21. Telltales

We didn't often get children in the bookstore. A book-loving parent intent on a thorough examination of every shelf, and then once more around in case they had missed something, would more than likely be on the receiving end of some heavy duty whining. Either that or they would have to be very adept in the subtle art of bribery.

Alastair didn't tend to purchase many children's books unless they were first edition hardbacks with dustjackets and illustrations on printed plates, tipped onto a blank page.

But occasionally, a mother or father would bring in a precocious child, an advanced reader, to find them something topical to their interests, or merely to engender a lifelong love of books.

Wednesday morning's first customers of the day were a mother and daughter. Neither appeared to have noticed that Edward was different, although the woman did look his way more frequently and for longer than would be deemed normal. I couldn't blame her. Despite his ripped, black jeans and shredded, charcoal grey shirt, he looked exceptionally attractive to me too.

He was smiling more than usual, but then the little girl was sweet natured and very eager to have him read to her.

"This is a particular favourite of mine," he said and then he lowered his voice and started to read softly.

After a few minutes, I got up from my desk and stole through the store, circumnavigating the bookcases until I was near enough to the section with the single shelf of children's books to hear but not be seen.

"Real isn't how you are made…" Edward said, his voice fading into a whisper before it got louder again, "…REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Are you real, Mr Edward?" the little girl asked, interrupting the story. "Does someone really, really love you?"

My heartbeat picked up as I waited for Edward to answer her, but the mother announced it was time they went or else they would miss their appointment.

Through a gap between the bookcases, I could see the three of them together at the cash desk. Edward took the woman's money and gave her her change. He wrapped the book in a brown paper bag and handed it to the little girl.

His eyes followed her as she skipped toward the door, holding her mother's hand. He stepped out from behind the desk and, with inhuman alacrity, arrived at the door in time to open it for them. As soon as they had gone, he turned and looked in my direction as if he had known exactly where I was all along.

Still thinking of how much I would have liked to hear him answer the little girl's question, I walked back to my desk. "Do you want children, Edward?"

"What I want is irrelevant," he said, taking a step toward me.

"How so?"

"Vampires can't have children, Bella."

"Because they'd eat them?"

"Because our bodies are frozen at the point of change. To all intents and purposes, we are dead."

"So if we were to… you know… I wouldn't get pregnant?"

He shook his head.

I stared at him for a minute. "I'm sure I read something years ago in one of Angela's books about a male vampire impregnating human women."

He sighed. "The Incubus. Do you also remember reading how those wretched women were torn to shreds by their own offspring, during childbirth?"

"It's true?"

"I believe so, yes."

"You wouldn't want to try?"

"No. I would not want the woman I love above all others to endure that kind of vile torture and certain death."

"No matter how much you wanted a child?"

"Do you really believe that I could be that selfish and sadistic?" His tone was sharp.

"No." I looked down at my feet. My eyes were smarting.

"Have you changed your mind about wanting children, Bella?"

I shook my head but didn't look up.

"The subject is moot then, isn't it? You need to go. Angela will be waiting for you."

When I raised my head, he was nowhere in sight and I couldn't help feeling I was missing something.

I fetched my cloak, draped it around my shoulders and collected my purse from behind the cash desk.

"I didn't mean to upset you," I whispered and then I opened the door and walked outside. The loud clang of the bell above the door reverberated in my ears while I crossed the street.

…

Angela was waiting for me in our favourite booth by the window, staring into space. She jumped when I slid across the leatherette bench seat on the opposite side of the table.

"Oh hi," she said, putting her hand to her chest. "I've ordered already. Hope that's okay."

"Yeah, thanks," I said, nodding. She knew what my usual was.

"You're looking a lot better than when I last saw you."

"Damned hormones," I said, rolling my eyes.

"It sucks to be female, right?" Her laughter was hesitant. "Are we okay now, you and I?"

"I… Of course." I smiled at her and she shook her head.

The waitress arrived with our order - two plates of sandwiches, a soda for Angela and a mug of black coffee for me – and set it all down on the table. I picked up my knife and cut my sandwich into quarters.

"I shouldn't have listened to him," Angela said, copying me. "I'm so sorry."

"Some of what Jacob told you might hold some truth, if not of Edward then of others like him. I just wish the three of you had taken the time to get to know him before you made assumptions. But who am I to talk? I'm still struggling with the whole concept of the supernatural."

"You still think Edward is human?"

"He is human, or he was once." I looked across the street at the bookstore. "He might not be the same as us but he's not that dissimilar either. Not on the inside."

"You care about him."

I nodded.

"Are you in love with him?"

"I don't do lo-"

The word caught in my throat on seeing Edward appear in the bookstore window, his eyes looking directly into mine as his hand reached for a book from the display. He turned back to his customer – an elderly gentleman with a walking stick – and they moved out of view.

I turned back to Angela, realising I'd missed some of what she was saying.

"…will get to know him. You're right. It's what I should have done before I allowed Jacob's opinions to colour my own."

"It doesn't matter anymore," I said. "He'll be leaving soon."

"Why? Have you told him to go?"

"The contract ends a week today at midnight."

Her eyebrows disappeared down behind the thick rim of her glasses as she took a bite out of her sandwich. I looked down at my sandwich and wished someone else had made it. I wanted spinach leaves in between the layers of cheese instead of roasted red peppers and artichokes.

We ate in silence for a while, but no sooner had Angela finished her last mouthful than she resumed our conversation.

"Mike said you were tricked by the agent."

I swallowed my mouthful and took a sip of my coffee to wash it down. "We both were."

"The fact that Edward stayed must count for something then."

"I'd paid for his time and he couldn't get me my money back. Besides, he told me he had nowhere else to go."

