Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga
Chapter 25: Someone Knows Something
Louisa didn't have to be an empath to know that Rosalie was getting frustrated, and she had to wonder if Rose had ever taken so long to complete a task since becoming a vampire. Despite no longer having to work in secret and having the backing of the Forks Police Department, their investigation into the murder of Anna Sweet was no further along than it had been since they had interviewed Ms Morales the week before. Add into the fact that with the start of the new semester, homework had begun to pile up and the two teens had to split their time in between school and sleuthing, making very little progress on the case. Louisa could understand her friend's frustration of course — she'd be lying if she said she wasn't the slightest bit frustrated herself— and she had to remind Rosalie that solving mysteries wasn't like what you saw on television. Sometimes, it took a long time.
Take the mysterious tunnel that had been found in her bedroom, which dropped into a crawl space underneath the house. Despite two days of around the clock investigation done by the state police, nobody could say why it was built or who built it. While the crawl space was in the original design of the house, the secret passageway wasn't on any of the blueprints that Mrs Cullen had produced. She guessed that it had been added sometime after the house was built, though, considering the building was at least forty years old, this revelation wasn't that much help.
Even still, the house had been searched thoroughly and all surveillance cameras had been removed. The hole in her wall would be patched up, so there wasn't a good reason for the Collins not to return to their home by Friday. Jasper was, understandably, distressed by the prospect, and Louisa couldn't blame him; she wasn't enthusiastic about the prospect either. She would miss the dynamic of the Cullen family almost as much she would miss how open she could be about the nature of her relationship with Jasper. (Sure, Mr Collins knew that they were dating, but watching movies in the lounge was very different than finding out your sixteen-year-old was sharing a bed with her boyfriend.)
Add in the fact that Louisa had been all but forbidden from injecting herself into the mystery of intruder/possible stalker ("You've got a perfectly good murder to focus on," her father had pointed out when she bemoaned the unfairness of it all), and she was in a foul mood by Tuesday afternoon. Rosalie ambled along behind her as she stormed into the police station after school, sending shrugs to the surprised members of the Forks police force that were left in the wake of Louisa's tempestuous mood. By the time the vampire had sat down at their assigned desk space, Louisa had already pulled out a dry-erase board and was furiously scribbling her theories and the evidence she had to support her conclusions. It was pathetically little, but it at least served the purpose of organising the thoughts in her head.
"Judging by Anna's age, he was either the same age as her or not too much older. My guess, no younger than sixteen and no older than twenty-five." Louisa began. "The crime scene is organised, and the suspect left behind very little forensic evidence. However, there is nothing that indicates that this was a planned attack, which by definition would make the crime disorganised. The attention to detail makes me think that the man was at the upper end of the age bracket. And we are looking for a man, judging by the extent of the bruising and the angle it was applied at."
"It could have been a tall, very strong woman," Sergeant Todd pointed out from across the room, not even bothering to glance up from his computer screen. Had it been anyone else, Louisa would have taken the comment as an innocent suggestion.
"I'm an equal opportunity blamer," Louisa declared. "But statistically unlikely, particularly in a town this small. Besides, the hair left at the crime scene belonged to a man." Her first inclination had been to blurt out about her dreams, despite knowing that it would be a stupid thing to do. Despite what she had seen, there was no way she could know the things that she did. Even if Chief Swan did believe her, she had no evidence to back up her claims.
"No, it belonged to the baby-daddy," Sergeant Todd argued. "It's a theory that he killed her, but it could have been left behind from any other time he visited. Its presence doesn't mean he did it."
Louisa wanted to grab the officer by the shoulders and scream at him 'yes he did!' whilst shaking him furiously. She somehow found the strength in her to refrain. He did have a point, after all. "The skin under her fingernails, then," she ground out.
Immediately she realised this was the wrong thing to say. Everyone in the room froze and turned to stare at her. "What skin?" Chief Swan finally responded, breaking the tense silence.
Louisa's brain flew through her mental copy of the police report, then the coroner's report, and finally the witness statements, all coming up empty. For some reason, the DNA sample from under Anna's fingernails hadn't been reported, yet she had a niggling feeling that the police should know this information. Her mind replayed the last moments of Anna's life, recalling how she had clawed at her attacker's hands. "He choked her," Louisa managed to respond, hoping she didn't sound as rattled as she felt. "If I were to wrap my hands around your neck right now and squeeze, what would you do?"
