigals of my childhood," and he was so straight-faced it took me a second to realize he was joking.

The four of us caught the last metro home, but apparently the night with our family wasn't quite over. When we arrived back at the Place des Etats-Unis, Esme returned to the main apartment while Carlisle followed us upstairs.

"Carlisle, do come in," Edward said dryly, unlocking the door.

"Thank you," Carlisle said, smiling at me reassuringly as Edward helped me out of my coat. We moved into the salon, Carlisle dropping fluidly into the striped armchair, Edward sliding in next to me on a sofa, his gaze intent on his father. The light from the sconces reflected on the French windows, obscuring our view of the city.

"It's going to be sunny tomorrow –" Carlisle started.

"No," Edward interrupted, his face hardening. "It's not safe."

"They have proved themselves -" Carlisle protested.

"They have," Edward conceded, speaking just slowly enough that I could understand him. "But they were Danielle's –"

"And others. They should meet –"

"You now think there's a danger?" Edward said sharply, leaning forward.

"I think it would be sensible, considering what happened –"

"But Jean-François would be able –"

"I would wager that he cannot," Carlisle interrupted. "But in case he can we should -"

"Yes," Edward said heavily. "But immediately. Then we go –"

Their staccato, elliptical half-mental conversation was starting to worry me and annoy me in equal measure. I coughed loudly and unnecessarily.

Carlisle looked at me apologetically and hastened to explain. "Bella, I am proposing that we go –"

"After your breakfast," Edward put in.

"Oh, yes, of course," Carlisle continued, "I am proposing that we head to Normandy in the morning to visit some friends."

"Carnivorous friends," I guessed, remembering that Edward had said only the Alaska coven shared the Cullens' diet.

"Yes, but as trustworthy as they get." Edward made a noise in his throat, and Carlisle added, "Edward, you know this. And after our encounter with Jane last summer, maintaining our ties with other covens is advisable."

"While I stay human, you mean," I said, and Edward stiffened.

"No," Carlisle said, shaking his head regretfully at me. "I agree with Edward. Your decision, your timing, should not be affected by this. The worries will simply be different, depending on your status. Aro will find you … worthy of his attention –"

"Carlisle!" Edward spat out suddenly. "When?"

"Just before we left to —"

"And you're telling me only —"

"Guys!" I barked in frustration. Carlisle flinched a little; I'd bet being called a guy was a novelty to him too.

Edward answered me this time, his voice angry. "Aro sent us a wedding present."

"Alice invited Aro?" I said, my voice rising an octave at the end. "I would have definitely vetoed that had I known."

"She saw that telling him of your marriage would temporarily salve his urge to check up on you," Carlisle blandly explained, but Edward erupted once more.

"That fiend would expect that," he seethed, and it took me a second to understand what he had heard in Carlisle's thoughts. Oh.

"Aro thought I'd be changed … um, one way or another afterward?" I asked.

"Yes," Carlisle said with a resigned sigh. "He responded to the news by sending you a rather large diamond and a note."

Ugh. I didn't want any gems from Aro. They probably literally were blood diamonds. And had vampire cooties. Anyway, what accompanied the diamond was more important. "What did the note say?" I asked.

"'I so look forward to seeing the new Mrs. Cullen in person,''' Carlisle recited.

Edward tensed at the implied threat, but Carlisle went on. "There is a silver lining, you realize – he sent his gift to Forks, not Hanover, so he doesn't seem to have been actively looking for you. Still, that note is one reason I paid respects to the Paris coven as well, for they have a certain level of rivalry with the Volturi, and it is useful to have them at our side. In truth, Jean-François and Danielle would side with us no matter what, but –" and he looked at Edward, "their country house is surrounded by forest, and Jasper should hunt before enclosing himself on a plane, as should the rest of us," he concluded, his eyes flickering to me.

Edward finally nodded in reluctant acquiescence, and Carlisle asked, "Bella, are you going to be all right with this?"

"If you are, yes. But where are the … people we're visiting on the creepiness scale? Is it Aro-level creepiness? Garsevan-level? Victoria-level?" I gripped Edward's hand in an effort to repress a shudder. After all, I'd never met a carnivorous vampire who wasn't scary as hell. "Vincent Price?"

Carlisle laughed at the last one, taking no offense. "I'm afraid that the vampire world hasn't given you a very good impression of itself," he said ruefully.

"I'm pretty sure that thanks to you I have the most positive impression of the vampire world a human could have," I said.

He winced, but answered, "True." He rose from the chair, and added, "Tomorrow, then. Sleep well, child."

Edward closed the door behind his father and sighed as he rejoined me on the sofa. I rested my cheek on the fine wool covering his shoulder. "Are you going to be all right with this?" I asked. "I thoroughly agree with Carlisle's making efforts to bolster our position against Aro."

"Yes, but I wish it didn't involve exposing you to any vampires, even our friends."

I almost suggested that I stay in Paris while he went on this visit, but I knew the argument against that: in Hanover, Alice could see well in advance a vampire wandering into the area; in Paris, the vampires were already too close for peace of mind.

"At least the visit will probably prove educational," Edward went on. "Jean-François and Danielle have an impressive collection at their house."

I put my right hand in the center of his chest, and I could easily feel the tension coiled there. I had it too, and I knew what would help. "Speaking of educational, is there anything you'd like to teach me tonight?" I asked in feigned innocence.

He caught my hand and held it still. "You are trying to distract me."

"Indeed I am," I said and ran the back of my free hand just above his belt. "Is it working?" I asked, the feel of the perfect line of his abdomen making my voice husky.

"Hmmm, I suppose I have the energy to teach you a lesson or two tonight," he said, and rearranged me so I was on his lap and his cool lips were on my throat.

Despite his words, his body remained anxious at first, only gradually relaxing as skin met skin. It was a subtle difference, one I wouldn't have been able to detect in his stone flesh just a few months ago, one that perhaps only I would ever be able to discern.

"You're so easy," I teased him, my own fears ebbing at his touch.

"To the contrary," he said, moving my hand down and his mouth up to my ear, "I'm really rather –"

"No!" I squealed. "Don't say it!"

But he did anyway, my desire making his breath feel almost hot in my ear, and I groaned for more than one reason.

With Alice's approval, I walked over to the market street early the next morning to get my breakfast, feeling discombobulated navigating this strange city without Edward. The men and women presiding over the stalls and shops smiled more brightly today, obviously happy to see the sun after so many cloudy days, and I smiled too, appreciating its warmth in the brisker air, clear skies having lowered the temperature and making me grateful for my cashmere coat.

The voluptuous young brunette with a toque who handed me my warm baguette, though, looked disappointed. "Votre ami n'est pas là aujourd'hui?" she asked as I carefully counted out a euro and 30 centimes. I wasn't quite sure what she was saying, but I could easily guess she was wondering where Edward was. "Désolée, madame," I answered. I'd be disappointed too if I were her.

Edward was waiting for me in the lobby where I left him, stationed next to the wrought iron and glass door since the sun wasn't shining at a dangerous angle, another volume of Custine's memoirs in his hand, unread, I suspected. I felt a stab of guilt that I'd been able to enjoy walking around in the sun and he couldn't.

"You were missed at the market today, especially by Mademoiselle Baguette," I told him, showing off my shopping bag of bread and fruit after we kissed, and he chuckled at the idea before hissing out, "No, Alice."

"What is it?" I asked with the wariness of experience.

"No, no, don't worry," he said, his tone reassuring, "it involves the footsie."

"Okay, I like footsie," I said hopefully, and he laughed again.

"No, it's the nickname for the London Stock Exchange's version of the Dow Jones index. Alice has a proposal I disagree with."

"I thought you didn't bet against Alice."

"The Greeks said you shouldn't bet against the Delphic oracle, either, but that doesn't mean she understood what she was saying," he said, his eyes gazing upward as if they could bore through plaster and parquet into the Cullen apartment. "Years of breathing in the fumes had to have had an effect on her brain. Alice's having an … intuition doesn't mean we should sell anything if it just means we'll have to pay taxes on a wash sale." He sighed and headed to the elevator. "Will you be okay eating breakfast on your own, then joining us downstairs?"

"Sure," I said, as he pressed the call button for me. "So do tell, Mr. Cullen, what is the secret to your investment success?"

"Buy low, sell high," he said, adding for Alice's benefit, "but you have to be judicious in doing both."

