Leah told Paul a limited version of the truth. The second he found out exactly what Sam had done, he would try to kill him. Before anyone challenged Sam, he had to be stripped of his Alpha powers. And if Sam figured out what she knew, the consequences could be dire. There was nothing to stop him from wiping her memory again, not to mention Paul's, or that of anyone else in the pack who came too close to the truth. She told him as much as she could, which wasn't very much. He knew there was more, and he hated being in the dark. But she asked him to trust her, and he did. He wasn't happy, but he would do anything he could to help, even stop asking questions.

However, he suggested that she tell her mother whatever she couldn't tell him. Sam couldn't pry anything from her brain without her permission, and her mother loved Leah fiercely and would do anything in her power to protect her. Leah didn't want to; she was too embarrassed. But after Paul left, Seth reminded her that the only other person who knew the truth was Rosalie. If Sam managed to destroy their memories, no one but a vampire would know what had happened. No one would believe her word against Sam's.

Sue was absolutely livid. They had never seen her so angry. Leah was certain that she would have phased if she could have. She wanted to get Harry's shotgun and take care of Sam herself, once and for all, and had he been anywhere in sight, they probably wouldn't have been able to stop her. As it was, they barely managed to keep her in the house. Once she calmed down, she helped them figure out a way to keep Seth apart from Sam. Leah wasn't supposed to phase until her leg healed, but Seth still had to patrol. He would inevitably reveal their conversation with Rosalie to Sam. Their telepathy, while vitally important in battle, made secrets very difficult to keep. Leah was stunned that Sam had managed to hide his intentions toward her, and she suspected it was another Alpha power. Seth had no such protection.

Sue formally asked Sam and the council to reduce the number of wolves on patrol during each shift from two to one. With Leah and Jacob out of the rotation, the schedule was untenable. She insisted that the boys spend more time in school and less time in the woods. And since Victoria was dead, they should not require the same level of protection. Old Quil pointed out that they were now more concerned about the Cullens, not less. Sue retorted that Jacob had chased off the biggest threat, Edward, and the rest of the coven would be on their best behavior knowing that the pack was watching them so closely. The council agreed, so Seth did not have to patrol alongside Sam any longer, and Sue reworked the schedule so that they rarely signed out to one another. Seth was relieved.

Sue also tried to get special permission for Rosalie to come onto the reservation to help Leah, saying that her daughter would need assistance when neither she nor Seth was available. No one supported the idea, not even Paul. Allowing a vampire onto their lands was simply not safe, even if she had saved Leah's life. Sue argued that she was obviously able to control her thirst, even when leaning over a puddle of Leah's blood. She had also revealed more about her family than she should have, far more. But the opposing vote was unanimous. Sam offered Emily's help, but Sue bluntly declined.

They decided that when Sue worked and neither Paul nor Seth was available to stay with Leah, one of them would drop her off in town. Leah was welcome to come to Rosalie's house, but she wanted nothing to do with the other vampires. Rosalie, on the other hand, she genuinely liked. The vampire was just as witty and sarcastic as she was, and they had a lot in common. Both were unwillingly supernatural, neither really fit in with the rest of their companions, and they each kept secrets they could reveal only to a few. The first time they met, Rosalie treated Leah to a pedicure, commenting that if the only parts of her foot she could see were her toes, they may as well look good. Leah tried to refuse, but Rosalie didn't leave her with a choice. She practically dragged Leah to the salon and convinced her to get her nails painted a bright, striking blue. For the first time in months, Leah felt like a girl. It was a refreshing change. Afterward, they went to a coffee shop, where Rosalie teased her about her appetite before lamenting about how much she missed the taste of human food. Now it tasted like ashes and dust in her mouth, and her digestive system had no way to process it.

A little later, Leah noticed Rosalie looking forlornly at a young mother pushing her infant down the street in a carriage. "Did you have kids before you were turned?" she asked.

Rosalie smiled sadly. "No. I wanted them, though, badly. I was engaged but not married yet. I thought we'd have babies, but, well, my fiancé was the one…"

Leah read the rest by the expression on her face. Her jaw dropped open. "He's the one who hurt you?" Rosalie didn't speak. She only nodded. "Wow," Leah breathed. "And I thought my ex was bad."

Firmly, Rosalie countered, "Your ex is bad. This isn't a competition, anyway."

"I guess I understand why you were so ready to help me."

