Recap: Last chapter, Seth and Raquel arrive to warn Bella of what Edward is. Edward discovers from Seth's thoughts that Jacob is planning to expose Bella's relationship with a student. Raquel is appalled, and she and Bella go have a drink at the tavern to hash this over (and so that Edward can't read her mind). Raquel asks Bella if she's told her immortal boyfriend about her family history and her mother, and Bella admits that she hasn't. In the parking lot, two drunks harass Raquel, and Seth shows up to save her. Back at her house, Bella is treated to a perk of being with a vampire.
Since it's been so long, a reminder that a few chapters back, when Old Quil Aterea was telling Bella about Quileute history, he mentioned that Eliza Teague's sister and father were killed by vampires.
I loved your response to Bella and Raquel's bar talk. Sisters before misters, as Renee Aubin says.
Many thanks to Camilla10, and to Mr. Price, even if he told me I was an unbearable pedant.
Chapter 14: Inti omri wa inti hayati
I slid down off Edward's back, staring at the gray modern house in front of me. There were vampires inside, I knew, but I didn't know how many, and it would be impossible to tell from the tall, blank façade facing me.
"No windows?" I asked warily, not having expected to be visiting a dungeon.
Edward laughed. "They're on the other sides. This is what's called a passive heating house, so, indeed, no windows on the north wall. And isn't it convenient that anyone who drops by uninvited won't be able to see in?"
That was doubly true because a wooden fence and thickets of evergreen huckleberry flanked the house and multi-bay garage – nobody would be able to venture farther onto the property without blatantly trespassing. I nodded without answering, and at my silence Edward looked down at me to ask, "Are you afraid?"
I considered that a moment. "I'm … nervous, because, you know, I've never been in this situation, meeting the family and all," I said.
He smiled at that. "You realize that my family has never been in this situation before either. And we won't –" he stopped and his smile faded.
"What?"
"And we hope you understand our lack of experience in this matter."
"Of course," I said. "Though I'm still kinda peeved about the whole let's-kill-the-inconvenient-teacher thing."
His lovely gold eyes tightened. "Everyone here is remorseful about that, and eager to talk with you openly."
I nodded again, smoothed my pleated skirt over my leggings, and stepped from the shelter of the woods onto the Cullens' shaded drive, my feet crunching on the gravel as I walked to a short set of stairs leading to a nearly imperceptible door in the wall. Next to it was a small plaque proclaiming it a certified Passivhaus, an explanation to the nosy.
Edward unlocked the door and ushered me inside to a small foyer with coat hooks and shoes in a neat line, the epitome of ordinary. We added our own jackets and boots to the collection, and then he unlocked a second door.
It opened onto a large space with a wall of windows, all the windows that weren't on the north façade and then some. On the other side were a stone patio and then a terraced hill descending to a stand of alders, their naked branches allowing me to see the river beyond them, gray water under gray sky.
The interior itself had nothing stereotypical of pulp-fiction vampires, only of rich people: large abstract paintings that I didn't recognize but whose styles looked familiar; ornamental trees in pots a human would need a forklift to move; clusters of upholstered furniture suitable for a big party, including one under a red Alexander Calder-style mobile; a baby grand in a corner.
Footsteps sounded deliberately on a flight of stairs to my left. "Bella!" Esme called out.
Suddenly she was right in front of me, but Edward's hands were on her shoulders, stopping her in her tracks. She gave him a reproving look until he nodded and retreated.
"Darling Bella, what a delight to see you again," she said in a voice that reminded me of a 1930s actress's – Myrna Loy in "The Thin Man," perhaps, or Katharine Hepburn without the lockjaw. The effect was heightened by her outfit, a tea-length bias-cut dress in silky silvery gray, and undercut by her bare feet. It was as if a wood nymph had come across an abandoned trunk of vintage clothes. She gave me a swift peck on each cheek, and I caught her scent – different from Edward's but beguiling all the same.
"Thank you for having me," I managed to say when she stepped back. Carlisle was next to her now and, more circumspect, offered me a handshake, as he had done on Sunday at the exchange of the peace.
But this time his hand was cold. "You guys take hand warmers to church," I said in realization.
"Since that's one of the few places we can't carry around coffee cups," Carlisle replied. And then he smiled, and my mind went blank for a moment because of his beauty, a sunny beauty that made you just want to bask in it, so different from Edward's remote perfection. "This modern practice of always having coffee with one – I approve of it. Come and have a seat."
I blinked, then followed him and Esme to the sofas under the red mobile, Edward's hand on the small of my back. Just as I was about to sit, Alice burst into the room, followed by Jasper carrying a tea tray. Okay, so there were four Cullens who apparently liked me enough to not want to kill me, which was reassuring.