After breakfast I brushed my teeth again in case anyone with a sensitive nose took offense at a particularly pungent Roquefort. I wondered how long it would be before my stomach started making its vague complaints again. The door downstairs was unlocked, and I stepped into the main salon to find only Emmett, flipping rapidly through a newspaper as he sprawled on a settee upholstered with shepherdesses. It looked as if it should have collapsed under his mass, but I knew from the bed upstairs that French furniture was sturdier than it appeared … with the exception of massage tables.

Since I was asleep when we left the mikvah/spa/playroom, I hadn't seen how Edward had dealt with the results of that enjoyable bit of destructiveness. I did know that he had carried me home since the metro had stopped running for the evening, I and five other Cullens (Alice and Jasper had left the mikvah after the family steam bath to, Edward told me, spend some quality time on the roof of Notre Dame) probably looking as if we were reenacting a scene from a zombie movie. Edward assured me that the Parisians and drunken Americans they had passed had found them plausibly human, and only a pair of Romani boys who had sneaked out of one of the encampments on the edges of the city had suspected them of supernaturalness, spitting on the ground and prudently turning the other direction.

"Morning, Bella," Emmett said in greeting, standing up and folding his newspaper, preventing my mind from lingering on activities associated with massage tables. "Come on in and set a spell."

"Thank you kindly, Mr. McCarty," I answered, trying to mimic his farmer-from-the-1930s accent. It was quite at odds with his English-gentleman-at-a-house-party appearance: Emmett had on a tie and tattersall shirt under a beautiful Donegal tweed jacket, wearing it with an ease rare in such big men.

I sat on the sofa opposite him. "Where's Rosalie?" I asked.

"She's dressing. She's able to do that more efficiently when I'm not around, " he answered. I would have predicted a leer accompanying such a comment from Emmett, but he made it a simple observation instead.

"I know what you mean," I said agreeably. After all, watching Edward dress, or better yet, undress, was one of my life's pleasures. "Whatcha reading?" I asked, pointing to the newspaper. I half-expected it to be The Times of London in keeping with Emmett's getup.

"L'Equipe," he said, unfolding the paper to show a picture of two players battling for a soccer ball. "I have to keep up with le foot. It's the world's sport," he said in response to my look of surprise. "I've been to every World Cup since the war ... at least the night games."

Emmett had come a long way from the valleys of Appalachia, I thought. "Did it take you a while to get used to all this?" I asked, gesturing at the luxury surrounding us.

He seemed astonished by my question. "No, I loved it!" he said. "The thirst is … well, you have a slight idea, but having shoes and a roof that didn't leak, even if the lack of either no longer made me suffer, I accepted that right away." He looked at me thoughtfully. "You think of yourself as having grown up without a lot of money, but compared with my childhood, yours was quite comfortable. I'll show you."

He disappeared in a blur and returned half a second later with a newish-looking coffee table book. "Photographs of the Farm Security Administration: Images From the Great Depression," I read on the cover as Em plopped down next to me.

"Here," he announced, handing the book to me. It was open to a black-and-white photograph of an older woman in a shapeless flowered dress, sitting on a wooden chair on an unpainted porch; she was shelling peas, so it must have been springtime. A little girl at her feet was employed at the same task. The caption read, "Mrs. Lemuel McCarty and daughter, 1937, outside Gatlinburg, Tenn."

"That's your mother?" I asked, and he nodded. "And your … sister, really?"

"Yeah, Clara or Robbie Jean, I haven't been able to figure it out. My mother's only 38 in that picture," he said, reaching over to gently rub a fingertip on the glossy paper as if he could touch the people in the photograph. Wow, Mrs. McCarty was Renee's age and looked like Renee's mother. "You can see how her life aged her. I was her oldest child – that is, her oldest child to survive to adulthood."

"And your dad?"

"My father died of pneumonia some years before - that was before penicillin was available. Even if it had been, it wasn't as if we could afford much doctoring."

"You must have been hungry growing up," I blurted, glancing at his huge frame.

"Sometimes, probably," he said, shrugging. "Carlisle speculates that my family had more money during Prohibition, so I had enough food to grow to my full height." He stretched out his arms like a giant bird of prey extending its wings.

"Why Prohibition?"

"We had a still to make moonshine, a Silver Cloud. I even have a hazy recollection of tending the fire." He was silent for a moment. "I never made it past fifth grade – when I went to high school as a Cullen, it was my first time. If that bear hadn't found me, I would have died toothless and emphysemic a long time ago, or been shot by the revenuers or been cannon fodder for D-Day - that is, if I hadn't knocked up a neighbor girl and had a passel of brats before -"

His head snapped to the doorway of the salon and Rosalie was hesitating there, her expression hard … and guilty? Oh, the passel of brats. I felt a surge of irritation, even though I knew she couldn't help it – it was an ineradicable part of her nature now.

I turned back to Emmett, who gave Rosalie a significant look before continuing. "And if an angel hadn't found me after that bear did, I would just have been dead at 20," he said, his voice resolute. "So I can't think of any better outcome for me."

I guessed that Emmett wasn't thrilled about Rosalie's visit to the blood enzyme researchers.

Rosalie nodded at me and dropped into the shepherdess sofa as I asked Emmett, "So you carry this book around with you all the time?"

"Huh?" he muttered, his eyes still on his wife, his expression so ferociously loving that I wanted to avert my gaze. "No, this is the copy I keep here."

"Wait, this is your apartment?" I asked in confusion.

"Yeah," he answered. "You didn't know?"

"No, I just assumed we were renting for the week. So the fourth bedroom is actually for Edward," I mused. Emmett nodded. "But what about the apartment upstairs? Who owns that?"

"We do, but we normally have a tenant. Luckily it's between renters at the moment – and about time. The French rent-control laws are a real bitch. Esme probably spends more time on paperwork for this place than any of our other properties."

"Wait," I said again. "You own the whole building?"

"Yeah," he answered again. I shook my head and he laughed. "Maybe it'd be easier if you just assume we own everything."

"Do you own the Carlyle?"

"No, Carlisle doesn't approve of the way it's spelled." I looked at him dubiously. "Fine, it would be too conspicuous, owning a famous hotel."

"Okay, but if you're the owners of this place, then why doesn't Mme Douzy the concierge know who you are?"

"This building is like the house in Hanover – its official owner is a French company, so she doesn't know we pay her salary. We're just the eccentric rich people who rent this apartment."

"So these paintings are real, then," I said, waving at the canvas in a simple wooden frame on the wall across from me. It could have been used in a dictionary to illustrate the Cubism entry.

"Yep. That's a Braque."

"Aren't you worried that someone will steal these since you're not usually here?"

"If anyone does, we'll track him down and kill him."

I knew he was joking but I frowned at him anyway.

"All right," he amended, "when the pictures show up on the black market, Jean-François will tell us, and we'll track the thief down and kill him." He added in response to my furrowed brows, "Jean-François's an art dealer, a very discreet one."

I was still puzzled. "Is that code for fence?"

"Nah, I mean he's not flamboyant ... uh, perhaps that's not the right word. He invites clients to his house very occasionally, but he doesn't mount shows to get publicity or have a public gallery."

"And he doesn't eat his clients on these visits, I take it?"

"That would definitely not be discreet."

I found that I had crossed my arms across my chest defensively. "My objection, you realize, is to the killing part, not the method of tracking down part," I said for clarification.

"Hyperbole, that's all."

"Yes," I agreed, "but I'm a little on edge about our hosts."

"You'll be fine," Emmett said. "We've got your security all set up."

"No, you should be on edge," Rosalie interrupted, her tone unsympathetic. "They're not the worst of their kind, but they're killers, the vast majority of us are, and you should understand that before you make any decisions that are final. It's not just -"

But the rest of her words were just so much noise, for Edward appeared in the doorway then, achingly beautiful in another dark gray suit and white shirt unbuttoned enough to tease me with a sliver of his chest, his eyes tense but still warm on me. Before I could finish my sharp inhale, he was in front of me, his hand in mine, helping me up from the sofa.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

"Always," I said, my fears forgotten.

As we left the salon, I distantly heard Rosalie mutter, "Fuck it. I give up. Edward, she's all yours."

The siblings had moved the cars from the garage when they returned just before dawn, and now two Mercedeses with tinted windows were waiting for us in the covered passageway to the building's interior courtyard.

