The gravestones loomed large and Gothic, eerily forbidding from where we appeared at the cemetery gates.

Long shadows cast by the setting sun obscured the dates carved into the stone and made the loving epitaphs of mourners seem as sinister as the curses of souls lingering in bitterness. It seemed as though we were walking into another world, an older one.

We strode in like avenging angels, forming a triangle with our pairs. Leah and I were up front, with Jack and Izzy a few steps over and back on our left, with Mac and Wes on our right. My parents were behind us, preparing even as they walked to turn their power against a man they'd once embraced as a brother.

Carefully we wove our way around graves and crypts until we reached a monument near the western edge of the cemetery, and the tall stone angel with the Reese family's names engraved on the plaque at its base. Just in front of it, on his knees with his face in his hands, sat Andrew Phillips, the man that I'd trusted as a family friend and fellow Watcher; the spy who'd handed the better part of my soul to the monsters who'd killed his first love.

The world stopped for a moment.

I saw him and then looked past him finding Emilia's name on the plaque. I'd been curious as to why her grave had named her Emily, or why Alice had seen the name written wrong. A 'y' had been scratched crudely into the stone over the 'ia'.

"It's almost over Emily," Andrew whispered, "the battleground is set. The Voturi will die for killing you; I swear it. Justice will be yours."

I felt something in me chill, and I couldn't help the words that I spoke.

"And Alexandra's?" I asked coldly, darkly pleased at how he jumped at the sound of my voice, "Will she have justice too?"

He turned quickly, dark curly hair falling away from wide blue eyes as he shifted back against the stone angel behind him, as if for protection.

"No sin without consequence, Uncle," Mac murmured with a mean kind of sadness in his voice .

"Will you submit to questioning by us, your fellow Watchers, for crimes against a fallen comrade?" Wes intoned at his side.

For a moment Andrew seemed calm.

"All I ever wanted was to see them pay for hurting her," he said candidly. " but she was not my match, so my love meant nothing. She was not needed for the balance, so her life meant nothing. She was just a girl, just a meal."

His eyes narrowed but then his face relaxed and he said blankly, "She was nothing to you, so that's what you'll get from me. Nothing."

He seemed to flicker out of existence, and Izzy, unaffected by his power, which made him invisible by altering perceptions, took off after him. In an instant the chase was on.

My parents joined hands and began to use their joint power, turning his power on him and making us as invisible to him as he was to us. Jack, Leah and I took off after Izzy, Leah stopping to transform into a hawk and flying over my head.

Meanwhile Wes and Mac teleported to the gates of the cemetery, where Wes formed a type of psychic fence that would let her sense if he made it out of the cemetery. Making the fence stretched her powers to thin to stop him, but it would ensure that we wouldn't waste time looking for him if he'd escaped.

We stumbled after him, following Izzy's lead around tombstones and past mausoleums.

Izzy was reaching after him, trying to grab hold of him when suddenly she screamed and tripped over a stone cross. Her hands scrubbed at her eyes.

"Izzy!" Jack yelled, as he grabbed at her hands, trying to see what was wrong.

"He pepper sprayed me! Get him!"

Leah and I continued the chase. She shifted forms, dropping from the air and becoming a wolf as she landed. She used scent to track him, and we followed him as he ran toward the edge of the cemetery farthest from Wes.

Every few feet Leah moved as if to pounce but Andrew was smart, dodging in front of tall stone monuments or open graves. Leah stumbled and ran into a gravestone or two but his scent, strong as he ran, drew her ever nearer to him.

The edge was in sight and Leah moved to end the chase. She leapt just as Andrew flickered into view, wanting to see where we were. He ran towards me, trying to avoid being landed on by Leah, and Mac swept in from the side knocking him over.

I ran up and helped Mac hold him.

"Stop struggling, Uncle Andrew," Mac whispered as he pulled out his red iPod and it's matching headphones, and used the music to help him project enough calm. Soon enough, Andrew was asleep on the ground.