Of course, that left Emmett and Rosalie, who apparently did want to kill me, which was not reassuring at all.
Alice bounded over to me, lifted me in a hug as Edward made sounds of protest, then snatched the tray from Jasper and set it on the coffee table in front of me, all in about two seconds.
"Hi to you too, Alice," I said faintly. Alice just grinned and said, "You remember my husband from the dance, of course. How could you forget him?"
I startled a little at her words. My husband. Well, why not? They were surely old enough ...
"Hello, Jasper," I said, wondering what version of a greeting I was going to get this time – kiss, hug, handshake?
Instead he produced a formal little bow, just like at the Holiday Hop, friendly but distant. "Welcome, Bella," he said in his unidentifiable Texas accent, before settling onto a sofa with Alice.
I sat down myself and turned my attention what was on the tray. "I gather you're not joining me," I said, nodding at the white teapot and the single white teacup in a saucer, luminous against the dark wood of the tray.
"We already ate," Alice said, playfully baring her teeth as Edward groaned. Being embarrassed by your family was something you apparently didn't outgrow, even if you were a century old.
"Alice says you don't take milk or sugar," Esme said, leaning forward to pour.
"She's right, thank you," I answered, accepting the cup and sitting back. I took a sip, only to realize that five vampires were watching me intently, as if drinking green tea was a most unusual event. I swallowed self-consciously.
"Um, Edward says this is a passive-heating house," I said in a transparent attempt to move the attention off me. "How does that work?"
Esme took pity on me and launched into a description of the house's features: the careful placement of windows, the exceptionally thick walls and the carefully joined planks of the wooden floor, the meticulous calculations to make sure the building would be warm enough in winter without furnaces and heaters.
"It was a remarkably educational experience, building this house," Esme said. "Although I had to lie to the Passivhaus certification team." The other Cullens laughed, and I looked at her in confusion. "The formula for figuring out if the house will have sufficient warmth takes into account the people living in it," she explained. She considered me a moment and went on, gently, "Our bodies don't produce heat, our breath doesn't add moisture to the air around us."
"Oh," I finally said, feeling clueless.
Esme waved her hand dismissively. "It hasn't really mattered if it doesn't work perfectly, because the temperature doesn't affect us. But are you warm enough, Bella?" she asked.
"Absolutely," I answered truthfully. It wasn't toasty here, but it was probably warmer than my own house. And I loved the fresh, faintly sweet scent of the air around me, the result of a Passivhaus's elaborate venting system – and the presence of fragrant vampires.
"Good," Esme said, and turned to look at Carlisle. "Then I think the house will work for the next owners, even if they're not a family of seven."
"You're planning to leave?" I asked. My cup clattered in its saucer and I had a spike of panic at the possibility they would move soon – maybe when Alice and Edward graduated in June? "You don't think you'll stay in Forks for a while? The setting seems so perfect for you."
Carlisle grimaced. "This is such a useful location for us," he agreed. "But – you're aware that we were here in the mid-1930s, down in Hoquiam?"
I nodded; that was part of Old Quil Ateara's story. Carlisle went on, "When we first encountered the Quileute, there was already a wolf pack. We had been living in the area for a year at that point; we ranged freely in the forest all the way to the coast and thought nothing of pursuing a deer even up to La Push. So we were on reservation land when three wolves confronted us. Fortunately, we knew immediately that they weren't ordinary wolves, since they were so large –"
"And smelled so revolting," Edward interjected.
Carlisle ignored that. "And since Edward was able to tell that they were thinking like humans, even if he couldn't read most of what they were thinking. It was quite a fraught situation. Unfortunately, we didn't have Jasper with us then to ease the wolves' hostility."
"So they had to wait in a tree until the wolves got tired enough to calm down and be willing to negotiate," Jasper added, seeming barely able to contain his mirth. "Completely undignified. Rosalie will never forgive them for that."
"Huh, that part wasn't in Mr. Ateara's story," I said, and Edward made a derisive noise next to me.
"Of course not," he said. "It's not very heroic to make a treaty with your worst enemy just because you needed a nap."
"The truth," Esme said, shooting a quelling look at Edward before turning to me, "is that Carlisle is very persuasive, and the wolves were finally brought to heel. And the point of the story is that we attributed the pack's existence not to our presence but to genetics - we thought that the shifting feature manifested itself automatically, not because of exposure to vampires.
"In preparation for our return, we started building this house a few years ago. We detected no wolves, so we speculated that the gene had died out or perhaps there just weren't any Quileute of the right age – the tribe is quite small, after all. In any case, this time we were careful to stay off the tribe's land, and indeed, none of us came into contact with any members."