Edward opened the front passenger door for me as Carlisle and Esme slipped into the back seat. Edward drove out of the courtyard, Rosalie at the wheel of the car behind us, and we made our way onto the expressway that encircled Paris. The Mercedeses, which would stand out so much in Forks, didn't stick out here – we were surrounded by Audis and Saabs and Citroens and exquisitely tiny cars I'd never seen in the States. My old pickup would be the sore thumb.

Soon we turned off the Périphérique and headed northwest. As I fiddled with the heating controls, never needing to ask if anyone else in the car was comfortable, I heard soft sighs coming from the back seat. Edward glanced into the rearview mirror and grinned, and I looked over my shoulder to see Esme lounging gracefully, barefoot, her eyes closed and her legs draped over Carlisle's lap. He was running his hands up her calves, under her brown wool trousers, gazing intently at his wife. I felt a stab of envy – that was not something Edward could do to me without planning - and I turned back to stare out the windshield. Edward smiled again and reached over to caress my covered left thigh. Well, that felt pretty damn good too, and I sighed happily myself.

We passed a signpost for Giverny, and I asked if they had been to Monet's garden. Edward and Carlisle laughed, and Esme squealed.

"Do you like gardens, Bella?" she asked eagerly.

"Of course," I said, confused. "Who doesn't? How couldn't you?"

"Your husband doesn't," she announced, as Edward groaned beside me.

"Really?" I turned slightly to look at him. "But you like architecture, and art … you're such a cultured person -"

"He likes culture, but not cultivation," Esme cackled.

"I prefer my landscapes as nature intended," Edward started, "wild –"

"And full of deer and lions," Carlisle finished.

"Philistine," Esme declared, then leaned forward to ruffle Edward's hair before turning to me. "Giverny is lovely, though not at its best in November. We'll find the right summer day to come back. But we should really go to England; the gardens look best on cloudy days anyway, and there are so many of them. And so many beautiful gardens: Sissinghurst, Hidcote, Wentworth…"

"Sounds good," I said. "Edward, what will you be doing while Esme and I do the grand tour?"

"Closing my eyes and thinking of England," he said, and the occupants of the back seat laughed. Great, I'm in a car with Carlisle and Esme laughing at a sex joke. "Of course I'd come with you. After all, I do like some particular flowers, Bella. I've become very fond of freesia, and lavender –"

"Awww," Esme and Carlisle chorused.

"Wait," I said, suddenly burning. "Do you all smell that? It's not just Edward?"

"Of course," Esme said, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. "Edward's not being poetic, you know. Everyone has a particular scent, and we can discern the various components of it, just as oenologists can taste the components for gunpowder or cassis or cinnamon in a Burgundy. Every vampire can detect the freesia, the honey, the lavender in you, quite separately from your blood. It's lovely. Don't be embarrassed, darling," she added, noting my cheeks. "We all have our aroma too, our particular flavors. What does Edward smell like to you?"

Eau de sex, but there's no way I'm admitting that. "Something indefinable, but delicious," I finally said. Edward chuckled beside me. Apparently, having his body odor discussed didn't bother him. "I don't smell the rest of you, though."

"No, because your senses are so dull," Esme said, but it wasn't a reproach, as it would be from Rosalie, just a statement of fact. "When I smell Edward, I smell -"

"Esme, perhaps we should let Bella find out on her own," Carlisle interrupted.

"Mmm, more romantic," she agreed.

This revelation about Edward made me think of another question. "Is there an art form all of you despise?" I asked. Music they seemed to like wholeheartedly, painting with some notable exceptions, but –

"Ballet," my three companions said instantly.

"Watching humans dance, even Nureyev and Tallchief …" Esme went on, shaking her head. "Even the most graceful are ludicrous."

"Except for you," Edward said gallantly.

"Especially me," I said ruefully.

"Not in my eyes," he responded with a smile before pulling my wrist to his lips for a soft kiss.

"So sweet!" Esme said in approval.

We eventually turned onto some country roads lined with a single row of denuded chestnut trees, fallow fields lying beyond that Esme said were yellow with rape or blue with flax in the summer. We slowed down to go through a village called Bosc-la-Forêt that would have looked as if it hadn't been touched since the 1820's if it weren't for the ugly 1950's café that seemed to be the sole commercial establishment there. The old man was smoking outside it was only person we saw as we crossed a lovely little arcaded bridge over a tributary of the Seine.

The land after the village was forested, explaining its name. Carlisle told me we were close and made a call on his cell, speaking in French too rapidly for me to catch any words.

A mile or so later, Edward pulled over at a wide gravel driveway whose iron gates stood open, and motioned Rosalie to precede him. His face wore a look of supreme concentration — he was listening as we followed the drive through the woods.

The forest thinned, then ended at an expanse of lawn that separated the woods from a symmetrically sprawling house, red brick edged with white stone quoins, gabled roof and tall French windows, the home of a 17th-century seigneur and his lady, it must have been once - it reminded me of the Place des Vosges in the Marais. Then I noticed the two men, one dark-haired, one blond, who stepped out onto the wide steps in front of the house as we followed the drive curving left and stopped in front of a single story building in the same red and white. It must have been the old stables, now empty of horses and probably full of expensive vampire-speed cars.

Edward was at my door a millisecond after the car stopped, and he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close as we all walked on a bridge over the dry moat, across more lawn and up the steps. The air was colder and rawer here than in Paris. The two of us hung back amid the exchanges of murmured bilingual greetings and embraces - if Edward could have politely hidden me behind his back, I think he would have. Finally the babble died down, and everyone turned to us. I had to squint against the sparkle overload.

Because I'm shallow that way, my gaze was first drawn to taller of the two strangers, perhaps the most beautiful man I had ever seen after Edward and Carlisle. His dark brown hair flowed in waves almost to his shoulders; his skin had paled to a golden hue, and he had astonishingly thick eyelashes that framed brown eyes. Though he was as tall as Edward, his build was closer to Jasper's; he must have been changed in his early 20s.

I tore my eyes away to his companion, who was shorter by several inches, his blond hair in a ponytail, wearing a pink linen suit with a sky blue tie completely inappropriate for season or the temperature. He too was wearing contacts, which had turned his irises an arresting, if unlikely, shade of deep blue. He looked, I realized after a few seconds, like one of the Bouchers I'd seen at the Frick in New York, needing only knee breeches and a frock coat to fit in one of the bucolic scenes, perhaps looking up a lady's skirt as she flew by on a swing decorated with garlands. Women didn't wear panties then, I thought randomly, and wondered where Danielle was hiding.

"Bella, Jean-François" - Edward indicated the blond man - "and Daniel." Oh, I finally got it; there was no discernable difference to me between the masculine and the feminine versions of the name. "This, of course, is Bella," he continued, and Jean-François was directly in front of me, looking inquiringly at Edward before darting his eyes at me. Whatever was in Jean-François's mind reassured Edward, for he nodded, and Jean-François took my hands in his cold ones. His lips gave my cheeks a double kiss almost before I realized it, and he beamed.

"I am honored to meet the beautiful woman who was able to captivate our friend Edward," he said in heavily accented English. If he hadn't been French I would have accused him of gushing, but he made his excesses sound natural. "Daniel and I were delighted to hear of your marriage. Please accept our felicitations."

"Thank you," I mumbled, rather stunned as Daniel stepped forward, and after a hesitation, gave me a swift double kiss. "You are very welcome, Bella," Daniel answered. He had a beautiful baritone to match his face, his accent indefinable.

I shivered in reaction to his temperature and to be honest, my nerves. The touch of our hosts gave me a feeling that was probably roughly akin to getting in a cage with a tiger that, you'd been assured, wasn't hungry - at the moment. Jean-François noticed, and was all apologies. "Forgive my bad manners, you must be cold," he said. "Come inside, we've heated the petit salon for you."

I felt like a grubby production intern among the models for a photo shoot for Town & Country as our hosts ushered us inside, Alice in her wasp-waisted striped jacket and flaring miniskirt, Emmett in his country gentleman's finery, Daniel in a charcoal suit and blinding white shirt that matched Edward's.