"Stop you," Chief Swan replied immediately.
To her surprise, it was Rosalie who responded, shaking her head. "She'd try to breathe," the blonde corrected. "It's instinctual. She wouldn't attempt to eliminate a threat. Her mind would prioritize keeping her alive. She'd try to remove the thing that was stopping her from breathing, not necessarily stopping the person from doing it."
Louisa felt the bubble of panic that had risen in her chest deflate a little at Rosalie's words, relieved that her friend had been able to express the thoughts that she herself had not been able to formulate. "She'd would have scratched at his hands." Louisa continued. "That skin sample would have the same DNA profile as the person who killed her."
"There was no skin sample found, though," Chief Swan said. "It's not in the coroner's report."
"Our first order of business is to find out why then," Louisa stated, making a note on a post-it and attaching it to the case file. "Either he didn't know about it, or he did and the information never made it to you." Which didn't bode well for the already scandal-ridden case. "But moving on, we next have to consider when the murder took place."
"The father called for emergency services at 5:08 pm, Pacific time," Chief Swan supplied. "She had been dead for at least two hours, judging by rigor mortis and internal body temperature, putting the time of death at approximately three in the afternoon."
"When most adults are at work," Louisa muttered under her breath.
"Are we looking for a student?" Rosalie asked. "You said that he could have been around Anna's age. Maybe they went to school together?"
"That explains why she would be comfortable enough to let him into the house," Chief Swan replied.
"A young woman would also let a police officer or a handyman into the house," Louisa countered. "It could just as easily have been an adult." And it was an adult, this much she was certain of. An adult she knew and trusted. "But it would have been someone she knew. There was no evidence of a struggle, either. She trusted him enough to get close to her, which is when he killed her."
Sergeant Todd scoffed.
"Do you have something you'd like to share with the class, Sergeant?" Louisa drawled.
Todd didn't seem phased that she called him out. "Yeah, you described half of this town."
"More like a quarter of it," Rosalie pointed out. "But I agree, Lou. That's not very specific. Forks is a small town; everybody knows each other."
"I know Sergeant Todd, and I wouldn't willingly let him into my house," Louisa almost snapped, her frustration rising. There was so much she knew and wanted to say, but it was like all the information in her head had been written on separate sheets of paper and tossed into the wind. Grabbing a hold of single thread long enough to focus felt impossible. "There is a difference between knowing of someone and actually knowing them." She raised a hand and kneaded the heel of her hand into her forehead, trying to ignore a growing headache.
"Look, kid, your little trick is cute and all," Todd said. "But it's not necessary. It's obvious who did it."
Rosalie leaned back in her seat and waved a hand, a blasé expression on her face. "Please, do enlighten us."
"It was the father," Sergeant Todd explained, rolling his eyes. "No one wanted to blame him."
"There is no evidence of that," Chief Swan responded sternly.
Todd didn't seem bothered by the rebuke. "The man happens to come home from work earlier than usual, and happens to find the kid's body?"
"The coroner report said that Anna was dead for at least two hours by the time her father reported it," Louisa pointed out in case he hadn't been listening to their earlier discussion. "Mr Sweet hadn't even left work then. Even if he did kill her when he got home, he would have had to wait for two hours before reporting his daughter's death to the police, in which case, he wouldn't have an alibi. But his entire office saw him during the time the murder took place."
"Then the coroner screwed up. He was incompetent," Sergeant Todd replied, tossing his hands up in the air.
"That seems to be a theme in the Forks Police Department," Rosalie snapped.
Chief Swan let out a heavy sigh before shaking his head and excusing himself from the room. Louisa felt a similar sort of exhaustion, slowly sinking into a nearby chair. What was with Sergeant Todd's hostility? Louisa could understand his discomfort with an outsider, and a teenager to boot, trying to solve a cold case. It wasn't the first time that police officers had been annoyed by her presence. And Louisa wasn't stupid. She knew that she possessed an extraordinary ability to push people's buttons. But for the man to completely ignore forensic evidence and established alibis? That couldn't be normal.