Rosalie smiled and shrugged. "I might have been projecting a little."

Leah asked, "Do you ever get the chance to make friends? Human ones or other vampires? It seems like you guys move around a lot, and I hear you mostly kept to yourself at school."

"We do, but we try to start school as young as possible so that we don't have to move again right away. Three or four years in one place ought to be enough time to make friends, at least casually, but no. The fact is, we stick to ourselves. I want to get to know other people, believe me, because eternity is long and lonely, and hanging around the same six people for years on end is very tedious."

"Tell me about it," Leah sighed. "I've only been back here for about a year, and the pack is driving me crazy. And seeing each other's thoughts? It's just not right."

"I do pity Edward that. I think his brain is a cacophony of endless noise whenever he's within a mile of anyone."

Leah glanced at her. "Did it make him crazy, you think?" She meant the question literally.

Rose wrapped her hands around a steaming mug of coffee that she had no intention of drinking. After a long pause, she answered, "It might have, and eternity itself. As much as I dislike Bella, he can't hear her thoughts, which has to be an enormous relief. The time gets to be too much, and when he can only get peace and quiet by being totally alone... We can't even fall asleep to break up the cycle between day and night. I miss dreaming, and I miss resting. We don't get physically tired, but sleep isn't just for your body, you know? It's for your mind, too. I don't know. We all probably go a little crazy from the boredom alone."

Leah wanted to know, "Why do you stay with them? When you talk about them, I'm not really clear that you even like them."

"My family? I worry about what they might do if I'm not there to stop them. Plus it's possible to love someone without liking them," Rosalie commented. "That's how I feel about them sometimes. I mean, they are my family, one way or another, or the closest I will ever get. They're all I have. They're not perfect, far from it. They're monsters. But then again, so am I. I have no illusions about that, even though some of us have fooled ourselves into thinking otherwise. But others of our kind are truly horrible. The worst of my family still has a conscience. That's rare, and it's valuable. It seems to be completely absent in the other vampires I've met."

"Are there others like you? Others with your diet?"

Rosalie nodded. "A few. Sometimes we spend time with a coven in Alaska. They also drink animal blood. But we haven't encountered any others. I would rather spend more time making friends with humans, I honestly would, but it just isn't safe for them. There are too many risks. It's too likely that they can figure out what we are, and humans who know about us don't survive for long."

"Why is that?"

"Vampires follow very few rules. Only one, really. We have to keep our existence a secret. The penalty for revealing ourselves is death, not just for us, but for the poor person who finds out about us. There's a very powerful society that makes sure of it."

Leah had wanted to ask about Charlie Swan's misguided daughter for a long time. "Then what about Bella? How did she find out, and what's going to happened to her?"

Rosalie huffed in frustration, leaning back in her chair and gritting her teeth. "That was Edward's fault. He let her get too close. She figured it out, and they became obsessed with each other. Now she wants to be one of us, and I can't figure out how to convince her otherwise. She doesn't realize, even though Edward himself has told her, that it isn't worth it. She willfully refuses to see the dark side. I mean," Rosalie gestured at herself, "this is all just for show. This is pretty packaging meant to hide something awful. It's a shiny bauble that catches our prey's eyes to make them come closer so we can eat them!"

Leah thought about their absurd, glittering skin and barely suppressed a giggle. "You're not awful. I'm sure of it. The rest of your family? I don't know about them, but you're not a monster."

"That's kind of you to say, but I am, and I know it. I'm just too stubborn to give into that side of me. Bella just doesn't understand. She won't acknowledge how brutal we are. I suppose it's our own fault. We try to hide our base natures with this veneer of control, of wealth, of beauty. She thinks it's glamorous. She wants to live forever, and she refuses to think about how painful it is to watch everyone you know die one by one. She won't even consider the fact that if she becomes one of us, her thirst won't be something she can just ignore. I mean, there are thousands of vampires in the world, and what, maybe a dozen of us don't drink human blood? And Carlisle is the only one I know of who never committed a murder. What are the odds that she'll never kill anyone? Infinitesimally small. The fact that she's willing to take this on voluntarily makes her morally bankrupt, as far as I'm concerned."

"I take it you don't want to add her to the small circle of people you have to spend forever with, do you?"

Rosalie rolled her eyes. "It goes both ways, you know. She thinks I'm shallow and vain."

Leah was surprised. "She said that? Really?" She had a hard time imagining Bella confronting anyone with such a statement. She had a hard time imagining Bella confronting anyone about anything.