We stepped into a entrance hall with marble checkerboard floor and a hunting tapestry, then Jean-François led us through a billiards room, a library, a variety of sitting rooms. The small salon was small only in comparison to the huge rooms that preceded it. And it was warm, and charming – Esme's houses were wonderful, but she simply didn't have the raw material that Jean-François and Daniel had. French windows provided views of the woods on one side and a topiary garden on the other; the white paneled walls were covered with small drawings and pastels, unassuming portraits of long-gone men in cravats and women in gowns. A marquetry card table was positioned among one of the groupings of Louis chairs, and Daniel immediately started distributing cards to Esme, Emmett and Rosalie.

"What a gorgeous house," I told Jean-François as Edward deposited my knapsack on a table and helped me shrug off my coat. I was definitely gushing myself.

"Merci. You've timed your visit well – we're about to go underground for a while, so we'll be giving this house up. My dear," he added hospitably as he indicated a sofa for me and Edward to sit on, "may I offer you some coffee? Tea? A Cognac for this cold day?"

"No, thanks," I answered, trying not to shudder at the thought of Cognac. I'd tried some after dinner with Edward a few days ago, and could abide no more than a sip.

"Well, well," Jean-François said in a tone of mild surprise. Daniel and most of the Cullens erupted into applause, Em hooted, Rosalie rolled her eyes and Edward, I saw, looked a little smug ... as he had in Volterra, when Aro discovered my mind was impervious to his.

I stood up and gave an exaggerated curtsey to my audience. "You have a talent, I take it," I said to Jean-François when I resettled myself. "Was I … supposed to choose the Cognac?" He nodded and sat in an armchair opposite Edward and me.

"That's why Jean-François isn't allowed to play cards with the grown-ups," Emmett said as he arranged his hand.

"I can influence people's decisions, a useful ability in my profession," Jean-François said. "It's a mental version of Jasper's talent, I believe, and Carlisle tells me you're immune to mental talents?"

"So far," I said. Knock on wood, I thought, struck by the fear that I'd somehow screw up my change and end up talentless and useless. In response, Jean-François just stared at me with that unnerving vampire stillness.

"Um," I said awkwardly, "so how do you know the Cullens?"

Jean-François looked at Edward instead of me. "Edward! I'm hurt," he said in mock indignation. "You haven't told your blushing bride all about me?"

"She knows the most salient fact," Edward said pointedly, and Jean-François shrugged, though not apologetically. "Besides, I wouldn't want to deprive you of a chance to recount a story."

"Since you insist," he said, though we hadn't. Jean-François leaned forward, while around the card table across the room the others carried on their own conversations. "To put it bluntly, Carlisle saved me from having my head wrenched off by the Volturi," he said, and I flinched a little. "My story starts when I was 25, the seigneur of St.-Just, and a few other villages in the Loire Valley - you should visit it, Bella, it's a lovely area south of Paris. My life was good: I was too low-ranking to be required at Louis XV's court; my lands were productive enough that I could indulge my passion for horses; I had produced two sons and could now ignore my wife. I was the master of my little corner of France.

"One late summer day I was returning from visiting a young man in one of my villages. The sun was shining and I was riding in the woods on my best horse, Pégase - Pegasus to you - and suddenly teeth were scraping open my neck ..."

He paused and I imagined he was remembering the pain of the bite. "I don't know who it was, if it was even male or female," he continued. "But Pégase sensed my assailant before I did and somehow managed to flee with me to one of my fields where the harvesters were out in force. My people found me, I gather, took me to the chateau and watched over me for three days. I awoke at night, with a raging thirst and only my children's nurse in the chamber. I'm grateful that I didn't attack Mme de St.-Just and my sons, for it's only because of her prudent management and their survival that St.-Justs remain on my land today …

"When I was done, I leapt from the window and into the forest. But I was untutored and conspicuous, and the Volturi soon heard of me. They sent Carlisle, Demetri and Felix to track and subdue me. Demetri and Felix were in favor of ending me and going home, but Carlisle persuaded the other two to let me live - he thought I might be amenable to his peculiar diet.

"Carlisle was wrong, of course," Jean-François said, fluttering his hand dismissively, "but I admired him in other ways, at how comfortable he was around humans. I had been a sociable man before the attack, and once my thirst was under control, I wanted to have some possibility of society. Since I could no longer be around horses, I eventually turned to art, and found I had a good eye for young artists who were a good investment. Carlisle has an early Manet I acquired for him, for example."

The Manet in our cottage, I realized. Edward slid his cell from the inside pocket of his jacket and examined the number. "The footsie," he announced, prompting Alice to chirp in glee across the room. "Excuse me for a moment."

I was happy that he moved only a few steps away. "Yes, Gordon," he snapped in impatient investor mode, his eyes remaining intent on me.

"He's très protective of you," Jean-François observed, startling me.

I regarded him skeptically for a moment. "Considering the company, surely you can understand," I said. "Besides, he has had to save me a few times."

"Vraiment? Tell me."

"Are you doing all this for my benefit?" My nerves seemed to be making me irritable, and idiotically bold. Next to Alice, Jasper lifted his eyebrow at me.

"What?" Jean-François asked.

"The accent. If my experience with the Cullens is any guide, you have a flawless American or British accent. Or South African, for all I know."

"I do, oui," he replied. "But zuh clients adore mon accent français!"

"I'm not a client. I can't afford your paintings."

"If my experience with the Cullens is any guide," he parroted my words earlier, "you could buy my entire inventory. Which reminds me, I need to have a conversation with Alice…." he added as I stared at him. Edward routinely left account statements on top of my dresser before he shredded them, but I'd refused to look at them, fearing I'd get dizzy if I read the numbers. Jean-François's remark put the Cullens' wealth into a new realm.

"However, if it makes you more comfortable, I'll sound like a chinless British aristocrat," Jean-François drawled. He suddenly sounded like Prince Charles. "Now, do tell me about your adventures."

"Misadventures, more accurately," I grumbled, but I launched into my tale, knowing here was my chance to gain his sympathy. I spoke uncertainly at first, then with more confidence as Edward rejoined us and Jean-François seemed to drink in my words. I described how Edward had saved me from Tyler's van and the thugs in Port Angeles and James and then Victoria. I skipped over our time in Volterra and, more important, the wolves, since it wasn't my secret to share.

"You seem to have a bizarre fascination for our kind," Jean-François said when I finished my edited version of the newborn fight, unknowingly echoing Jane's words. I shuddered as I always did whenever something reminded me of that malevolent child.

"You can tell him about Volterra, love," Edward said quietly. "It's only fair that he knows."

Jean-François's unnaturally blue eyes widened in anticipation. "Ah, I do love a good Aro story, preferably one in which the greedy little tyrant is put in his place," he said. "He feels that he should have first refusal on my paintings, and without negotiations on the price."

"Is he still angry with you over selling that Ricciardo to the Met?" Edward asked.

"Greedy little tyrant," Jean-François repeated. "Do tell, Bella."

"Um, you're sort of harboring a fugitive, since I might have passed my expiration date. Edward, can you?" I pleaded. "You have more …context than me." Actually, I wasn't sure I could tell that story – it still hurt too much, even though we survived, even though we were together now. Edward nodded, and gave a succinct accounting that left Jean-François thoughtful.

"Aro will try to get you back, sooner or later," he said. He looked at Edward. "But I see that I'm not telling you anything you don't already know."

"I'm all too aware of that, yes," Edward said, and we were silent for a moment.

"Jean-François, Daniel," Carlisle called out, "we were hoping to take advantage of your woods while we were here, if that's acceptable to you."

"I expected as much," Jean-François answered, then walked to a corner, pulling out a topographical map from a rectangular wooden box with narrow drawers. He laid the flat paper on a sofa table and Esme, Jasper, Edward and I gathered around it. Our hosts' land adjoined a national forest, and Jean-François pointed out areas where hiking trails had been recently blazed. I suspected that if I hadn't been there, he would have been much more macabre about the dining possibilities offered by hikers.

"What will you hunt?" I asked.

"Red deer," Edward said without a great deal of enthusiasm. "There are no predators here, so the forests are overrun."

"The boar are in rut," Jean-François put in, wrinkling his nose. "Isn't that a little better?" His tone suggested that "a little better" wasn't very appetizing.

"Jean-François," Esme chided him. "It wouldn't hurt you to try it. Well, boys, shall we?"

Three spouses saw off three hunters, who promised us they wouldn't be long and blurred through the gardens and lawns before disappearing into the brush. Carlisle took Esme's place at the card table, and I sat down next to Alice.

"What are you playing?" I asked.