"Until that car crash," Alice said.
"Exactly," Carlisle said. "Last summer, a group of young men from the reservation, six of them, were packed in a car, heading to Port Angeles on a Saturday night, when they were forced off the road by an SUV coming at them in the wrong lane – probably a drunken driver; there are so many here that a highway accident without fatalities barely gets noticed in the newspaper."
I nodded, remembering the glass display case at Forks High filled with photos of Eric Yorkie and other dead students.
"The Quileute victims all came to the hospital the night I was on duty," Carlisle continued. "Edward was there too, volunteering."
I looked at Edward next to me, and he shrugged. "It looks good on college applications," he said, but the words sounded bitter.
Carlisle shook his head at him. "We'll figure out a way for you to practice some day," he said, and went on, "The young men had various injuries, some serious – broken bones, concussions, lacerations. However, even as we were treating them, the injuries were improving. Not as quickly as they do in vampires, but noticeably."
So vampires could get hurt. I couldn't muse on that long because Carlisle was still talking: "It was fortunate that Edward and I were the only doctors there, because as their bones mended themselves, the young men were developing fevers and nausea -"
"And a revolting smell," Edward put in.
This time Carlisle nodded. "And indeed a familiar smell," he said. "So when their families arrived and demanded that I immediately discharge their sons, I did. One of the young men is Seth Clearwater. The rest are the other members of the pack."
"So we've had to consider the possibility that encountering us in a time of stress triggered their transformation," Alice said. "But it doesn't explain Jacob Black."
"Contagion," Jasper suggested. "His being around wolves on the reservation awakens his own lupine qualities."
"Bella has a theory," Edward said, and I jolted at being invoked in this discussion. "She wonders if our scent causes the wolves' genes to mutate, that their cells essentially have a receptor for us."
"I guess," I mumbled and put my teacup on the table. "Jacob noticed Edward's and Alice's scent in my classroom, and, I realize now, that when he remarked on the 'awful stink' in my yard –" Edward huffed as I spoke "—he was talking about Edward."
Esme refilled my cup. "Whatever the method," she said, "it's become obvious that we are the cause. Quil Ateara said, 'They turned the young men into wolves even though generations had passed.'" I nodded, impressed by how precisely Edward or Alice had retold my account of Mr. Ateara's story to his family.
"That means we won't ever be able to live here without conflict as long as the shifter gene is present," Carlisle said.
Alice exhaled a noise of frustration. "It's annoying because if we go anywhere close to the border, they're there snarling at us and scaring off the deer. And since my talent fails with them, I can't even know how to avoid them. Or know if Jacob Black will follow through on his ridiculous scheme to get Bella in trouble –"
"Ridiculous, yes, but potentially very messy," Jasper observed.
"Even without that complication," Esme added, "if Bella's hypothesis is correct, Jacob Black's conversion suggests that the longer we stay, the larger the pack grows, and perhaps attracts attention."
We fell silent at that, until Alice scrunched up her face, which somehow made her look more adorable than ever. "Enough of that, because Bella! -" she clapped her hands, a mini sonic boom that made my teacup rattle where it sat on the table "- I've been longing to thank you."
"For what?" I asked, baffled. It wasn't as if I had given her a good grade she didn't deserve on a paper.
"For telling Esme and Carlisle at the parent-teacher conference that I sounded like Eudora Welty sometimes." I blinked at her, and she went on, more slowly, "I didn't know where I came from, but your remark gave me the impetus to think about searching in Mississippi, and that opened a way to a sequence of events that led me to my birthplace there."
I was still baffled. "Carlisle said you were born in St. Louis."
"Because we didn't know, and St. Louis is in the center of the country," Carlisle said, and shrugged.
"We don't always remember details of our human lives, and I really don't remember mine," Alice said. "The earliest I recall is being alone in a swamp in Louisiana, a vampire already, knowing neither my age nor my last name. All I knew was that someday I would meet Jasper –" she rubbed her husband's thigh "—and this family." She moved a hand in a circle encompassing us all, even me.
"Do you know how old you are?" I asked hesitantly, since it might be considered a rude question. But really, how could I not want to know?
"I do now," she answered. "I was born in 1901, like Edward." She went on to describe how she and Jasper went to Jackson over the holiday break to do research, and guided by her visions, found a microfiche with a short newspaper article in a 1920 Picayune Item about one Mary Alice Brandon having escaped from a local asylum. The asylum had long since been razed, but the story led her and Jasper to her hometown of Biloxi, and to the gravesite of a niece who'd recently died.