Wes floated him ahead of us as we walked back through the cemetery to find my mother helping Izzy rinse her eyes with a water bottle, while my father watched for our return. Leah had shifted into a small bird and ridden back on my shoulder. She hopped off and took human form as we approached them.

"You ok, Izzy?" she asked, reaching down and offering her a hand up.

"You bet," she replied wiping at the water on her face before taking Leah's and allowing herself to be pulled up. "My ankle stings a bit but I'll live."

"No other injuries?" my mother asked, looking us all up and down.

"Sore feet and tired arms seem to be the sum of it," I replied, looking around at the group, "let's get Andy here back for questioning."

Jack and I grabbed Andy's arms and we all found points of contact along Mac's and Wes's arms and shoulders. An instant later we were in my parent's living room.

Wes's eyes went slightly unfocused as she separated from Mac and put her hand to a wall, closing her eyes.

With grim fascination we watched as the handle disappeared from the door and the lines from the door way smoothed. Around us windows were sealing shut and vents changed shape in ways that let air through but wouldn't let so much as a hair out of the building. Mac focused on keeping Andy asleep until we were prepared to deal with him.

"Ms. Stevens," Wes startled us, speaking in a haunting monotone, "if you like that wind-chime hanging in your bedroom window, it'll have to be moved so that I can finish."

My mother ran off to do that and I stood glancing between Wes and Izzy. With Wes's eyes closed the two were twins. It was a wonder that two people could look so similar and wield power so differently. Wes is power. Her abilities are like arms hanging restlessly at her side or raised and benignly active as she moves about, changing the space subtly to suite her just as Wes's unstoppable nature alters an interaction. Izzy has power. Izzy's powers are less consciously controlled, she can choose to sleep but she'd have to eventually anyway. She can choose to take her shield and Jack's love and presence to help make their safe place, which guards against more than her shield alone, but the protection from mental attacks is like a physical structure in her brain. They use their skills like day and night and as watched them that day, I was happier than you can know that they were on our side; because they worked together without effort, and because with Jack and Mac at their sides, the world could be theirs within weeks.

"The house is secure, and looks normal from the outside. No one gets out without my help, and not even that for about an hour, please," Wes murmured, sliding down the wall in exhaustion.

Mac rushed to her aid as my mother returned, couple of sheets of paper and a digital voice recorder in hand. There were 4 sets of handcuffs hanging over her arm.

"I have the Watchers' questions," she said, her voice was near emotionless with bits of pain edging in. she'd loved Andy like a brother. This wouldn't be easy. "Lock him down, and wake him up."

Jack and I cuffed his arms and legs to a chair; a heavy, metal one that my father pulled out of a closet in their room.

Leah grabbed a glass from the kitchen and filled it with water and some ice from the freezer before walking over and dumping it on Andrew's head.

He woke up sputtering.

Mom started the recorder and Jack pulled a chair up across from him.

"You are aware of my son's power. He can see the truth in human eyes, and in those of some species greater and," she looked pointedly at Andrew, "lesser. If you look away from his eyes while you speak, your words will be counted as false. Are we clear?"

"Mary you have to know-" he tried to say, but was interrupted.

"Are. We. Clear." My father asked, standing behind him.

Andrew gave up, muttering, "very."

My father looked to me, catching my eye and nodding. When there was no danger lurking, new Watcher were typically taught protocol fairly early on. I knew what I had to do.

My parents sat down to make room and Leah and I took their places. I stood in front of Andrew, to the right of Jack's chair. Leah stood directly behind him.

"Andrew Philips," I said formally, "What is the current status of your Match bond with your wife, Rebecca?"

"Dissolved. For years now," he replied, looking a little defiant as he stared into Jack's eyes.

Jack added, "They ended the bond within days of finishing their training, it was his idea, though she did agree to hide it so that they could go on serving with the Watchers."