"Alibi," Louisa muttered under her breath, drawing her case file towards her, oblivious to the bickering going on around her. She started to flip through the statements that had been taken nearly twelve years prior, not actually reading them but letting her fingers trace the indents the pen had left on the paper. These weren't photocopies of the statements, she noticed. Black ink on white paper. The handwriting on one was shaky, another firm. One was written by an older woman— she used to babysit for the Sweet family. These were original. Personal. Alive.
Tears had stained words on another, but what would you expect? Her only child had been murdered.
Spiky handwriting. Loopy handwriting. A statement where all the i's had been dotted with hearts. Barely legible cursive.
Large, rounded letters that had written hundreds, thousands, of notes before, but never a police statement. She much preferred passing notes to her best friend, penned in a carefully crafted code. It wouldn't do to have Mr Banner intercept it and read it out loud again. The whole class didn't need to know that she thought Ethan Cheney was fit. Only Anna needed to know that. Anna knew everything though. They told everything to each other. Where did she even start? How could she fit everything they wanted to know on a single piece of paper? Was this betraying Anna, if she told the police something that her best friend had said in confidence?
"Louisa?"
She jumped in her seat, blinking and turning to face whoever had called her. Rosalie and Sergeant Todd stared back at her, the first looking more worried than the latter. She cleared her throat and sat up in her chair, straightening the witness statements into a neat pile. "We should re-question people," she said, ignoring her momentary lapse in attention.
"You're suggesting that we call in the original witnesses and have them give new statements?" Todd asked, his eyebrows raised in disbelief. "Do you know how long that will take? And how expensive that will be?"
Chief Swan picked the best possible time to re-enter the room. "It might be our only option," he agreed. "But twelve years is a long time. People will have forgotten most of the details."
"I know," Louisa said. "But someone knows something, and right now, this the only plan that we've got."
A heavy sigh drew all eyes over to Sergeant Todd, who sank down into a chair, running his fingers through his hair. "So we really are reopening this case?" Todd groaned.
"It's always been opened," Chief Swan pointed out. "It will just be an active investigation."
"The town isn't going to like this, Charlie," Todd warned.
"They shouldn't like that someone has gotten away with murder," Chief Swan replied, his tone firm. "I'll start calling up everyone who submitted a witness statement."
"Start with Bernadette Krantz," Louisa said, handing the witness statement in question to the chief of police. "The best friend."
"Let me guess," Todd sighed, sounding exhausted. "You think she did it?"
"Of course not," Louisa replied airily. "But she knows who did."
"And what will you be doing?" Todd asked.
Louisa shrugged and rose to her feet, grabbing her coat and trying to ignore how the room was spinning. It was a good thing that Rosalie drove. "I'll do what I do best."
"Annoy the hell out of people?"
"No the other thing," Louisa retorted. "Snoop."
No Stone Left Unturned
The next morning, Louisa willingly woke up earlier than usual in order to spend the maximum amount of time in the school library before the bell rang. The librarian was kind enough to help her locate old yearbooks, and she selected the one that coincided with Anna Sweet's senior year. Louisa spent the entirety of homeroom inspecting the pages and trying to discern who would have known Anna the best. The answer came to her the moment Mr Mason walked into first period and began lecturing about symbolism in The Great Gatsby. Rosalie gave Louisa a confused look when she slid the yearbook out of her backpack, balanced the book on her knees under the table, and began to flip through the pages, trying to make the least amount of noise possible.
There, on page 42, was the portrait of a less bald Mr Mason. In a school the size of Forks High School (Home of the Spartans!), there wasn't a need for multiple teachers in each discipline, so if Mr Mason taught junior English in 2007, he would have taught Anna the year before that. Her heart pounding in excitement, Louisa dragged her notebook towards her and began to jot down potential teachers to interview in the margins of her notes.
She felt the yearbook slip out of her lap moments before she heard Mr Mason clear his throat. She looked up at the noise, only to find herself staring up at the annoyed face of her English teacher. "Is there something more interesting than the works of F Scott Fitzgerald, Miss Collins?"
"Well, while The Great Gatsby is considered today to his greatest work, it originally sold poorly and Fitzgerald considered it to be a failure. It wasn't until World War Two, when American soldiers were sent copies of the book, was there any interest," Louisa rattled off. She gave him a brilliant smile, acting as if this was a common fact that everyone knew and that she hadn't written an essay on the topic the year before. "So technically, I guess so?"