"Presumably, my family put me away because they thought I was crazy, and whatever treatment I got interfered with my memories," she concluded, without any noticeable rancor about being institutionalized; perhaps not remembering it took away the sting. "Doctors back then were experimenting with all sorts of things - pyrotherapy, insulin shock, convulsive therapy. Anyway, Carlisle thinks I was indiscreet about having visions."
"That seems likely, because you are indiscreet about them now," Edward said. Huh, if he could tease her like that, her history truly must not bother her.
"Oh, pooh, I can't help being indiscreet with you," Alice protested, but then proved the truth of his words by adding, "Bella, I know you want to ask about all of us. Don't be embarrassed. Jasper will go first."
Jasper raised his hands in a gesture of mock helplessness, and obeyed. He told about growing up on a plantation in antebellum Texas, fighting for the Confederacy, and then, more euphemistically, "falling in" with a group of vampires, living the "traditional" vampire way and wandering the world until he met Alice.
Esme had a charming story about being a turn-of-the-last-century Ohio girl – she had told me the truth about being from Columbus – and meeting Carlisle, and then a less charming story about an unhappy marriage and meeting Carlisle again.
"It was meant to be," she concluded cheerfully, her memories of being abused and broken apparently nearly as faded as Alice's. Carlisle pulled his wife in more closely to his side protectively – his vampire memories of Esme's trauma, I guessed, were much more acute.
Then it was Carlisle's turn. "I was born in London in 1639 or 40, depending on which calendar you use," he said, then paused as my mouth dropped. Since he looked much the same age as the rest of his family, I had assumed he was of the same 19th- or early-20th vintage they were.
When I could speak, I blurted out the first thing that hit me at this revelation: "We have to talk about the Great Vowel Shift!"
All the Cullens, even Edward, that jerk, burst into laughter at this new evidence of my geekitude. In my defense, though, what other chance would I ever have to discuss the huge change in English pronunciation still occurring when Carlisle was born – when "eh" became "ee," and "ah" became "ay," "ooh" became "ow" - with someone who actually experienced it? Even if Carlisle grew up speaking in the "modern" way, I'd bet he had heard pre-shift English speakers, and could imitate them too, a big improvement on linguists' reconstructions.
"But I'd rather hear about you right now," I muttered to Carlisle when the laughter died down. Edward pressed a swift kiss on my temple, and I almost forgave him for his being amused at my expense. Almost, that is, because the rest of his family was silently staring at this contact as if it were even odder than a human drinking tea.
"Hush," Edward told them.
Carlisle seemed to have to shake himself before he could talk. "Um, I will happily talk to you someday about when 'mice' was pronounced 'meece,'" he said, then went on, "My father was a clergyman in the Church of England, and I was following in his footsteps when an unexpected encounter made me a vampire in 1663 –"
My mind automatically did the math, and I burst out, "That means you're younger than me."
"Only by one measure, and a relatively minor one at that," he said, his face becoming stern, and suddenly I could see how a 23-year-old could manage to pull off being a convincing doctor and guardian of five teenagers.
"True," I murmured. "Edward makes me feel very young sometimes." My 110-year-old boyfriend looked at me as if that could be a surprise.
"Three years later, my father's church was mostly destroyed in the Great Fire of London," Carlisle continued, his expression relaxing into its usual beauty. "I salvaged a cross, which you can see upstairs."
I nodded; I'd seen the Cullens in church, after all, so I already knew that any myths about vampires and crucifixes were indeed myths. Carlisle described traveling through Europe, including a stay with the Volturi enforcers that he ended because of the constant pressure to be a normal vampire, and moving on to North America, with its bountiful wildlife and easier acceptance of strangers that allowed him to live and practice among humans.
"And thus was my existence until I met Esme for the first time, and then Edward," Carlisle said. "But I will leave that story to Edward."
I nodded once more, leaving unspoken what had struck me most forcefully about the Cullens' stories: none of them explained how someone became a vampire. Was it taboo, like the Quileute and their wolf history? Was it too traumatic? Would the knowledge make me run screaming from the house?
Carlisle stood up, ending that train of thought. "And now, I have to go to work. I still get all the Saturday night shifts in the E.R., since I'm the youngest doctor on staff," he said, and I had to smile at the incongruity.
Esme rose too, then, and the rest of us imitated her. "Bella, make yourself at home." She frowned briefly. "Well, as much as you can considering the circumstances. All the human appliances work, at any rate."
"Thank you for having me," I replied, repressing a giggle at Esme's essentially telling me it was okay for me to pee here. "And – oh!" I said in sudden remembrance. "I have something to return to you." I looked at Edward and he flitted away for a second.