"And you believed that? Vampires don't need the comforts of modern living, Bella. Granted, they might like them but they can manage fine without."

"I didn't know that, though. I thought he was playing a part."

"Some actor!"

"I think I've hurt him," I whispered.

"How could you possibly have hurt him? He's a vampire."

"It's such a silly thing but, then again, maybe it isn't. I watched him with a little girl in the store today and asked him if he wanted children. At first, he said vampires can't have children, but then I remembered that book of yours and–"

"Please tell me you did not offer to have his baby!"

"Not as such, but–"

"It would kill you, Bella."

"That's what he said. In any case, he already knows how I feel about having kids, but that's not the point. I may have pressed the subject a little too far. I was insensitive."

"Ben couldn't have children."

"What?"

"Ben couldn't have children. It's why we broke up."

"But that was years ago when I was… I wasn't really there for you, was I?"

She shook her head. "You were, as much as I let you be."

"But I thought it was all your decision."

"It was just one of those things. I was young and foolish and I let him push me away."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You had your own problems to contend with."

"And now you've broken up with Jacob because of me."

She fixed her eyes on mine and shook her head again. "Because of him, Bella." She sighed. "It wouldn't have lasted anyway. He wasn't Ben. None of my boyfriends have ever been able to fill his shoes."

"No." I winked at her. "They'd have had to have cut their toes off first."

She smiled. "Not even then."

"Perhaps you should try to contact him."

"I've thought about it but I don't know. Back then, I had no idea what I had. The potential for lifelong happiness was right there in front of me and instead of fighting for it, I just walked away and pretended it didn't matter."

She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. I pushed my plate to one side and looked over at the dessert counter.

"It may be short term," I said, "but I can see the solution to all our problems on that glass cake stand over there. My treat."

While we gorged ourselves on generously cut wedges of chocolate layer cake, we chatted about my week in Forks and Angela's recent photo assignment. When her lunch hour was up, we paid our check and went our separate ways.

Once I'd crossed the street, I turned around to look for my friend. She was about to get into her car so I called out her name. She held on to the top of the open door, looking this way and that until she'd spotted me waving at her.

"If I don't see you before," I shouted over the noise of the passing cars, "I'll see you next week at your party."

She frowned and cupped her hand to her ear.

"See you on Halloween!" I shouted, emphasising each word.

She smiled and nodded, got into her car and drove away. I pushed open the door to the bookstore and found Edward sitting on the floor in the middle of a large delivery from Alistair.

"Nice lunch?" he asked.

"Yes, thanks. Let me just use the bathroom and I'll come and help you."

We spent the rest of the afternoon – give or take customer interaction – sorting the books into categories and then reboxing them. It would take some time for me to price them all and add them to the online catalogue. I'd barely made a start before it was time to go home.

That evening, soon after Edward had left the apartment, I put a sweater on over my pyjamas and slipped my feet into my boots. I grabbed my keys, stepped outside onto the top step and locked the door.

Even with the aid of the security light, the moonlight and the street lamps, I could see no sign of Edward, so I walked down the steps and around to the front of the building. As I raised my hand to knock on Mrs C's door, it opened with the spookiest of creaking sounds and there stood the lady herself.

"Would you like me to get Edward to put some oil on those hinges?" I asked.

"I quite like it, dear." She smiled. "Do come in."

I followed her into the lounge and took a seat on one of the two armchairs beside the fireplace. She sat down on the other one.

"Are you warm enough?" she asked. "Would you like me to turn the fire on?"

There was a chill in the apartment that I'd never noticed before, perhaps because I was almost always dashing in and dashing out again with my laundry.

"I'll be fine," I said, pulling my sweater sleeves down over my hands.

"You're still human."

I frowned. "Shouldn't I be?"

"When you asked if you could close the store, I did wonder if that was about to change, if maybe that was the real reason you wanted to go away."

"No, I really did need to sort out my father's house."

"Where's Edward?"

I tensed. "He went out."

"Hunting?"

"So he said."

"He's an interesting one your young man, killing animals when human blood is so much easier to come by."

"Is that what Alistair drinks?" I asked. "Human blood?

"Oh yes, dear. As I said, your Edward is unusual." She smoothed the fabric of her skirt out over her left thigh. "He found it difficult with me at first. Sex and sustenance had always gone hand in hand for him. Not one of his previous lady friends got a second chance."

"What was so different about you?"

Her eyes lit up. "He fell in love with me, although it took him a while to both feed from me and make love to me at the same time. Still, we had a lot of fun building up to it and then nothing could stop us until… well, you know that story."

"Why didn't he make you like him?"

She turned her gaze to the old gas fire. "At first he was torn. A part of him wanted to protect me from the more sordid side of his nature. Back then, vampires were stuff of myth and legend. They weren't allowed to reveal their true selves to anyone who might survive to tell the tale.

"And he was petrified. He'd never created another vampire. He'd never sunk his teeth into anyone and stopped before me. And he was solitary by nature. He had no one from whom he could seek advice."

She turned to me again, the warm smile on her face fading as she spoke.

"I was thirty-five and recently widowed when he came into my bookstore. He lit up my world and continued to set me ablaze for another ten years, Bella, but we left it too late. It was fortunate that I had changed my will and left my store and my home to him, otherwise I would never have been able to stay here like this all this time."

Hot tears splashed down onto my freezing cold hands. I was shivering.

"I should go to bed," I said, pushing myself up out of the chair.

Mrs C followed me to her door and leaned forward to place a cool, feather-light kiss on my cheek. "Goodnight, dear," she said. "Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite."

I sniffled and forced a smile. Bedbug bites were the least of my worries.