Rosalie waved her hand. "Oh, not to my face. But I know what she thinks of me. You don't have to read minds to know. I hear her talking to Edward or Alice about me, because she forgets how good our hearing is. Somewhere along the way, she pigeonholed me. She's decided I'm a vapid, egotistical airhead. She thinks I spend hours putting on makeup and getting dressed, but it's like she got me confused with Alice. My sister is the one who's always trying to use Bella like some kind of dress up doll. She says she hates it, but for someone who says she doesn't care about her looks, she sure accepts a lot of free designer clothes and high-end makeup. I'll admit I like to look good, but it isn't as if I'm primping in front of a mirror for hours on end. The only reason I put on makeup is to try to blend in a little better. I spend about 20 seconds putting on some powder every day to tone down the disco-ball effect."

Leah took her head to the side inquisitively. "Do you think she's projecting on you?"

Rosalie agreed. "People who won't shut up about how little they care about their appearance really, really care about their appearance. I mean, she's furious about turning eighteen. She's been hounding Edward to turn her before her birthday so that she's not 'older' than him."

Leah found this fact ridiculous. "Wait, isn't he, like, a hundred years old or something? He's a creepy old man hitting on a child, basically."

Rosalie slapped her hand down on the table. "Yes! Exactly! He's old enough to be her great grandfather! Every single one of us is ancient, and she can't handle turning eighteen! Come on, if I could choose a moment in time to be frozen in, it wouldn't be that young! You can't vote, can't get most jobs without a fake ID, can't rent a car. It's such a pain!"

"Although, let's face it. It doesn't sound like she ought to have the right to vote," Leah snickered.

Rosalie laughed out loud. "Good point. Ugh. I can't tell if it's willful ignorance, stupidity, vanity, or blindness. She just has no sense of perspective."

"Do you know what she's planning on telling Charlie if she's turned? Can she tell him anything?"

"No! She absolutely can't tell him anything. His life would be at risk, and not just because of the bloodthirst she'll have as a newborn. If he knew anything about our existence, and anyone found out, he would be killed."

"So what, is she just going to avoid him? He's going to notice she looks different. She's not going to age. And the second he touches her, he'll know something's wrong. He's not stupid."

Rosalie wasn't certain. "She hasn't talked to me about it, but I don't think she has much of a plan. She's debating between a slow fade with a few phone calls and, well, just vanishing. That's what Jasper thinks she should do."

Leah, whose family had just been devastated by the loss of Harry, had absolutely no sympathy for Bella. "What? But he's her dad! She can't just disappear!"

"Technically, she can," Rosalie sighed. "We're experts at disappearing. Most likely, she'll want to fake her own death so he doesn't look for her."

Leah thought this was infuriating. "You have to be kidding me. I literally cannot think of a crueler thing to do to your own parent. Charlie loves her. He would be crushed. It would gut him. I know you don't know him well, but he was a really good friend of my dad. She hardly ever came to see him. Actually, for years she refused to come."

"Why?"

Leah waved her hand dismissively. "Some stupid excuse. She said it was too cloudy."

"That's not a reason," Rosalie frowned.

"No shit. The reason is because she was a damn brat. He pretended like it was fine, but you could see how hurt he was. But when she did visit? He was like a whole other person, even when she was sulking or being pissy for no good reason. He was so happy just to have her here. And every time she left, it was like all the light just went out of him. No. She can't do that, Rose. It's too thoughtless and cruel, even for her."

Rosalie held her hands up. "Hey, you're preaching to the choir here. I don't agree with it either. I don't agree with any of it. If she turns, she's going to regret it. Money, long life, power, none of it's worth it. I've tried to tell her, but she won't listen to me. Even Edward has tried to tell her."

"If Edward doesn't want her to turn, then why is that even still an option?"

Rosalie explained, "Well, he's as obsessed with her as she is with him. He can't read her mind for some reason, and the quiet from her brain is really peaceful to him. He has that with no one else. He used to tell her that he would stay with her for as long as she lived, because he wanted her to stay human."

A look of confusion crossed Leah's face. "Wait, stay with her? As a couple?"

"Something like that."

"How would that even work? Could they ever have sex or anything?"

Rosalie snorted. "Not if he wanted her to live. I mean, it's technically possible to have sex with a human without killing them, but most of us don't have the self-control. But you're assuming Edward wants to have sex with her. He doesn't. He's a virgin."