He returned with a tote bag that held Esme's Dutch oven, which he had carried here in the morning while I had gone to Port Angeles for my usual Saturday of yoga with Lakshmi/Lauren and food pantry pickup; now was not the time to develop a reputation as unreliable or erratic. He handed the bag to me, and I offered it to Esme.
"I told Edward that you could keep that pot," Esme said, looking at her son with a reprimand on her face.
"Thanks, but I have one already, and besides, what are you going to do when you have to 'make soup' for Edward's next girlfriend?" I said, curling the fingers of my free hand into air quotes.
My little joke was met only with silence. From my few encounters with her, I'd figured that Esme was pretty laid back and had a healthy sense of humor. But it seemed I was wrong, because she looked as if I had slapped her and that it had somehow actually caused pain. I would never have expected that teasing her about passing off the diner's soup as her own would hurt her feelings.
It was only after a couple of beats that Carlisle tried to smooth over the awkwardness in the room by saying, "Well, since we'd despaired that Edward would ever find a woman who would agree to spend time with him, I wouldn't hold my breath that you'd be easily replaced – and, I believe you know by now, holding my breath poses little difficulty for me."
Edward scowled, but everyone else laughed weakly, easing the tension somewhat. I watched Carlisle and Esme vanish up the stairs, then turned to Edward, who was still frowning.
"Um, I guess we should put this away somewhere?" I said, hefting the bag with the Dutch oven, still in my hand.
His face cleared, and he took the heavy bag from me. "Yes," he said. "And I'll show you the house."
"We'll see you around, Bella," Alice said sweetly as I started following Edward out of the living room. "Don't forget to show her the refrigerator, Edward."
Edward paused and glared at her. "I suppose I have to now," he grumbled.
"Is that where you keep your shoes?" I asked, only half teasing. I didn't pay much attention to footwear besides running shoes, but I had certainly noticed Edward's elegant boots – which maybe he did keep in the kitchen; the Cullens certainly didn't need the room for cooking.
Then another thought occurred to me. "Or are there bags of blood?" I whispered, but the laughter from Alice and Jasper behind me demonstrated the futility of speaking quietly.
Edward regarded me thoughtfully as we skirted a long table that in any other house would be used for meals. The one here held five chessboards in various states of play. "No," he said finally. "We prefer it from the source."
I stilled my reaction and nodded. "Okay," I said. "So what's in the refrigerator?"
We passed through another doorway and stopped in front of the appliance in question. It was a big stainless-steel refrigerator, fitting in perfectly in a room that a real-estate ad would describe as a "state-of-the-art kitchen," a selling point when the Cullens gave up this house, I thought glumly.
"Brace yourself," he said, and opened the door.
I gasped into a laugh: the refrigerator held shelves and shelves of apples, lovely mottled heirloom ones from the Cullens' old orchard packed into perforated plastic bags. A small hanging thermometer said it was 34 degrees inside.
"Is all that for me?" I asked.
He nodded and gestured to the apple-filled shelves. "This is the arrangement the county extension service suggested," he said. He sounded almost shy. "These apples don't keep particularly well without help, so we normally donate them to food pantries at the harvest –"
"Why are you uncomfortable about this?" I interrupted him. "It's really sweet of you."
"I, ah, experienced a certain amount of teasing from my family for doing this," he said, and closed the door.
"Why?"
"I would attribute it to a mixture of affection and Schadenfreude that varied from person to person. And at the time I was simultaneously insisting that I had to stay away from you." His face lightened suddenly. "But I suppose now I am justified in –"
"Hey!" Alice's exclamation carried through from the living room.
"— I am justified in revealing that Alice is the reason you couldn't drive your car to Seattle when you wanted to go to Raquel's show."
"I confess!" Alice had materialized in the kitchen, and she dropped the tea tray and its accouterments onto a counter. "I sneaked into Dowling's Garage and hid all the drain plug gaskets and oil filters that would work for a Civic to force you into accepting a ride from us to the city."
She turned to me as I opened my mouth without succeeding in making in words come out. "I'm sorry for the agitation it caused you, Bella, but I was right. Edward was convinced that he couldn't be near you –"
"I very nearly couldn't," he broke in, and I remembered how he had kept the window open and periodically fled Esme's Mercedes during that journey. I had thought he couldn't stand something about me … and, well, that was true, just not in a way I would have ever imagined at the time.
"But you did," Alice told him. "God knows you two would have never managed to get together without my help. You'd still be watching Bella like a gargoyle and she'd still be thinking that you hated her, and the wolves would never have felt the need to say anything."
"Bella didn't think I hated her," Edward said, looking at me sharply.