Her classmates turned around in their seats to watch her like one might watch an animal at the zoo. Someone gave an awkward little cough in a poor attempt to cover up their laugh.
Mr Mason blinked in confusion before glancing down at her notebook and snatching it up. "And what were you writing? Passing notes in my— what language is this even in?"
"Russian, mainly."
"Miss Collins," Mr Mason said with a sigh. "Do you give your parents this much trouble at home?"
"Much more, sir," she chirped.
"Please stay after class," he replied, dropping the notebook on her desk before turning around and continuing his lecture.
The yearbook slid across her desk, and Louisa glanced over at Rosalie, who looked thoroughly confused. Louisa gave her friend a shrug before returning to her notes. When the bell rang, Louisa hung back, waving Rosalie ahead before trudging up to the teacher's desk. He pretended that he was busy by shuffling his papers around whilst the last student filed out.
"You are an impressive student, Louisa," he began, giving her an indiscernible look. "Your essays are well researched, eloquent, and refreshing. I requested your previous reading lists and papers from your former teachers, so I know you've read all of these books before."
Louisa shifted from foot to foot, not sure what was happening. She had expected to be at least chastised for her behaviour, if not handed a detention.
"Your old school had you reading at a college level since you were in middle school," Mr Mason continued. "I understand you are bored, Louisa. But I can't have you not paying attention during class."
"Detention?" Louisa guessed.
"If I thought that would be an actual punishment for you, I would," he told her. That was how Louisa found herself holding the senior reading list and a paper detailing the first essay she would have to write.
"So my punishment is to make me read?" A bit weird, but okay. At least it wasn't detention and it would look good on a college application. If she did well enough, she might be able to get a recommendation out of Mr Mason too. "Do I still have to come to class?"
Mr Mason actually laughed. "Yes. Just make sure everything is written in English from now on."
Louisa rolled her eyes and sighed. "Dull. But I supposed I could manage."
Mr Mason shook his head and pulled out a notepad and began to write her a note, excusing her tardiness for her next class. "Your resilience is something to be commended."
Louisa stretched out her hand and accepted the note, her fingers brushing against his for the briefest of seconds. This wasn't the first time he had done something like his for one of his students, though it had been quite a while. He only hoped this one turned out better than the last. "Sir, one more thing, if I may?" Mr Mason nodded and waved his hand for her to continue. "I know you taught Anna Sweet." She watched his face fall and the corners of his eyes grow tight. "I know she liked reading too—"
"Miss Collins," he said, cutting her off. "There are some things that shouldn't be looked into. What happened to her is one of them." When Louisa opened her mouth to protest, he stood from his desk and escorted her towards the door, where a line had begun to form outside. "I have another class about to start. I'll give you your new book next class."
Some students gave her a curious glance when they walked by, but were otherwise uninterested in what had happened. How could they continue on with their day when something out of the ordinary happened? Didn't they want to know? Or was there something wrong with her need to know everyone's business? Louisa shook her head as if doing so would clear the thoughts out of her head, before making her way towards her next class.
The teacher didn't seem to care when she wandered into history ten minutes late, though Emmett was ready to grill her the moment she sat down. Louisa was rather proud of herself for managing to ignore the vampire for over half the lesson before giving in to his demands for answers. If the teacher noticed the two passing notes back and forth, she didn't care.
After class, Louisa managed to squirm out of Emmett's grasp and escape towards the gymnasium to change into her gym uniform. Coach Clapp gave her a weird look when he noticed that she was one of the first students to arrive in the gym, rather than her customary last. She managed to corner him while the other students were playing volleyball and interrogate him about Anna, but his response, while less frigid than Mr Mason's, was hardly enlightening.
"Anna Sweet was the perfect name for her," he said, giving her an odd look. "I don't think she broke a sweat in the three years I taught her. That girl hated physical education and would do anything to get out of it. Sort of like what you're doing right now." Louisa had to wonder if the little bit of insight into Anna's character was worth the three laps she had to run around the gymnasium.
Jasper was waiting for her when she arrived at her locker, a brow arched in amusement. "I hear you've had an interesting morning."