"Have you acquired a new Match since the dissolution of your first?" I continued.

"No, there's no one you need to fetch to sit beside me," he said, quietly irritated, "Skip to the good parts, why don't you?"

Leah shifted into a wolf and before putting her front paws on the back of the chair and growling low into his ear. Fear flashed in his eyes and he murmured an apology. I couldn't bring myself to feel anything, not amusement or pity, for him just then. Leah shifted back to human.

I took a deep breath and tried to summon some authority into my voice. The questioning was about to begin for real, and it looked like my parents were going to leave the questioning to me and Leah.

"Andrew, you stand accused of giving the Volturi information that led to the murder of Alexandra Abdima, an in-training Watcher of the American West, and my first Match," I said, then looked up into Leah's eyes and settling into the bond so that I could send her the right words.

"The charges against you are brought by us, her family in the eyes of our organization," Leah continued. " They are brought following an investigation carried out by all but the heads of this family, in the interests of setting straight the record, and righting the wrongs that have led some amongst us to harbor dangerous mistrust for our traditions and for those that we fight beside. There is one amongst us whose ability to see truth will move these proceedings along. Jack, do you swear on the wholeness of your bond and on the life of your Match that you will tell the truth?"

"I swear it," Jack announced.

"Then Andrew," I asked, "Did you hand Alexandra over to the Volturi?"

For a time he just looked at us, like he couldn't comprehend that this could be real, that he could be tried by this, a tribunal of Watchers a generation younger than himself, like he was sorry it'd gotten this far. He closed his eyes and then opened them and something seemed to give way inside of him.

"Yes. It had to be done. I regret that it had to be her," he replied.

"He believes that," Jack confirmed.

"Why did it have to-" I started but Wes interrupted me.

"Tell the story Andrew, before they protocol this into a three hour question and answer session."

That startled a laugh out him, though it sounded more like a sob.

"Elizabeth Wesley, always straight to the point, no matter where we send you. Fine. May I confess and explain, Jamie? Leah?"

"Please do," Leah hissed from behind him.

He closed his eyes again, letting his head rest on his chest and breathing in and out before he began.

"I did this for her," he started.

"For Emilia," Jack clarified.

"Her name was Emily. I called her Emily. She was born 'Emilia' and in death she's 'Emilia', but in my heart she's Emily. She was beautiful and strong and smart and perfect, and then one day she was gone, disappeared with the rest of her family on a trip to Italy.

I waited so long for them to find her. I saw her everywhere but she was gone. For a time, I let her go.

Then one day, about twenty years ago I met a woman, in the library where she was stocking books. I saw dark eyes and hair like my Emily's and I felt like I was whole. I thought she'd finally come back to me. she hadn't. It was Rebecca, and I was meeting her for the first time. The wrong girl again, just as it been so often in those months after Emily disappeared, but I felt drawn to Rebecca somehow so we dated, and then weird things started to happen and I went to my parents to ask for the knowledge that would welcome me into my family's hidden life.

I didn't connect the dots until after we'd finished training.

She'd disappeared in Italy. The Volturi lived and fed in Italy. They had to have killed her. I went through a box of old papers. She'd given me her itinerary so I could imagine what she'd be up to.

Item seven was a tour of Volterra.

I followed protocol. I requested that the Watchers take action against the Volturi for killing Emily.

They all but laughed in my face. How many had the volturi killed to live? And how many vampires had they killed, saving us the work of several wars? Emily was not one of us, not a Watcher and therefore was unworthy of our vengeance.

They didn't care about Emily, and I couldn't just let her killers walk free.

I decided, then and there, that at the first opportunity I would take my revenge.

They hadn't cared about a civilian, so a Watcher would have to die, and at the hands of the Volturi. Then they'd care. Then they'd claim vengeance that Emily deserved, and the Volturi would never gaze out over their empire with those eyes made red by her blood.