I winced. "Um, I thought you thought I smelled bad and that I was sexually harassing you," I answered him. "You know, back before we started running –"
"No! No, Bella, I never thought that," he said. His arm snaked around my waist, pulling me closer, and his hand curved around my jaw. "To think that about your scent … I could never." He inhaled audibly next to my temple.
"And this would be my clue to leave," Alice said, teasing, but I was aware of her lingering until Edward lowered his lips to mine. Some minutes later, we broke apart, with Alice long gone.
"Wouldyou like to see my room?" Edward murmured, and I nodded, a little breathless, into his chest. "We can listen to Nirvana and talk about the genius of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.'"
"I think you have your decades mixed up there, you geezer," I said, but snickering at the idea of the centenarian and the 24-year-old hanging out in his bedroom in his parents' house like teenagers. Wait, maybe we could "neck like teenagers," as he put it, too…
"So what's your equivalent?" he asked.
"Probably Arcade Fire and 'Harry Potter.' I kind of grew up with Harry, actually," I said, then shrugged. "But I didn't go to the bedrooms of boys in Laconia. Apparently I like 17-year-olds a lot more now than I did then."
He exhaled, his breath gently flowing over my hair. "I'm glad. And I'll assume that group doesn't include Justin Stanley."
"Um, no."
As we left the kitchen, I regained enough of my brain function to say, "I don't understand why you have such an old orchard and such a new house."
"That is because when we bought this property in the 1930s there was a different house here. But it burned down seven years ago," he said.
"Wow. How did that happen? Was there a forest fire?" Forks was dry in the summer, and there had been a big wildfire not long after the school year started.
"Vampires," he said, and I startled under his arm. "The ones who killed Eliza Teague's father and sister. We know because we had a carefully concealed safe here, with money and IDs for emergencies. Someone ripped it open with his fingers, and then used one of Jasper's aliases in Las Vegas during a string of unsolved killings there."
His face had become hard and unreadable during this recitation, and I gulped. "Is that –" I waved my hand, not sure how to phrase my question.
"Normal vampire behavior?" he suggested, and I nodded. "Yes, except for burning and looting other vampires' property. Perhaps our visitors did not know what we were – though if they did, that's even more troubling. Unfortunately, they now know what we look like, which puts us at a disadvantage with them. All we know is that one of them looks at least vaguely like Jasper."
"And has red eyes," I said, recalling Eliza's story.
"That's not much of a distinguishing feature for us."
By now we were back in the living room, and my eye was caught by the baby grand in the corner. "Who plays?" I asked, tilting my head to the piano.
"All of us."
"Oh, can I hear you?" Drummers might have stamina, but pianists had those adept fingers …
Edward raised an eyebrow. "You'd rather hear me play than see my room?"
I got his point. "Um, I'd like to hear you play … sometime."
"Sometime I will do that," he said, smirking, his good mood restored.
Our journey up to the third floor took a lot longer than I expected, though. The charred cross from Carlisle's father's church was arresting, of course – "It still smells a bit smoky to me," Edward said - but so were the many paintings on the walls of the staircase, as casually displayed as school pictures and snapshots would be in the house of a much more conventional kind of family.
"That looks sorta like a David Hockney," I said, pointing to a canvas with figures perched around a bright blue square, a sun-drenched swimming-pool scene that vampires wouldn't be able to experience in public.
"That's because it is," he said.
"Oh," I said, unable after a lifetime of penny-pinching to avoid trying to calculate how much the painting would fetch on the auction block. That Alexander Calder-style mobile in the living room was a real Calder, then, and as for this colorful painting on the third-floor landing, a portrait … "And that's actually an Elizabeth Peyton, then?"
"It is. Do you recognize the sitter?" I looked more closely at the portrait, of a young woman with short black hair, shadowed eyes and pale, pale skin. "It's Alice?" I said, realizing that she knew the painter far more intimately than just seeing her work in a museum show. I smiled. "Peyton's made her look like a hipster."
"Peyton makes everyone look like a hipster," Edward said dryly. "Neurasthenic hipsters."
"Are there portraits of you guys by famous artists scattered in museums around the world?"
"We tend to keep them. Perhaps one day you'll see Emmett and Rosalie's bedroom. Do you remember at the school dance calling Rosalie a Vargas girl?" I thought a moment, then nodded, recalling how Edward's sister reminded me of a World War II pinup. "Well," he said, "there's that. It's a portrait that dominates a room."
Just then a breathy moan sounded from down the hall, from the vicinity of a closed door. Edward's eyes widened, and he hurriedly ushered me through another door, closing it behind us.