"That's one word for it," Louisa replied, spinning the dial on the locker before extracting an orange.
"Now, I'm no expert," Jasper began, watching as she tore the skin off of the fruit. "But that doesn't seem to be an adequate amount of food for lunch."
"That's because we're not going to lunch," Louisa agreed. "Well, I'm not going to lunch. You can, but fair warning, Emmett will harass you about 'not being able to entertain me very well'."
"I'll follow you," Jasper responded immediately, trotting after her when she started off down the hall. "What are we doing in the meantime?"
Louisa began to explain her idea for interviewing Anna Sweet's former teachers. They first headed towards the theatre, figuring that Mrs Tran, the elderly drama teacher would remember Anna if she was half the performer her mother claimed she had been. Jasper followed inside, sitting next to her quietly as she interviewed the teacher, occasionally using his power to manipulate the woman when she hesitated for too long.
"Anna was a talented girl. She could have made a name for herself. She always talked about getting out of Forks," Mrs Tran admitted. "There were so many rumours about her, about her character. I used to tell her that bad press was still good, as long as they spelt your name right. Well, they didn't even put her name in the papers when she got herself killed. You start to wonder if those rumours had something to them."
Louisa was glad that Rosalie hadn't been around to hear that comment. Poor Jasper already had to deal with her own irritation and had to all but drag her out of the room before she lost her temper. The next interview with Mr Hewitt, the chemistry teacher, wasn't much better, but at least Louisa didn't have the urge to commit homicide (though she had a sneaking suspicion that Jasper was behind that).
"It was my first year as a teacher," Mr Hewitt explained, running a hand through his dark hair. "They tell you that the first year is the hardest, but to lose a student that year on top of it? It was devastating. I almost quit teaching. Anna, she wasn't my best student. She was pretty smart when she applied herself, and a nice girl when you got down to it, but wild. Loved to party from what I heard."
Jasper dragged her out of the room after that comment. He led her down the hallway, and pressed her into an alcove, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles into sides. He leaned down to press his forehead against hers and she could feel peace seeping through her veins, slowing down her pounding heart and lowering her blood pressure. Louisa snaked her arms up around his neck and pulled him closer, her nose brushing against the underside of his jaw, her breathing jagged. She wasn't sure how long they stood in that alcove wrapped up in each other's arms, but she drew back, knowing that the end of the lunch period had to be near. Jasper's lips quirked up into a small smile and he brushed his fingers across her cheek, a pulse of curiosity running through her.
"Yeah, I'm better now," she whispered, watching as his honey coloured eyes darkened to a light hazel. "Thank you."
Jasper let out a little hum before leaning down to press their foreheads together again. It was at that moment that realised how close they were, or more specifically, how close his lips were to hers. Whether he had done that on purpose or not, Louisa didn't care. All she knew was that Emmett wasn't there to interrupt them again. She shifted onto the balls of her feet and tilted her head upwards, her arms moving to wrap around his neck again, pulling him close. She could almost taste his scent he was so close, and her eyelids fluttered shut on their own accord.
A giggle from the opposite side of the hall broke the spell and she sighed and leaned back. As much as she wanted to kiss Jasper, she wasn't about to do it with an audience. She opened her eyes, Jasper was watching her with a confused expression.
"What's wrong?" He asked, his tone disappointed.
Louisa nodded her head towards the girl who had laughed, and they both turned to look down the hall.
"I don't understand," Jasper said, his eyes darting between her and the empty hallway. "What's wrong?"
Louisa disentangled herself from Jasper and began to creep down the corridor, peeking into classrooms, only to find them empty. "I just heard a girl laughing. Didn't you hear her?" How could he have missed it? It had been loud enough for even her to hear it, and he was the one with bat ears.
"There was nobody but us, Lou," Jasper replied, moving to stand next to her. "I would have noticed."
"No, I swear I heard—" she broke off when the giggling started up again, this time joined by a man. "There it is again. It's a female laughing, and there is a man with her. Please tell me you can hear that."