I just needed a Watcher that they would see as a threat. Years passed and I waited but no one seemed perfect until…"

He paused and looked down ashamed.

"Eyes on me," Jack scolded him.

Slowly he raised his eyes to meet Jack's. Jack gasped loudly, his eyes narrowing.

"Tell her," Jack hissed to him, "tell her or I will and no one will stop them, however they react."

I looked down at my brother, startled by his sudden intensity, and then Andrew continued.

"No one seemed perfect until my brother had me over to dinner one night when I was in town on Watcher business and told me that little Elizabeth Alders, Wes, who'd been hanging around my nephew for years, was his Match, and she had the power to literally topple empires."

"Why not just use me then?" Wes asked in a tone that was frighteningly calm, in part because of small items all around the room that were beginning to twitch. "Why wait years to take your revenge if I was there?"

"Because I couldn't do that to you and Mac. The two of you had been friends for so long that no one could imagine him without you. By the time it occurred to you to ask the question and become Watchers you acted as much like halves of a single body as you were halves of a soul. How could I take that from you? from my brother's son? And to do it by killing the force of nature that had kept you smiling and laughing, Mac? Think what you have to about me, but never believe that I don't care about you."

I glanced over at them. They were pale but looking at each other with the fondness of an old married couple, affection warring with anger and sadness in their postures because their friendship had saved them. I looked at their joined hands and I wondered briefly if Leah and I could ever hope to be so close. Feeling her gaze on my face I looked up and met them and was startled by the warm affirmation that I barely avoided speaking aloud. We could. First though, we'd have to finish the questioning.

"Continue," my father ordered from his place on the couch.

"Since I couldn't strike so close to home, I waited. I got more and more anxious concerning the odds of another powerful Watcher coming in. I swore to myself that the next one who felt right would be the one. No more mercy, and no more time for the Volturi to go on unpunished.

It seemed as though it must be my ongoing burden to contemplate hurting the ones I loved though, because sometime later at another family gathering, this time here, I met Alexandra, and I knew that she was the one. Capable of lighting them on fire with barely a thought, of starting a fire within them to kill them slowly, burned from the inside out… she'd have been their worst fear in time.

I went to Volterra and refreshed their long memories about the Watchers, then gave them the address of the cousin that Alexandra had mentioned she'd be visiting. I fed them stories about a coming war and how I wanted only to be on the winning side. I expected them to slaughter her and her family. to leave some sign that the Watchers couldn't mistake. I settled for the traffic cam video of the accident. I reported to the Watchers that the volturi had killed Alexandra, then they decided to act against the Volturi."

"Why weren't we told that they'd killed Alex?" My mother asked, moments after Andrew finished speaking.

"Because of Jamie, he'd have run off and tried to avenge her and died," he replied, admiration making its way into his voice. "He is needed. Like your friend Edward, if the Volturi had killed him before his time, the balance would be set on a path to destruction. They lied, collectively, to you all. There are no saints amongst the Watchers, even Mac and Wes were supposed to be told. You two are no better than-"

"They," Izzy interrupted him, "are best of us all. They refused to find out rather than lie to their friends. Brother dearest, would you say that the questioning is done?"

I thought about everything; about Alexandra, who died because of this twisted plot for revenge against the Volturi, whose death had been a strike back at the Watchers who'd refused his plan the first time. I thought about the calls I'd been shut out of, the lies of omission they'd told my family, and the power I'd given up in the months and years since her death, the scars on my arms from my self-destructive grief. I thought about Leah, and this new life born from the place that Alex had left and it was all that I could do to stay standing.

"We're done," Leah answered and the recorder was turned off.

In the echoing silence after that, I fell to my knees, incapable of processing all that was rising within me, incapable of holding all of that and hatred for Andrew at the same time.

"How could you?" I whispered brokenly as the warmth of Leah's hand on my shoulder gave evidence that she'd moved to my side. Hot tears were gathering in my eyes but through the blur of them I watched as my mother and father rose to confront their once dear friend. Tears ran down my mother's face as she said words that hit him as hard as a slap.