"Bridge," Daniel answered as he dealt. "The Cullens know that they have to play on their visits to us. I seize any opportunity when I have enough company for a table … without cheats."

"And then he ignores me," Jean-François said mournfully, which is just what Daniel did. "So it is up to you to entertain me, Bella. Tell me where your husband has been taking you."

Figuring he didn't want to hear about my dinners, I described the intensive art education Edward was giving me. I was relieved to find that Jean-François didn't entirely agree with Edward about which painters were most admirable — he was fond of the Caillebotte I had liked so much in Chicago, of the rainy day in Paris.

"I find it a charming painting," Jean-François said, "but perhaps that's because it reminds me so strongly of the first decade I spent with Daniel." Daniel dropped his pretense of ignoring his mate and gave him a fond look.

I went on to describe what we had seen in Paris, and Jean-François praised my unimpressed reaction to the "Mona Lisa."

"That is because you have excellent taste, Bella," he said. "Leonardo is a disgrace to vampires." There were murmurs of agreement around me.

It took a few seconds for that to soak in. "Leonardo da Vinci?" I asked stupidly.

"Mais oui," Jean-François said to tease me.

"But his paintings," I protested, again mentally picturing La Joconde in her sad little glass box. "They're not like Ricciardo's paintings."

"Let's just say that as an artist, Leonardo was a very good inventor," he snorted. "That's why you actually see his works in the museums rather than hidden away in Volterra," casually dismissing the world's most famous painter. "He's always asking me to sell some of his paintings, and I always turn him down."

This was too much. "You're joking, right?" I asked.

"Yes," he conceded. "I have stored several 15th-century canvases for him to scrawl on. My commission alone would be extraordinary …" he trailed off, calculating.

"Where is he now?" Carlisle asked from the card table. "I haven't seen him in ages." I wondered if Carlisle might mean that literally.

"Electronic Arts," Jean-François answered as if that said everything.

Rosalie took pity on me and explained: "Computer geek is not a bad role. You're inside all the time, you work odd hours, by yourself, if you want, you pretend to eat Hot Pockets at your keyboard. And everyone expects you to be pasty and socially awkward anyway."

"He's made a fortune in stock options," Jean-François said enviously. "But he should have done a better job on Dead Space — really, it's scandalous if he had anything to do with it. Perhaps he should try to invent something useful, like color contacts that won't dissolve."

"If you followed our diet, you wouldn't need contacts," Carlisle said.

"So you've mentioned," Jean-François said, his tone unpromising, and Carlisle shook his head.

"How could Leonardo disappear?" I asked. "I mean, he was pretty famous in his lifetime, wasn't he?"

"Humans are easily fooled," Jean-François said airily. "An old man calling himself Leonardo moves to France from Italy at King François's invitation. He is accompanied by a handsome young Italian nobleman. A few years later, the old man dies. The young man inherits everything, returns to Italy and disappears from history. The old man's grave disappears when the churches are gutted in the Revolution. No DNA test will ever prove that Leonardo didn't die in 1519. Nor that he did."

A nugget of biographical information that I shouldn't write down on my art history final, I thought. It was rather a relief when Jean-François offered to show me around the house. I put my coat back on, and Carlisle and Alice followed Jean-François and me, leaving Em and Rosalie to play faro with Daniel. The place had passed through many families in its four centuries of existence, and walking through the rooms was like having a tour of interior decoration trends through the ages.

We ended up in a sunny gallery where Jean-François and Daniel kept the most important paintings – mostly Impressionists and later, Vuillard, Pissarro, Toulouse-Lautrec, even a Caillebotte still life of flowers that was almost abstract, artists I'd heard of but works that I'd never seen. These were the paintings that made rare appearances in exhibitions labeled only "Private collection," pictures that weren't on greeting cards in every gift shop in every museum. I was acutely aware of how privileged I was.

Jean-François left us in mid-tour when his cellphone vibrated; it was a client, he said, adding that Carlisle knew the paintings here almost as well as he did, so I was in good hands. Alice's face went blank a second, and she excused herself as well. But my father-in-law didn't continue showing me around. Instead he stopped, and guided me to an upholstered bench that sat in one of the window alcoves. We sat there for a few moments quietly, and I wondered what he wanted.

"I thought I should take an opportunity to talk with you while Edward is away," he finally started, and I tensed, because I realized that this was my opportunity too, to ask Carlisle about my tremors. "How are you feeling? You're very pale."

I couldn't help but snort. "Well, that's the pot calling the kettle white, isn't it?"

He smiled. "I mean, you're paler than when I saw you last. I think the others don't notice because they see you every day. And you look tired. … Is college too much? Are you getting enough sleep?"

"College is fine, and living with Edward, I probably get less sun than even in Forks. But I feel great. I haven't even gotten a cold."

"Living with Edward, you're not likely to get one. We're not disease vectors."

"And theoretically I'm not getting enough sleep," I said, knowing I didn't need to explain why. "But it's worth it. And I feel fine." I stared at the window opposite me for while before steeling myself enough to continue. "I do, however, I need to ask you something."

"Alice has herded everyone over to the stables so we have privacy, if that helps," Carlisle said. He added carefully, "Are you asking me as your father-in-law, or as a doctor?"

"As a doctor. I don't want Edward to know," I said, and stopped, feeling a sob invade my throat. I took a few seconds to compose myself before I continued shakily. "I don't want him to think it's his fault. Ever."

"I won't tell him anything you don't want me to, sweetheart," Carlisle said soothingly, running his hand along my back. "Tell me what is troubling you."

I recounted the episodes I had been having, and how they were assuaged by Edward's touch. "I thought at first they were panic attacks, but I don't think so anymore - I don't fear them, they're not debilitating, I just worry about Edward's reaction. I do not want him to freak out. He can't think again that I'm not strong enough to be with him. I am," I said fiercely. I bit savagely on my lip to stop my tears.

"Bella, shh," Carlisle said softly, pulling me into his hard arms, pressing my head against his gray sweater. "Edward is not going to leave again. It's impossible. He cannot."

I gulped in air to try to calm myself at hearing Carlisle say this aloud. "He would think it's his fault," I whispered.

Carlisle sighed. "It is his nature to feel responsible," he agreed. "But he will stay with you no matter what. And he knows you better now, he sees every day how strong you are. If what you have experienced had happened to any one of my other patients, I'd have diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder long ago and written a prescription. You're going to be okay."

Carlisle's face had been the very definition of compassionate as we talked. He'd doctored me before, of course, but for spills and sprains and things easily mended. Now I saw him as his oncology patients probably saw him, giving them strength for the next round of chemo, soothing their fears as they awaited the biopsy results.

His next words were not particularly soothing, though.

"There are two possible theories that I see immediately. You could really be having panic attacks – you haven't had any episodes here, away from Hanover, and the beginning of college with its attendant anxieties is a common time for them.

"But from what you've said, I don't think that's likely. So I have another theory, and it's actually why I wanted to talk with you without Edward. Will you indulge me?"

"Sure." My voice was muffled by the thick cashmere of his sweater, and I pulled away so I could see his face.

He gazed at me, not bothering to pretend to need to blink. "We have very intense relationships with our mates. I think you are beginning to become aware of this. It will always be powerful, Bella – what I feel for Esme, what Edward feels for you, cannot be described. Human couples have a period called limerence in the beginning of their relationships, a time of intense feeling, of first love, of compulsive desire, that usually fades in a few years. For a small minority of couples, it lasts for decades. Scientists call them 'swans.'" He paused for a moment to let me absorb that.

"For us, a much stronger form of it is a permanent state. For a human, to be the object of that devotion, to feel it even imperfectly … perhaps it is taking a toll on you. The irony, of course, is that my family's self-control – the thing that makes it possible for you and Edward to be together – would make this harder for you."

"What do you mean?"

"My line, which unfortunately makes me sound like a teacher in a sex ed class in Texas, is that abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. Jean-François and Daniel, even as bonded as they are, don't have the sort of connection that we have. Because we are restrained in hunting, we redirect our energies into our mates. That's a lot of energy to absorb, emotionally. "

"So you don't think there is something physical wrong with me?"

"Your scent is unchanged," Carlisle said matter-of-factly. "As Esme said, lavender, freesia, vampire."

"What?"

He just looked at me and waited. One beat, two beats, blush. I guess showers didn't entirely wash Edward away.