Jasper stared down at her, watching as the colour drained out of her face and her pupils constricted to pinpoints. He glanced between Louisa and the still empty hallway, ears straining for movement. He could hear Mr Hewitt the next hall over, shuffling papers as he prepared for his next class. Emmett was chatting animatedly with Rosalie in the next building. Students were pouring out of the cafeteria on the other side of campus. If there was someone in the hallway, he couldn't see them. Louisa's hand wrapped around his wrist, her nails poking into his skin.
"It's not real," she muttered, more to herself than to him. "It's… they're…" Her nose wrinkled and she looked like she was refraining from gagging, her emotions flip-flopping between frustration and revulsion. Without warning, she took off down the hallway, dragging him along behind her, while she wound through the corridors, following something only she could hear. He let her pull him along, feeling a mixture of curiosity and concern until they stopped outside a janitor's closet.
"This is where…" Jasper trailed off, not willing to point out that they were in front of the place she had figured out he was a vampire in case someone was nearby.
"I heard something that day, too," she admitted. "That's why I was poking around in here."
Jasper rested a hand on the small of her back. "Do you want to go back in?"
"I don't know," she confessed, her voice barely above a whisper. "I feel like it's important, but…"
She was scared. He knew that without even having to read her emotions. He knew what it was like to have so much power at your disposal and not have a clue how to use it; it had taken him almost a decade to fully utilise his own gift, and his didn't cause him physical pain to use. "I'll stay with you, no matter what you decide," he promised, pulling her into a hug, and resting his chin on her shoulder. "We can always come back after school—" he stopped when she stepped away and threw open the closet door. "Right now works, too."
"Who knows when I'll have this chance again," she replied, grabbing him by the wrist and pulling him in after her.
"We do have class in five minutes," Jasper reminded her. He didn't care if he missed it, but Louisa didn't strike him as the type to skive off.
"I'm still learning something," Louisa said, running her hands along the walls, looking for a light switch. She flicked it on, but the closet remained dark, just like the last time she was in it. At least this time she wasn't afraid that her boyfriend would drink her blood.
"What now?" he asked, after searching the room for a few moments.
Louisa paused, her gaze unfocused. What now indeed. What exactly had she been expecting? Last time they were in here, she hadn't found anything either. Of course, her search had been interrupted by a vision of Jasper killing someone, but that wasn't the point. Besides, she hadn't even been consciously using her power at the time. It had just sort of happened. She ran her hands along the wall while she pondered what to do next.
How did her gift even work? Was she supposed to feel some sort of energy on an object? That time when Dr Cullen had tested her, she had imagined threads of memories attached to the object, but that was after the memories had already appeared. How was she supposed to get them to start? There had to be some way to trigger a memory, she realised. When she had tripped in the closet and Jasper had caught her, she became the girl who had tripped in the alleyway. What if they recreated what the laughing couple had been doing in the closet? If they did, it might trigger a vision. Louisa didn't have to guess too hard to know what the couple had been up to. There were only so many things you could do in a janitor's closet, after all.
"I'm going to kiss you," Louisa declared, turning to face her boyfriend.
He blinked in surprise. "Okay?"
It was inelegant, unromantic, and the exact opposite of how she had imagined their first kiss to be. She grabbed him by the belt loops on his jeans and pulled him towards her, before reaching up to grab his head. Somehow, her lips ended up pressed to Jasper's, and his arms wrapped around her waist. His lips were warmer and softer than she had imagined, and yet they still managed to send a shiver down her spine. His kissed her once, twice, three times; his lips brushing against hers, hesitant and surprised that this was actually happening after so long, waiting for her to push him away or stop and say things were moving too fast, but she didn't say anything and nobody was around to distract her or take her away from him. This was good. He pressed his lips more firmly against hers, pushed her back towards the wall, bent down so his neck wasn't at a funny angle, five, six, seven, still, she wasn't saying no and she wasn't shocked by her own actions anymore, but enjoying them. Eight, nine, ten, eleven. It was nice, but it wasn't enough, she wasn't close enough and he wanted more was he allowed to ask for more he didn't want to upset her but she wasn't pushing him away so that meant she liked it, right? She gasped in surprise when he pulled her bottom lip between his teeth and he took the opportunity to slip his tongue into her mouth and that was better but still not close enough and she was enjoying it and kissing him back and she was so soft and warm and still too far away.
He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around his waist to balance herself, a giggle escaping from her throat.