"She was going to be my daughter."

"Our daughter," my father added.

Wes stood, strong again after the rest, and backhanded him across the mouth.

"You were going to give them me. You chose my friend; my good, loyal, strong, friend. Go to Hell, and so help me I'd send you there myself, if the Watchers would allow it."

She moved to hit him again but Mac moved in front of her.

"I hope," he said with subtle malice," that you will be granted mercy equal to what you have shown."

" She was my sister," Izzy threw in.

"And mine," Jack added.

"My freedom," Leah added after a moment's quiet, "Her death was the cost of my second chance, but it wasn't your life to bargain with. A happy accident of fate doesn't make this right. Nothing can undo what you've done."

It was my time to say my peace.

"You have never loved like I loved her. Never. I felt her life. I would have felt the lives of our children and grandchildren but that's gone now. She is gone now and I feel the earth that embraces her. She was my Match. I know how little that means to you but she was my soul."

His wrists were still cuffed to the chair. I moved behind him, pressing the scars on my arms against his palms. His fingers traced clumsily along the deep ones.

"I loved her deeply, and felt her absence deeper than I could make knives reach," I whispered fiercely into his ear. "My love for her was worth more to me than the blood that spilled from those wounds."

His hands stopped their exploring, fingers wincing as though shocked. I stood and faced him.

"I hope that the Watchers do grant you mercy, all the mercy in their hearts and in ours, because you will never be loved like she loved me. Her love gave me a second chance, and I have no need of your blood, or your tears, or your life, or your death. I have known what you discounted in your wasteful longing for a girl you couldn't save, and maybe someday I'll know it again. I -"

I faltered, looking up into Leah's eyes and seeing tears that she was holding back, but also seeing there a kind of surprised hope, gave me the strength to finish.

"I will enforce whatever is decided, but don't you dare think that you are important enough for me to enjoy your pain. You'll get what you wanted. She was nothing to us, and you'll be nothing to me. Whatever happens, whatever they decide, goodbye Andrew."

Mac, ever the cultured one with his appreciation for dramatic timing, used his power and within moments Andrew was sleeping.

My parents conferred with Jack on the truthfulness of Andrew's statement then went off to send Andrew's confession by internet and we all moved to sit around Wes as she lifted a hand to the wall and unsealed the doors and windows.

Leah sat next to me and I reached over and took her hand in mine. My heart sped up, and god, does love have weird timing or what? I watched our hands and her face for a while.

"You're staring at me," she whispered.

"As long as I eventually meet those pretty eyes of yours, I think it'll be ok," I whispered back, and then I let my head rest on her shoulder. I felt a hand on my foot and looked up to see Izzy smiling at me, weakly, an expression mirrored by Jack, Wes and Mac. We all settled into the support of bonds literal and figurative, of Matches, and of friends and family, and Leah and I began, consciously for the first time, to embrace this new sense of what we could be. Mac and Wes, My parents, and even Izzy and Jack were proof that it could be amazing to let the bond take you where it would, and now we were going to let it. The time to fight, and to act would come soon, all we could do then was wait.

I know, it's late, but this is the best I could make this chapter and I'm not above begging for you guys to review. Please send me your outtake ideas because we're starting to wind down.

School has to be my first priority but it's easier for me to feel like dedicating my free time to this story when I have proof that someone besides me is still reading it.

Next up: The Watchers conference and punishments are decided, maybe a different point of view, but I need to think about it.

As an incentive to review, anyone who sends me a review can include a name that they would like to have used by a Watcher, and if I get 5 reviews by Friday(on this or any chapter) I will work over the weekend to get the next chapter out by Tuesday, if I don't then I'll finish when I finish and I hope you'll hang in there and be patient with me.

Ps. Sorry for any grammar / typing mistakes, I edited this pretty quickly