"With all this in mind, have you decided when you might become like us?" Carlisle asked softly. I started to speak, but he went on. "I know I said that your decision shouldn't be affected by the Volturi, but you might want to consider your own mental health, and Edward's."

"Edward's? Has he talked to you about - sorry, I know I shouldn't ask."

"It's all right. But you should talk to him about this. You've been able to talk about other things, and that worked out, did it not?"

"Yeah," I said, flushing again as I recalled our discussion about my period last month. "And yeah, I have decided. But I want to tell Edward first."

"Of course. Whenever you're ready, we're ready for you," he said, giving me a smile that lighted up his whole face. Even though I was married to the most stunning man on the planet, it left me a little dazed.

"Okay," I said, shaking my head to clear it. "Um, so what should I do about my … love overdose?"

Carlisle laughed at that. "Maybe it's not an overdose," he said. "Maybe it's an addiction."

"Oh, you mean that I haven't had an episode this week because I spent most all of it with Edward?"

"Perhaps," he said, growing more serious. "But this is all purely speculative. I hate to say it, but I'm going to have to research this."

The memory of conference calls and rabbits flashed through my mind. "There won't be any animal testing this time, will there?" I asked.

"No, I'm not Dr. Doolittle, I'm afraid. And while you and Edward are unique, human-vampire relationships are not. I'm going to ask Tanya to visit you. I won't tell her the real reason, so she won't inadvertently alert Edward – she's never been as adept as the rest of us at hiding her thoughts from him –"

Yeah, her seductive thoughts, I thought with mounting dismay.

"— but she's the most likely of all of us to have some perspective on this. Is that okay?"

I nodded, even though the last thing I wanted was Tanya to join the boarding school graduates of Dartmouth in pursuing my husband. I gave Carlisle a hug. "Thank you for listening, Dad."

Carlisle was pointing out our hosts' Ricciardos through the centuries when Alice returned. The painter had anglicized his name and changed his style in keeping with the fashions of the times – I was particularly struck by a streetscape of New York from the '70s that was astonishing in its realism.

"Bella, are you hungry? Would you like to have lunch now?" she asked as she skipped in.

"Alice, why are you even asking me?" I said with a laugh, as Carlisle and I automatically walked toward her.

"I like to give you the illusion of choice sometimes."

A place setting sat in solitary splendor on a round table in a corner of the dining room, a glass of red wine already poured. Daniel pushed open a concealed door in the paneling as I slipped off my coat again and we sat down. Behind him I could see a dark, narrow stairway, down to the basement kitchen, I presumed.

"I assumed that you would understand if I didn't cook," Daniel said, depositing a platter on the table and then sitting opposite me. "How I endured course after course at dinners when I was human, I'll never understand."

"This looks great," I said in thanks, helping myself to some incredibly thin slices of ham. It was all the sort of food that needed no preparation and would keep a long time – hard cheese, olives, cured meats – and since it was French, it was delicious. Unfortunately, as the only one eating at a table of four, I felt extremely self-conscious. So I asked Daniel how he had met Jean-François, and he politely obliged.

"It was 1867," he began, "and I had been invited for a dinner party at La Païva's ostentatious house on the Champs-Elysées." He paused at my blank expression, and explained, "She was a notorious courtesan of the time and she had found me interesting for professional reasons - I was a Goldschmidt and was about to marry one of my Rothschild cousins." I nodded as I chewed a piece of dry sausage, knowing at least that famous name.

"Everyone in Paris wanted to see the inside of her town house – she had commissioned a particularly atrocious Cabanel, for example," he said with distaste. "As was La Païva's wont, the party was made up of men, except for her. I don't remember any of them, except for one."

"Jean-François?"

"Yes. Jean-François had supplied her with some works and had charmed her, of course. There is a word in French, médusé - you know, you turn into stone by looking directly at Medusa? - that describes the effect he had on me." I knew that well. "When he signaled for me to leave, I did so without thinking or hesitation. As courtships go," he said wryly, "it was very short. And he did turn me into stone."

Alice's eyes widened in a rare instance of surprise, and then alarm, as Jean-François materialized behind Daniel. A second later Emmett loomed in the doorway. While the Cullens trusted their friends, they were engaging in a careful choreography to make sure the odds were always in my favor, I saw.

"Yes, if I had been able to control myself like your Edward we could have gotten our hands on a share of the Rothschild fortune," Jean-François said as he and Emmett joined us at table. "Unlike La Païva, I obviously didn't want Daniel for his money."

Daniel looked at him reprovingly. I guessed this was a discussion that they had had before. "It was fortunate timing because Caroline was able to marry one of my cousins without waiting for me to be declared dead," Daniel said. "She was able to have a much happier marriage with him than she would have had with me."

"And … you were happy with what happened?" I asked hesitantly, not sure if it was polite.

Daniel didn't mind. "Yes, once I settled down, because I was meant to be with Jean-François," he said. His mate touched one of his hands folded on the table. "Still, I missed my family more than most who have turned, I think.

"For obvious reasons, our family was very close-knit, and it was fortunate that Jean-François had a similar sense of family pride, because he understood my urge to help from afar. My family's money meant that they escaped much of the indignities that Jews suffered in that era, but even wealth wasn't a guarantee when the 1930s arrived. And while my diet is the very definition of trayf – "

"Non-kosher," Emmett the religious scholar put in for my benefit.

"- I still had that connection. That is why I am so grateful that your family helped my family."

"When?" I asked, confused.

"During the last war, of course. Don't you know?"

Daniel shot a look at Alice next to me. "I wasn't there," she said, and pointed at her brother. "Blame Emmett. Or Carlisle. Or Edward." Carlisle and Emmett both shrugged, looking almost embarrassed.

"They guided some of my old family and their friends out of Germany and France so they could get to ports and wait for passage to other countries – that is," Daniel added harshly, "when those other countries would deign to accept them."

His bitterness was heavy in the room, and I was too astonished to ask any of the questions roiling in my head – how, where, why? It was a forceful reminder of how little I knew my husband in some ways. He knew how to make me come apart at his touch, every detail of my childhood was locked in his memory, but what he was doing in 1942? I had no clue.

"It is a long story, Bella," Daniel went on. "Make Edward overcome his modesty and tell it to you."

"Absolutely," I promised.

"Indeed, they're heading back," Alice said, and like Daniel, without thinking or hesitation I pushed my chair back and stood up. I followed her through the French window to the terrace outside, not bothering to fetch my coat. Carlisle came to join us, and we watched our glinting blurs return, Alice grinning at something I could not yet see.

They were ... filthy, I saw in astonishment. Their pants were muddy, their shirts torn. Esme's hair was filled with dead leaves, and Edward had a streak of dirt across his cheek. They were beaming.

There was a resounding thunk as Esme's leap pushed Carlisle into the brick façade – Edward had once told me that Esme was always particularly "energetic" after a hunt - while Alice and Jasper embraced more sedately, and Edward hesitated. "I might make you dirty," he warned me.

"I hope you do," I murmured, and I vaguely heard laughs behind me from Daniel and Jean-François as Edward folded me into his cold arms. He smelled wonderfully of himself and yes, sex, and the musk of the forest.

All too soon I had to step back with a shiver, and Daniel asked, "What happened to you three?"

"We found a bear," Edward answered. I reached up to pull a pine needle from his hair. He looked extraordinarily sexy, even the smears of dirt highlighting the symmetry of his face.

"There are no bears in these woods," Jean-François said with perfectly French assurance.

"There are now," Edward said, smiling down at me.

"You didn't –" I asked, puzzled.

"No, the brown bear is endangered in France," he said. "We wouldn't take down the last bear in the forest."

By this time, Emmett and Rosalie had arrived to hear the story. "What happened was that Grace over here - " Edward nodded toward Jasper "- scented the bear and stopped short, without thinking. Esme and I both crashed into him and we all fell into the mud. We had to investigate the bear, of course, and we came upon a sow and two yearling cubs."

"And she was pissed," Emmett said happily.

"Extremely. She took some swipes at us, and we backed off. Emmett, yes, northeast, over the stream," he told his brother, and Emmett and Rosalie raced off.

"It looks as if some washing up and new clothes are in order," Daniel said, and Esme said, "Oh, please," with a laugh. Jean-François went off to take another call and Daniel led us inside to the broad staircase in the entrance hall before stopping at the first step.