Leah blinked slowly. "A hundred year old virgin? You're kidding me!"

"A hundred year old, stuck up, Victorian, virgin prude. It's hysterical. It's my favorite thing about him, because it amuses me to no end. Trust me. He's terrified of sex, honestly." She idly picked up her spoon and started to swirl it in her drink. "You know, Carlisle created me to be his mate."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. He didn't 'save' me for the sake of saving me, Leah. I mean, if turning humans into vampires was a truly altruistic, noble thing to do, he'd do it left and right. But he's only done it four times in hundreds of years. Once because Edward's mother begged him and he was lonely, once to make his own mate, me, and once because I begged him when Emmett was dying. But I was supposed to be a present for Edward."

"That's crazy! Didn't he find you after you'd been assaulted?"

Sarcastically, Rosalie said, "Because who's a better candidate to be the mate of an immortal, bloodthirsty monster than a teenage girl who's just been gang-raped to brink of death?"

Leah's jaw dropped open. "That's sick! I... I don't know what to say, Rose."

"Trust me, neither did I." Rosalie laughed bitterly.

"Did he ask you if you wanted help? Did he tell you what he was going to do?"

Rosalie had to let go of her spoon before she accidentally bent it in half. "I was unconscious. I had passed out from pain, or blood loss, or something. And when I woke up, it was to a whole new world of agony. My veins were being filled with acid. t was awful. One nightmare turned into another. I had no idea what was going on. I was scared out of my mind. I didn't stop screaming for, I don't know. Hours? Days?"

"Sounds like phasing for the first time," Leah noted. "Damn. What is it with you and me, huh?"

Rosalie looked at her questioningly. "What do you mean?"

Leah hesitated briefly, not sure how much she felt like sharing. But Rosalie had just bared her heart, and they hardly knew each other. "The first time I phased, no one was expecting it. Girls aren't supposed to phase. I'm the only one, ever, as far as we know. I came home for spring break. It was supposed to be a week's visit. I thought I got sick, Seth and I had these awful fevers. My temperature was through the roof, 108, 109 degrees, every cell of my body on fire. It was like somebody stretched me out on a medieval torture device, like a rack or something, or was trying to draw and quarter me. It lasted for days. I was delirious. I got into a fight with my dad, and, well, I exploded. It was like my whole body was a bomb, and I detonated. I burst out of my own body, into this creature. I had absolutely no idea what was going on, none. Nobody told us anything, gave any hint to what was going on. Seth phased after seeing me. He was as scared as I was. I could hear him screaming in my brain. And my dad, my dad..." She swallowed thickly. "He had a heart attack, he was so shocked. Died that night."

"Leah, I'm so sorry," Rosalie breathed. Her new friend's transformation story was just as bad as hers.

"It's okay," Leah said, even though it really wasn't.

Understanding crossed the vampire's face. "Oh, god. I really am sorry, though. If we hadn't come back here... I wish we never came back here!"

"I wish a lot of things." Leah laughed sardonically.

"Honestly, though, I'm so sorry. Of all the places in the world… I'd change it if I could, I swear."

"Can't turn back time, though. But I'll let you know if I figure out how." After a pause, Leah asked, "What the hell was Carlisle thinking when he turned you?"

Rosalie rolled her eyes. "That I looked awfully pretty underneath all the blood and bruises, that Edward wasn't getting any, and that I was about to die. You know, the makings of an epic love story. It's a damn good thing he's practically asexual. If he had ever tried anything with me, I'd have ripped off his dick and set it on fire. You know, Bella thinks I'm jealous of her because he wants her when he never wanted me, but…"

"I can't imagine you ever wanted Edward."

"I was too traumatized to want anyone, let alone Edward. I guess I got lucky that he's such a prude. He never felt threatening or anything, which was good for me back then. And even if it weren't for what had just happened to me, we'd have never been romantic. I could never see him that way. He's too effeminate for my taste, not to mention pretentious. He takes himself way too seriously, he's too depressed all the time, and he has no sense of humor. Some girls go for that sort of thing, but not me."

Leah mused, "But Bella thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread."

"Apparently. She's concocted some fantasy life in her brain, and he's at the center."

"And that fantasy doesn't include her getting old and wrinkly while he still looks seventeen?"