"Does that bother you?" he asked quietly.
"Was that –"
"Carlisle and Esme," he finished for me. "Saying goodbye, I suppose you could say."
"Will we bother them?" I asked, thinking of supernaturally acute hearing.
"Not in the least," he answered, leaving unsaid whether that was because they wouldn't care or because they were too absorbed in what they were doing to hear us.
"Okay." I inhaled and took a look around me. "This is your room?"
As with the rest of the house, there was nothing here to shout "vampire's lair." True, there was no bed, unsurprising for a virgin who didn't sleep, but everything else was normal for rich people, or maybe old-fashioned rich people: a long wall of built-in shelves filled with books from many eras; rows of vinyl records; a vintage turntable hooked up to a sleek modern sound system. Speaking of hipsters, whole neighborhoods in Seattle and Portland would go into raptures over that turntable.
"At last," Edward said, and stepped over to the stereo to press a button. Music I didn't recognize, in sort of a low hum, filled the room, presumably to drown out any sounds of passion that might drift in from down the hall. The possibility didn't bother me – it was comforting that two people who had been together for so many decades sought to gird themselves for just a few hours' separation in that fashion, even with a guest in their house.
Edward gazed at me expectantly, waiting for approval or questions, I thought. "May I look around?" I asked, and started examining his shelves. For music he had plenty of classical, of course, arranged by conductor, but also an appealing variety of rock and jazz – I had to smile at his battered copies of Joy Division's two albums from the early '80s, such a complement to the brooding side of his personality. In that era, I hadn't been born yet, and my mother was probably obsessively listening to Menudo.
His books included most of the highlights of 20th-century literature, and I realized that with his age and speed-reading that this was a carefully curated collection, much too small to represent the breadth of what he had read in his time on earth. I pulled out a copy of "The Beautiful and the Damned," the story of people who drank too much, and waggled it at Edward.
"Is this really your favorite, or were you just dropping a hint when you told me that?" I asked him.
"The latter."
"So what is your favorite?"
He cocked his head. "Remember at the dance you said you couldn't tell me what your favorite band was? It's the same for me and books. There are so many, and they're so different." He waved his hand toward the bookshelves. "I don't ever need to open those books again to tell you what's in them, but seeing their spines reminds me of the feelings they evoked when I read them."
And "The Beautiful and the Damned" reminds him of when he decided he was justified in killing people, I thought.
"Are all these your mother's books?" I asked, indicating a row of gold-embossed volumes that looked similar to the copy of "Bel-Ami" he'd lent me.
He nodded, but said nothing more, ignoring this opportunity to tell me about Elizabeth Anthony. But since I couldn't press him on this without being a hypocrite, I continued my survey: a scattering of framed studies in pencil and charcoal, large windows for the southern sun, a black leather sofa with a flat rectangle wrapped in brown paper leaning against it. There was something familiar about the shape and the size, and I crouched down to read the business card taped to the kraft paper.
"Bree Tanner, art consultant," it announced above a website address and phone number. Bree Tanner, art consultant – and Raquel's dealer. Well, damn, that certainly put a new light on some things, including the mysterious Jason Jenks, lawyer and art patron. I raised my eyes to meet Edward's unblinking ones, set in a worried face.
"Jason Jenks is … one of your aliases?" I asked him as calmly as I could.
"Jason Jenks is a real lawyer. He happens to be ours, and he bought Raquel's painting of you on my behalf," he answered.
I was silent for a moment. I was relieved to discover that some pervy attorney wasn't fapping to my naked portrait, as Raquel had teased me … and a little disappointed that apparently Edward wasn't either.
"You've had this wrapped up in your room for all these weeks?" I finally asked.
Now he really did look embarrassed, or as embarrassed as someone who didn't blush could look. "It hasn't been wrapped up all this time," he said. Oh. "But I thought bringing you to my room with your portrait on display seemed a bit much even for the gargoyle who's been watching you."
"So, you put Bree's card on the picture so I would figure it out?"
"I confess!" he said, mimicking Alice. "Like the apples, the painting has been the topic of a certain amount of teasing in recent months."
"Okay," I said absently, thinking over the implications of all this. "So the Pacific Northwest Trust, represented by one Jason Jenks, is your family's thing, right? Hey, Eliza Teague and Gracie Alvarez will get that scholarship, then?"
"They're the only candidates for it. In fact, it's worked out remarkably well – once we learned what happened to the Teagues, we planned to do something for them anyway, and your approaching the Trust has made it easy for us. As for Gracie, she really should go to college, but she won't unless she can do it and help support her family at the same time. The money you give her for eggs won't be enough."