He held up his hand and looked at me consideringly. "Wait for few minutes, and I'll set up a room for you," he told me. "No. 8 will be the warmest now." He then took the three hunters upstairs to find clothes, and I sadly watched Edward go.

I retrieved my knapsack from the small salon, having decided to call Renee from upstairs and see how Phil had fared in cooking their Thanksgiving dinner two days before. We had talked on her Thursday morning, but I'd spent most of the call answering Phil's questions about roasting times. At least there probably wouldn't be a kitchen fire this year.

In honor of the holiday, I too had had a bird for dinner. It was squab. Tasted like chicken.

Alice and Carlisle had stayed downstairs with me, and they flanked me as I climbed the stairs instead of sprinting up to their spouses as they undoubtedly would have preferred. The second floor was a long row of bedrooms, numbered as in a hotel, and Alice nudged me toward the door marked with an iron 8. I could hear water running as I stepped in and softly said, "Hey, sweetie."

"I'll be just a few moments," Edward called back.

Like all the rooms I'd seen in this house, this one was lovely, with all the charm that came from the sun pouring through French windows and gleaming parquet and an antique wardrobe and a curious version of a daybed, with a sofa back and sides but a full size mattress for sleeping … or whatever Jean-François and Daniel intended it for. An old porcelain stove painted with blue flowers provided more heat for the room – Daniel must have started a fire in it for me. The woodwork on the wall was a faded bluish-green that made me think of the eggs at the small farmers' market in Hanover, and the panels were painted with scenes from Aesop's fables, I decided, deciphering on one the fox disdainfully turning his back on a heavily laden grape arbor.

I dropped my knapsack on an upholstered bench and delved inside for my phone. My fingers encountered something unexpected and silky and I drew out a length of sheer blue fabric with a gold border. It was the material that Alice had bought when I went to Queens with her and Rosalie all those weeks ago. Hmmm. Alice Cullen, sex facilitator.

I saw an iPod and its player looking extraordinarily out of place on a chest of drawers with ormolu fittings, and looping the silk around my neck, I wandered over to turn it on. There was only one playlist, titled "Shag," and checking it out was irresistible: what would a centuries-old French vampire couple choose as songs for fucking? I had my finger poised to silence the music immediately if needed, but instead a woman's voice breathed out over a piano chord: If I should die this very moment, I wouldn't fear/ for I've never known completeness like being here…

The key to the wardrobe was in its lock, and I turned it open to see if there were electric blankets. I was out of luck there, only regular blankets and a couple of robes, but I got distracted by the mirror on the inside of the door. The blue silk suited me. I toed off my shoes and shucked my clothes quickly, then draped the fabric around my chest and torso as best as I could, tying the ends into a bow and wishing I had the skills of the Indian women who wear saris.

"Is this a present for me?" Edward purred suddenly behind me. "You definitely should have. And the wrapping is quite attractive as well."

I breathed in sharply as his bare chest pressed into my shoulder blades, his skin warmer than mine for the moment. Our eyes met in the mirror, darkening gold burning into brown, before he bent his face into the curve of my neck, his damp hair brushing my ear, his tongue on my skin. Bliss.

The piano chords of the song on the iPod had transitioned into a sensual beat. "Wanna stay right here, till the end of time, till the earth stops turning/gonna love you until the seas run dry/ I've found the one I've waited for/ all I've known, all I've done, all I've felt, was leading to this…"

Hands trailed down my shoulders and arms to my palms, fingers underneath intertwined with mine and lifted to caress my collarbones, then lowered to cover my breasts and tease my nipples. My breath came out in whimper as he and I watched the woman in the mirror writhe and arch, uncontrolled. The blood rushed into my cheeks; it was too much, and I tilted back my head and pressed it against his chest.

"Open your eyes," he whispered. "Look at yourself. Look at me. You're exquisite. I always want you." I forced my head back up and saw our hands descend farther, curving over my hipbones and pulling me back so I could feel his erection though the bath sheet tucked in around his waist.

The music changed, another woman's voice. "Don't think about all those things you fear/ Just be glad to be here…"

His right hand moved mine onto my sex, our fingers warm on my flesh beneath the silk. The tiny delay between what I felt and what I saw magnified the effect of his touch on me, and his arm wrapped around the front of my waist to hold me up as I swayed from the sensation of climax, my eyelids too heavy to stay open.

Edward held me against him as I regained strength in my legs, and our eyes met in the mirror. "Can I open my present now?" he asked, one side of his mouth curling up.

I smiled back at him. "You can open it anytime you want, you know that," I murmured. He started to guide me toward the odd bed, but the light hit his skin as we stepped away from the wardrobe, and I stopped. Here was a place we could both be in the sun.

"Let's go by the window," I suggested, pointing to the rectangles of light on the floor. A second or so later, the mattress and its duvet were on the parquet, and Edward beckoned me to him. I stepped into the sun, and the blue silk fell away under his hands, leaving me bare and flecked with reflected light.

"Exquisite," he said again.

"You aren't bad yourself," I said with a wink, then I yelped as he scooped me up and laid me down on the mattress. The sheets were old and soft.

"Arms over your head, baby," he said above me. I stretched up, and he wound my discarded wrapping around my arms, not tightly, but enough to make my chest bow up in an intriguing way.

"Can you free yourself if you need to?" he asked, and I hmmed. "Perfect," he went on, running a finger over my arched sternum. "But no cheating."

"You're cheating," I complained. "You still have a towel on."

"True, and you can't do anything about it." He cut off my protest by pressing his lips to mine, and I forgot for several moments what my complaint was. He moved down, and once safely away from my mouth, he opened his, running his tongue along my jaw and down my neck, the strong sun warming the trails of venom on my skin. He sucked at the swell of my breasts, and then my nipples, and my back arched more at my body's pleasure in this position and my arms pulled against the material trapping them.

"Behave," he stopped to warn, and I retaliated by using my toes to tug the bath sheet from his waist.

"Hah!" I gloated.

"Clever girl," he said in approbation, and returned to my breasts. Another woman's voice, a breathy one:

"L'eau et le vin, je veux l'eau et le vin/ La terre et le venin …"

After he was satisfied that he tortured me enough there, he moved down, the sight of his beautifully mussed head over my hips making my stomach curl deliciously. He hesitated above my sex, as he always did, looking for abrasions on my fragile skin. I wish he didn't have to worry about that, I thought.

He inhaled then and lowered his mouth to my clit, moving slowly at first, and I gasped and moaned at his tongue, and his fingers twisting with infinite care inside me, again and again.

"I'm so glad to have you, and I'm getting worse/I'm so mad to love you, and your evil curse..."

As he gripped my hips to hold me close to him, the air around us seemed to change, the sunlight thickening, each dust mote seeming to have triplets. Our playfulness dissipated, replaced by an urgent desire, his mouth moving hungrily on me. I came long and loud, not thinking of our sharp-eared neighbors, nor my climax bringing me release. I cheated and freed my arms, then I pulled impatiently at his to bring him on top of me. He pushed in without pausing, and I wrapped my legs around his waist in an effort to pull him nearer, able only to babble "yes, yes, yes" to his thrusts.

"Vivo, mordiendo/ Voy, sintiendo el vacío …"

The glints on his skin softened as the sun descended, but we kept moving together, Edward tireless, I unheeding of my exertions, both of us in a haze in which only the connection of our bodies mattered and satiation was impossible. I was addicted to him, his skin searing on mine even though his borrowed heat was fading. The blue silk twisted around us, floating over my shoulders as I moved over him, wrapping around his erection, ripping in his hands as I put my mouth on him. When the last ray of sun left the window, a violent shiver swept my body, and Edward yanked his head up from my neck even as his hips continued to circle over me.

"I'm so sorry," he said, his expression horrified. He pulled the duvet over my torso, and I whimpered at the loss of his skin on me. "I'm sorry, and I just don't want to stop."

"I don't want you to," I breathed out, emphasizing my words with my hips.

He shook his head. "You don't understand. It's fucking Jasper, and I mean that in two senses of the word. Get out," he growled, and I finally got what he was saying.

A few seconds later I could hear Alice's laugh trailing away on the grounds below us, and the quality of the atmosphere lightened as she and Jasper and his empathetic circle of desire put distance between themselves and our bedroom. Edward sighed in relief and slid his hand in between us. "Come, love, and I can let you rest," he murmured hypnotically, and then his fingers again assured that I did. He slumped over me briefly in his own release before pulling away and arranging the bedspread around me completely. I shivered in my cocoon. He looked stricken.