Rosalie visibly relaxed now that they were off the subject of their agonizing metamorphoses. "Exactly. As you can imagine, that didn't really appeal to her. But he swears it's what he really wants."

Leah stared at her with a blank expression. "I don't get it."

"Fantastic, isn't it?" Rosalie cackled. "He wants her to stay human. He drones on and on about her immortal soul, and how he doesn't want to damn her. But really, if he doesn't change her, he has this built-in excuse not to have sex with her. She's so sexually frustrated. It's hilarious. You can smell her desperation, just like you can smell his terror at the very idea."

"So she's crazy horny and he's, what, gay?"

"The thought has crossed my mind. His balls practically retract into his body when she comes near. I've seen them 'kissing' a few times. It's the funniest thing ever. She drapes herself over him, and she tries so hard to make out. She'd strip him naked and climb right on if he'd let her. But he kisses her the way boys barely peck their aunties on the cheek, and then he pries her off. It's fabulous!"

"What on earth are they doing?"

Rosalie sighed. "I don't know. They could pull off a human-vampire marriage for a little while, maybe even a decade or two, but she'd start to look like some cradle robber pretty fast, or really, people would assume she was his mother. I can see why she doesn't want to do that. But it doesn't mean he should turn her."

"It means he should leave her alone. It means she should move on with her life," Leah finished.

"Exactly," and Rosalie agreed. "But Edward isn't willing to let her go, not really. He'd rather turn her than give her up. He's been lonely for a very long time. I honestly think he's never fallen for anyone before because of his ability. He sees too much, knows too much."

"Has he dated other women before? I know you said he's a virgin, but has he even gotten close?"

"I think that when we left Forks for a little while, there may have been someone. I'm not sure. He ran off, separated from the rest of the family after he dumped Bella. I don't know exactly where he went, but I think he tried to see other women. I get the impression he was trying to get over her. I'm not sure. He'd never tell me, but I overheard him saying something to Alice. But they shut up as soon as they realized I could hear them. Either way, other women just don't hold his interest. There's no mystery to anyone in the world except her, you know? He can see everyone's flaws instantaneously, but not hers."

"They aren't obvious enough as it is?" Leah was skeptical.

Rosalie explained, "He has grown so reliant on his ability that his other senses are dulled. Not the vampire senses, of course. Our sense of smell is probably almost as acute as yours, vision like a hawk, that kind of thing. But reading body language? Subtle distinctions of language? Why pay attention to that when you can just read someone's mind? She's a lovely mystery to him. So I get why he fell for her, and why he wants to keep her. But what he's doing, what our whole family is doing with that girl, it's just too selfish. But no one's listening to me. I've been outvoted, quite literally."

For some reason, Leah thought this was rather funny. "You guys actually voted?"

"Yeah. I'm the only one who thinks it's a bad idea. Alice wants another sister. She had a vision of Bella as a vampire, and she can't let go of it. She got the whole family worked up, so even before we actually met her, Esme decided she wanted another daughter. Jasper will agree with whatever Alice thinks. My husband thinks it's fantastic. Carlisle wants Edward to be happy."

"All at the expense of her life, and the lives of any humans she'll kill later."

Rosalie hunched over the table, staring sightlessly into the wood grain somberly. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but part of me hopes Jacob comes back without my brother. If he really killed that man..."

"The question isn't 'if', Rose," Leah pointed out. "By his own admission, he accidentally killed him while trying to save him. And that's the best case scenario. At the very least, he should have stopped drinking before it was too late, and then the man would have turned. Not that I'm suggesting you guys make a habit of that. But the worst case scenario is much, much worse. He probably just murdered him."

"I know," Rosalie sighed. "It's possible, I know."

"The way he reacted when Jake confronted him? It wasn't the reaction of an innocent man. Something bad happened out there. Jacob's not just going to let him get away with it."

Rosalie looked up and retorted, "If he can catch Edward. Even if he can do that, Edward's not going down without a fight. Like I said, he's very hard to kill."

"How is the rest of your family handling all this?" Leah asked.

Rosalie shrugged and looked away again. "I don't know. Carlisle and Esme are worried out of their minds. Emmett's sulking, which is really weird for him. I haven't actually seen Alice and Jaz around. I don't know where they are. I don't think they want to talk to me very much. "

"Why not?"

Rosalie started to fidget in her chair. It was the most uncomfortable Leah had seen her. "Like I told you, they all know how I stand. If Edward killed him on purpose, I'd kill him myself, or at least try to. They know it, and they hate me for it."