"Be quiet," he muttered into her lips, unwilling to break their kiss. "Someone will hear us."
"That hasn't stopped us before," she teased, running her fingers through his thick, dark hair.
"Do you know how much trouble I could get in?" he asked. He pulled his head back to look at her, and even in the small amount of light that was seeping in from under the closed door, she could make out his beautiful blue eyes.
"Nobody will hear us," she replied, pulling his mouth back towards hers, eyes drifting shut again.
"I'm serious, Anna," he tried to say around her lips.
"You're bleeding."
Her eyes snapped open. She was still in the janitor's closet, her back pressed against the wall and her legs wrapped around a man's waist, but he wasn't her… boyfriend? No, he was, but her other boyfriend wasn't her boyfriend. This was her boyfriend. This was her Jasper. He was cradling the back of her head with one hand, while the other guided a handkerchief to her nose. She accepted it, pinching the bridge of her nose and trying to stem the flow of blood. In an instant, she was in his arms, and he was pushing his way out of the closet, and striding down the hallway. He turned a corner, nearly knocking over a freshman, before wading through the steadily crowding corridor.
"Spanish is the other way," Louisa pointed out, resting her head on his shoulder.
"We're not going to Spanish," Jasper replied, his voice harder than usual. "I'm taking you to the nurse, and then we are leaving."
"It's only a nosebleed," Louisa said, confused. He had pushed his way out of the building, the damp January air biting her exposed skin. He gripped her tighter to his chest and sped up to a point that people might either think he was inhuman or an Olympian power walker. "I don't need to leave school."
"There are four other vampires in the school," Jasper murmured into her ear, keeping his voice low as he passed by a curious group of students. "You need to get out of here."
"Rosalie has seen my nosebleeds before," Louisa pointed out. Was he walking to fast or was everything actually spinning? She tried to wrap an arm around Jasper's shoulder to keep her balance, but her arms refused to move. "You're a vampire, too?"
"I'm not going to hurt you," Jasper replied. They were at the main office and Louisa had no recollection of how they got there. Edward was standing by the door, his face bloodless.
"Of course not, silly," Louisa agreed. "Edward, you look like you're about to faint." Could vampires faint? Maybe not. They didn't even sleep.
Jasper gave a low hiss and the next moment, Edward was gone. He marched her into the office, brushing past a stunned Mrs Cope, and pushed his way into the infirmary. Then Louisa was draped across Jasper's lap, and… why was he holding the handkerchief for her? She could have done that. She went to replace his hands but her arms weren't moving. All she could do was allow her boyfriend to tilt her head forward and pinch her nostrils shut. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the clock on the wall ticking away. They would definitely be late for Spanish.
"This is an overreaching… no overarching… no… overreaction," Louisa tried to inform her boyfriend, but her tongue felt abnormally heavy. "I'm fine. When did you get here?" Who even were these people? They looked pretty familiar. She'd probably seen them around town before. Why did they have a gurney with them?
Jasper picked her up and placed Louisa on the stretcher, his hand trailing down her leg to rest on her ankle, shuffling out of the way of the paramedics without letting go of her.
"You good?" She asked, her words slurred from both the blood loss and the influence of his gift.
He let out a strained chuckle. Louisa would ask him if she was okay when she was the one practically haemorrhaging out of her nose. "I'm good."
"That's nice," she said with a lazy smile. "You're really pretty. Did you know that?"
"I'm flattered," he answered. A paramedic asked him to let go and step back, they needed to move her into the ambulance. But if he lost contact with her, all of the numbness he was giving her to suppress her pain would be dispersed throughout the room. The last thing he needed was high paramedics, but he couldn't allow her to be in pain. "I'll see you in a bit, Lou."
The last thing she did before succumbing to the exhaustion was to give him a thumbs up.
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." –Oscar Wilde
A/N: So how about that kiss, huh? You almost didn't get it, but I figured if there was one thing Louisa loved more than sleuthing, it's Jasper. The fact that they were together sleuthing... well, it was weirdly fitting. Anyways. Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Concerns? Leave me a comment. I promise I do read them all. I just got a new job on top of the one I already have, so my life is a wee bit hectic right now. But never fear: I will not abandon this story. Lots of Love, CheckAlexa