"I'm going to move you over to the bed – it should be warmer there now," he said. I was too much of a boneless, exhausted mass to object as he carried me and the mattress to the other side of the room.

Edward found matches and lighted the candles in the sconces before coming to curl around me on the bed. I blinked sleepily at the play of light on the wall.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I think I should be asking you that," he replied. "Perhaps Aro was right. Perhaps he was just off on the timing."

"Huh," I said, after having had to search through my memory of our conversation about Aro's assumptions about our honeymoon before I understood him. "Do you think one can become a vampire through an excess of sex?"

"I wish that were true," he answered humorlessly. "Surely that's more pleasant than the usual way."

"Actually, I'm sort of surprised the Jasper Effect hasn't happened to us before," I said.

"He's generally been careful to stay away from us at crucial times, and it's helped that we've lived apart. But …." he added more slowly, stroking my hair, careful not to touch my skin, "you have experienced it before."

"I don't remember that."

"You wouldn't. It was the last night you stayed over with me before the wedding. You had a dream. I had to leave."

I did recollect that night, and the memory erased some of my languor. It had been a very … inconclusive dream, one where I was repeatedly on the verge, and then Edward would be pulled away from me by interruptions of various kinds: Charlie in the hallway, Alice knocking at the door, even Mrs. Cope walking in as we inexplicably necked in the school office, his hand on the seam of my jeans. I had woken up hot and bothered and alone.

"I remember that dream," I said.

"Was it a good dream?" he asked hopefully.

"No," I answered. "It was frustrating, like our sex life at the time."

"Ah," he said. "I may not have had that dream, but I know the feeling very well…. What is this music?"

The iPod was still playing. "If I could sleep forever/ I could forget about everything …"

"It's their 'Shag' playlist," I said, pulling my hands out of the duvet to make quotation marks.

"But almost all the songs are about biting and letting go and dying," Edward said.

"Maybe they mean la petite mort?" I suggested.

"Hmmm, a bilingual orgasm joke? You know, you have a more talented mouth than you give yourself credit for," he said, looking at my lips before pressing his to mine.

"Sooooo," I said significantly when we pulled apart. "I had an interesting conversation with Daniel while you were out. You didn't tell me the Cullens were Righteous Gentiles." Yes, I knew about "Schindler's List."

"That makes us sound more heroic than we were," he said, looking uncomfortable, then falling silent.

"How did it all come about?" I finally prompted him.

"You remember that I told you that we came over here for the first time in '39?" I nodded. "The war in Europe started shortly after we arrived, but we didn't want to have to return to the States so soon. And we realized we would have difficulties if we did, since, as you know, we have to avoid the draft. But then Daniel asked for our help."

He went on to describe the anti-Semitism they had seen in the States, and the even more virulent anti-Semitism they encountered in France, how so many of the art dealers Jean-François and Daniel knew, both in France and Germany, were Jewish and desperate to save their families. Daniel led the rescues, particularly at first, because this was the first time in Europe for all the Cullens except for Carlisle, and even for him, things had changed considerably in the decades he'd been away, busy with a family of newborns.

It was a way to help without attracting much notice – the people they rescued never knew their real names, and while they may have been instinctively wary of the Cullens, they never suspected their saviors' true nature. After all, it made sense to hike at night and hide from the authorities in the daytime, to travel across the countryside living off the land. The Cullens forged identity cards and ration coupons, stole cars and dazzled border guards. Rosalie and Carlisle, especially, pretended to be escapees' spouses, but Edward did sometimes as well, and I was a little jealous even so many decades later. They guided refugees over the Pyrenees into the care of Jewish aid groups in neutral Spain and Portugal, or less often, since the Swiss were known to reject or expel Jews fleeing the Reich, over the Alps into Switzerland. Daniel took particular satisfaction from leading the elderly grandchildren of his former fiancée to safety – and from draining Nazis.

"He said that he wanted to show them a Jew who truly was a bloodsucker before they died," Edward said, grimacing.

"As the war went on, our work became both easier and harder," he continued quietly. "It was easier because the Resistance became more organized, so there were more safe houses and routes in and out of France. But it was also harder, because more and more often we would go to a rendezvous point and nobody would be there – everyone had already been sent to the camps."

I could see that the memory of those missed meetings disturbed him. "But you still saved a lot of people," I noted.

"A tiny number compared with six million."

"You are an amazing man, Edward Cullen," I said firmly. I wished so much right then that I could have my arms around him. When I had teased him about sneaking across borders a few days ago, I had had no idea how right I was. "What was Jean-François doing while you were crossing mountains?"

"When the Germans invaded, Jean-François was well established as a dealer in that particular incarnation. He saw firsthand the extensive looting the Nazis were doing, thousands and thousands of works, and it infuriated him as a dealer and a Frenchman. He helped hide paintings the Nazis coveted. He cultivated people at the Jeu de Paume, where confiscated paintings were sent, and at the German office in Paris that oversaw the looting - it allowed him to feed information about shipments to the Resistance so saboteurs wouldn't blow up the trains carrying art to Germany. And he sold fakes to Reichsmarschall Goering, to finance our activities. When the war ended, he and Daniel disappeared from France for a while, and we … went back to high school."

"That must have been quite a transition for you."

"You have no idea," he said.

My conversations with Jean-François had left me with another question. "Jean-François and Daniel's collection must be worth a fortune, and this house, too … so why is Jean-François so obsessed with money?" I asked.

Edward grinned, and put his mouth almost directly on my ear. "He plays the ponies – badly," he whispered. "Perhaps if he could physically approach a racehorse, he'd be able to bet wisely, but he can't. It drives Daniel to distraction." He pulled away from me and frowned. "You're still cold, and we should bathe and dress. Everyone's returned by now and we do have a plane to catch."

"Oh, and I guess we've been pretty rude to Jean-François and Daniel," I said.

"Don't worry. They greatly enjoyed the Jasper Effect."

Indeed, when Edward and I finally made our way downstairs, Jean-François and Daniel looked extraordinarily content – I'd even say sleepy if that were possible.

"Alice and Jasper have been such an interesting addition to your family," Jean-François told Carlisle as we embraced and exchanged farewells on the steps, the lights from inside illuminating the night for me. "As I sure you will be too," he hastened to tell me, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "It has been such a pleasure telling you my old stories. And just think, I'll get to do it all over again someday!"

We said goodbye to Esme and Carlisle at Logan airport the next day with hugs and reminders that we'd see one another in just a few weeks for the winter break. My parents-in-law left for their connection to Seattle, and the rest of us made our way through the chill and dark to our cars for the journey to Hanover and the resumption of class the following day. Edward hadn't driven far on the 1-93 before Alice squealed in the back seat behind me.

"Jasper, great news - we're going to have a guest!" she burbled happily. "Tanya's coming for a visit!"

Oh, yeah, great news.

A/N:

Songs: "Gorecki," Lamb; "Hayling," FC Kahuna; "L'eau et le vin" (lyric: "I want water and wine, earth and venom"), Vanessa Paradis; "Blindfold," Morcheeba; "Olvido" ("I live, biting/ I go, feeling emptiness"), Capitan Melao; "Sleep," Dandy Warhols.

I wondered what the Cullens did during WWII, since SMeyer didn't say. Having them smuggle Jews from Germany is a bit of wish fulfillment: there'd be many more members of the Price family around today if it weren't for Hitler. Jean-François is inspired a bit by Han van Meegeren, the Dutch forger who did sell fakes to Goering and was hailed as hero after the war. The Victorian art critic was John Ruskin (his poor wife eventually got an annullment). Leonardo da Vinci's young friend was Francesco Melzi, and the circumstances of Leonardo's death were as Jean-François described them, which allowed me to have a little fun.

A wash sale occurs when you sell a stock then repurchase it shortly afterward. It screws up your taxes.

Jewish dietary law forbids blood consumption.

Thank you, Sugarbritches, for the recs on ADF!

My own recs: if you like ExB gallivanting around French museums, check out "Incunabula" by suitablyironicmoniker, in which they run around Eastern Europe and look for the earliest printed books, and "This Buried Life" by emmanuelle nathan, in which they cavort rather dirtily on the London Tube and at the British Museum. Both on my favorites list.

Art links on my profile page.

Two chapters to go.