"So if Jacob catches him," Leah understood, "you don't have to do the dirty work."

Now Rosalie looked positively despondent. "You shouldn't hang around me, Leah. Vampires are very selfish."

Leah gave her a very warm and genuine smile. "In that case, you're doing a terrible job of being a vampire, Rose. I think you may be one of the least selfish people I've ever met, and the one thing that is supposed to define vampires, you refuse to do. You're a good friend, both to me and to Bella, even if she refuses to see it. I'm not sure you even quality as a vampire."

Rosalie's stony features somehow softened. "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in a very long time."

X-x-x-x-X

Paul stared at the computer so long without doing anything that the screen went to sleep. He was lucky that calculus came so easily to him. He hadn't submitted homework for weeks, but if he did well on this test, he could squeak by with a passing grade. He just had to pay attention long enough to finish it. He yawned hugely and clicked the mouse to reactivate the computer, and fifteen minutes later he was finished. Thankfully, his last period was physical education. It didn't matter how sleep deprived he was; he could still shoot three-pointers and dribble circles around his opponents. He tried to take it easy on the other guys, but his team still won the game by a margin of twenty-two points.

After the final bell rang, he stopped at the border to pick up Leah from Rosalie. Sam crouched in the tree line, paws itching to leap at the vampire. Instead he watched them from the trees, glaring at them and ensuring that Rosalie didn't take one step onto tribal lands. Paul ignored him and grabbed Leah by the hips and pulled her flush against him, kissing her softly. He heard Sam's growl and deepened the kiss. When he let her go, he screwed up his face and said, "I think I like doing that better when you haven't spent the entire day with a vampire. You kind of stink."

Rosalie flipped him the bird and drove off, complaining that he was a mutt that needed to be hosed down.

Leah tried to tell him that it was his bright idea never to leave her alone, but the words wouldn't come. Instead she playfully rubbed herself against him to transfer the odor. "Hah," she said firmly.

He chuckled and shrugged nonchalantly as he heard Sam back away to continue his patrol. "I suppose that's fair. Anyway, it'll give me an excuse to wash this smell off of both of us when we get you back to your house."

She cocked an eyebrow in response. "You're going to be really late for your shift." She was still able to discuss pack business, at least.

"Yeah." He glanced at Sam's retreating tail. Under his breath, he whispered, "You think I care about being late?"

She grinned at him and let him lead her into his truck. He was 45 minutes late, and he arrived covered in Leah's scent.

Sam was livid, but Paul didn't care at all. Sam tried to pretend that he was only mad at Leah for spending time with one of the Cullens, but they both knew he was jealous. Paul found himself in the unusual position of defending a vampire. Sam feared Leah would share important information with the enemy. Paul countered that the opposite was happening. She was learning a lot of valuable information about the coven by spending time with one of its members. Sam argued that it was dangerous. Paul pointed out that they hadn't risked anyone on the reservation; the girls spent the day in Forks. Sam accused Paul of being careless with Leah's safety. Paul snapped that Sam had done more to hurt her than anyone, so as long as he stayed away from her, she would be fine. Besides, there was no one else available to help Leah while she was injured. Sam said that Emily was happy to help. Leah was only being petty by not accepting the offer. Paul thought he must be kidding. Rosalie had already done more good for Leah in a few short days than Emily had over a lifetime. Emily obviously took a sadistic joy in hurting Leah as much as possible, and if she ever wanted to spend time with her, it was only so she could rub her relationship with Sam in Leah's face. Sam was tempted to order Paul not to speak, but issuing such declarations out of anger didn't end well. He phased out in sullen silence.

Paul decided to follow Sam at a distance. As far as he was concerned, Sam was as much of a threat to Leah as any vampire. He wished he could blow off patrol to stay with her, but that would definitely result in disciplinary action. He couldn't wait until the day that her ex no longer had influence over them. Jacob couldn't come home fast enough.

He waited until Sam was completely out of range and then followed his scent. He was relieved when he realized it led to Sam's cabin rather than Leah's house. He crept close enough to confirm that Sam was inside with Emily. Through a window, he saw her speaking on her cell phone to someone. Sam was moving around behind her doing domestic chores. As far as he could tell, there was nothing worth sticking around for, so he made a loop around the house in order to stay out of sight. His path took him around the side, past the open-air car port.