"I don't do it for that," I said. I bought from Gracie for selfish reasons – she raised chickens outside her family's trailer, and the eggs were delicious. "But you do a lot of charity?" I asked Edward, thinking of the projects alluded to on the Pacific Northwest Trust website, both educational and environmental – of course, the Cullens had a long-term stake in the health of the planet's wildlife, so there was some self-interest in there too.
"We have the resources to do it discreetly," Edward said, with no hint of self-congratulation.
"You're so perfect," I said, my admiration bursting out, and immediately looked away from his indeed perfect face. By human standards, I had a lot of things going for me, but my brains, stamina, looks and even my altruism were so … mediocre compared to his. And I also had one big bad thing going against me.
"I'm glad you think so, since you are perfect for me," Edward said, and I looked back at him. His tone was joking, but his face had an intensity that seemed too heavy for the moment.
"Esme doesn't seem to think I'm perfect," I said, my voice a whisper despite his assurances that she was paying absolutely no attention to us. "I didn't realize I would insult her so much by teasing her about the diner's soup."
"Her reaction stemmed not from what you said, but from what I haven't said," he murmured, the joking in his voice vanished.
"What do you mean?"
He stepped over to me and took my hand. "Come sit with me, please," he said.
"That sounds ominous," I said, as we sank down onto the sofa, and I ended up nestling against him. The sofa was firm, but he was much firmer. "What is it?"
"You really are perfect for me - it's as if you were made for me," he said, then shook his head. "No, that's not right. It's as if I am made for you."
I frowned at him. "I think you have your decades mixed up again. You showed up first," I pointed out.
"Nonetheless, it's true." He exhaled, and shook his head once more. "It's another one of those vampire 'things.' I am made to find you perfect. When a vampire meets his partner … well, when Jasper saw Alice, it truly was love at first sight. Even if he had wanted to fight it, he couldn't. In my case, because you are human, I did fight it, just as Carlisle did with Esme – he's always hated himself for letting her go and what happened afterward. But look at them now."
He then gestured toward where our bodies were curved around each other. "And look at us now."
"So you have an irresistible pull toward me," I said, uncertain how I felt about this. "My personality doesn't matter at all? My tastes?"
"What do you mean?"
"You'd like me just as much if instead of running and reading 19th-century French novels I used my spare time to write a blog about Mexican telenovelas?"
"Yes," he said, but then he grinned. "Now, if you wrote a blog about 'Jersey Shore,' that'd be an entirely different matter."
I wrinkled my nose at him, and he grew more serious. "I think, though, if our personalities weren't compatible, I wouldn't be here. So many times I told myself I had to leave, but then you would say or do something funny, or unexpected, and then I couldn't." He paused for a second, then added, "Or perhaps I was simply making excuses for myself."
I had a flash of sympathy for the Edward in an alternate universe whose Bella really did maintain a blog about "Jersey Shore." But maybe Alternate Universe Edward thought it was adorable, and Alternate Universe Bella didn't have fucked-up genes.
In the meantime, This Universe Edward was looking at me quizzically. "Um, I feel a little interchangeable," I confessed. "I'm just a body you have the right receptors for, like the Quileute have the right receptors for vampires."
He seemed horrified by this idea. "You're not interchangeable," he said, then paused before continuing, "Well, there might be someone else, somewhere, in some era, but I met you first. You're the only person for me now. Carlisle has told me about one of the leaders of the Volturi who lost his mate centuries ago, and hasn't looked at another woman since. And Carlisle himself waited for centuries to find Esme." Edward ran his hand through his hair. "That's why Esme was so taken aback when you suggested that I'd love someone else someday. That's not going to happen."
Some women would swoon at such a declaration of eternal devotion. I was not one of them. "I really am your special snowflake, then," I said sadly.
He winced. "Snowflakes are ephemeral."
"So am I. I'm going to die."
I didn't add the "someday," because that was both too vague and promised too much. Raquel's words from last night flashed through my brain: "Have you told him about Renee? I mean, he's immortal, and you're … not."
"I am all too aware of that," he said, and it was if he was answering both me and Raquel. He fell silent for a moment. "I could change that, you know," he added quietly. "You could be like me."
-x-x-x-
Chapter title: "You are my days and my life," from "Aisha (version mixte)" by Khaled.
You'll note that Bella continues to be clueless.
Carlisle's birth year: In that period, England was on an older calendar, so that the start of the year was in March, not January. Passivhauses (Passivhäuser?) are a real thing, as is the Great Vowel Shift. And despite Mr. Price, I feel that I should mention that, strictly, since he's not a conductor of water, Edward would be a grotesque, not a gargoyle.
Art links on my profile.
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