Suddenly, the side door opened. Sam came out bearing a trash bag. Paul barely managed to duck behind Emily's car in time. He was sure Sam would hear his heartbeat or notice his scent, but he got lucky. The headphones in his ears muffled any sounds Paul made, and the pungent garbage masked Paul's musk. Sam just dropped the bag in the can and went back inside. Paul waited a minute, then lifted his head carefully, making sure no one would see him. A flash of reflected light caught his eye. Under the passenger seat of Emily's car, he spotted an expensive silver smartphone. What was that doing there? It definitely wasn't Sam's; Paul knew what his looked like. And Emily had hers in her hand. She was still talking on it.

He phased into his human body, carefully opened the door, and picked up the phone. He turned it on and saw a notification icon for a voicemail. He tried listening, but he couldn't access anything else without the passcode. He turned it over in his hand, but short of stealing it and finding someone to hack it for him, it wouldn't tell him anything. He gently replaced it, closed the door with a quiet click, and crept away from the house.

He ran several loops around the border, but he couldn't stop thinking about the phone. He had a bad feeling about it, although he couldn't explain why. Emily had probably given someone a ride in her car, and they must have dropped it. It was the most likely explanation. But Emily didn't have many friends. Pack members were at their house constantly, but he didn't think anyone used that model, although he didn't keep track. Emily was very close to Kim, but she couldn't afford a phone as expensive as that. If she wanted one, though, Jared would have sold his soul to buy it for her. Or maybe it belonged to an elder? The question nagged at him.

After Quil came to relieve him, he phased into his human body and jogged back toward Sam's cabin. When he got there, the only light came from the bedroom. He peered between the crack in the curtains. Emily was flipping through a magazine, and Sam was snoring beside her. Paul suppressed a snort. Sam was such an old man. It was way too early to be tired. He tiptoed around to the car; the phone was right where he left it. He circled the cabin, looking for signs that anything else was out of place, but he found nothing. Dissatisfied, he started to walk away. Something was off, but he wasn't going to figure out what it was by staring at the cabin while its inhabitants slept. He started to walk to the Clearwater house. Sue would feed him, and then he could pretend to leave and sneak back in Leah's window.

The snick of a latch stopped him. He turned around, and through the trees he saw a shadow moving in the car port. It was too short to be Sam, so he crept closer. Emily opened the car's passenger door, and a flood of light from the interior illuminated her flannel nightgown and ratty slippers. She opened the glove compartment, rooted around in it, and made a sound of frustration. But then she found the phone where it had slipped to the floor. She sat in the passenger seat and shut the door. While she unlocked the phone and put it to her ear, Paul moved as close as he could, but he didn't want to get spotted. He wished he could hear what she was listening to, because an expression of alarm crossed her face, and she cursed. She frantically jabbed at the screen and muttered, "Pick up. Pick up, damn it." Then she said, "Hey, it's me. I got your message. Sorry I couldn't pick up earlier. I couldn't get away from Sam." She paused and frowned. "Hello? Are you there? Hello? Hello?" She must not have gotten an answer, because eventually she hung up. She stuffed the phone inside a map that she shoved into the glove box. As she got out of the car, she looked around carefully. Paul felt like she was looking for him, but the night was too dark, and he was too well hidden. She disappeared into the house.

Paul headed to the Clearwater house and relayed what he had seen to Leah. She said it was evidence that Emily must be having an affair. Ever since she had given Emily's name and Sam's phone number to Brock, the man she met at the carnival, she suspected it. Emily had reacted far too suspiciously, and she had a history of cheating. She must have learned a lesson in secrecy after a previous boyfriend discovered her infidelity because of evidence she left on her phone.

They went to sleep amused by the delicious irony of the situation, but they didn't sleep long. The sound of banging on the front door roused them at 3:30 AM. Who would come around at this time of night? It couldn't be a vampire-related emergency. If that were the case, someone would be howling, wouldn't they? As Paul helped Leah out of bed and down the stairs, they heard the person they were hoping for.

Jacob's voice was so low that they couldn't hear him as he spoke to Seth, who had let him in.

Paul interrupted, "Jake, thank god you're back. We really have to talk about Sam."

"Sam?" Jacob looked up. "Actually, I'm pretty sure it's Emily we really need to talk about. But first, we have to get to the border in case the Cullens attack."

X-x-x-x-X

A/N: Thanks again to my lovely beta, Babs81410.