Edward's POV:

Another hundred years had passed and Violet and Adriel were now three hundred years old and the size of four year olds. Eliza, Masen, Carl, and Rosita were all four hundred years old and the size of five year olds. Allison and Jackson were five hundred and were the size of six year olds. Scryan and Aiden were the tallest of the children and were taller, but skinnier, than Allison and Jackson. Ashley and Lily, on the other hand, were the shortest and were shorter than Violet and Adriel.

Our efforts to start schooling our little monsters were really paying off. We started off by adding desks to the nursery room and using that as the classroom, but it was too crowded, so Esme built a small building on the other side of the playground, specifically designed to house our new school. Emmett was assigned teaching detail, because of his teaching credentials. And because he could not control all twelve of them, Jasper was their other permanent teacher. The rest of us also pitched in for specific subjects, but we did not stay the entire day.

Vampiric children learn quickly, so they had all been reading for years. Esme helped out in the morning during reading time and she had them all reading The Black Dragon series. Then it was history with Jasper and a short recess. After that it was math time, which Bella helped with, followed by anatomy with Carlisle. Then they had a longer recess on the playground, before their afternoon classes.

The first class after recess was writing, which was the most difficult subject to teach, because it involved such fine motor skills. Alice was helping out with writing and their first lesson was how to not break the pencils. The thin wooden sticks filled with graphite crumbled so easily and the kids really had to concentrate on controlling their strength to write with them.

Pencils also made excellent projectiles. Masen had a note sent home last week that he had thrown one into the wall, eviscerating the plaster. Scryan's desk was on the other side of the room from his, so he had no way of shielding the boy's thoughts. Consequently, Eliza saw the pencil coming in Scryan's visions and ducked out of the way, letting the projectile continue on its course until it hit the wall.

Masen's punishment was to help Esme repair the hole, which was a bit more complicated given the extremes Alice and Esme had gone to in order to build such durable walls in the first place. All the inner walls in the school house were made out of reinforced sheets of Kevlar, which was then spackled over with plaster to make it look like a wall. This gave the walls strength, flexibility, and a certain resistance to projectiles, with the decorative plaster being the weakest link. It was indeed the plaster that Masen had damaged and would have to repair.

Bella and I had spent the last several hundred years teaching Masen and Eliza how to get along. They were pretty good about not destroying the house and furniture at home, but at times, they could still be a bit destructive with their violence and they often got notes sent home from school for fighting and throwing things at each other.

We bought all new furniture, which lasted a lot longer now that the children were growing up. The first piece of furniture I bought was a piano, which allowed me to give my children lessons on a high quality instrument. And now that school was in session, Emmett had asked me to help out with music hour and teach all the leaches to play. Music class was in the afternoon, right after writing hour, so it was the last class of the day before wrestling practice.

Rosalie, being the second best musician in the family, was my co-instructor. The two of us would arrive a few minutes early and waited for Alice to finish her writing class, before we started music. We always started class the same way, by first walking the group of children across the hall to the new music room, which was set up with one piano, a number of keyboards, and a few violins.

We did not have enough room for a piano for everyone, so the room was filled with keyboards instead. And since I had already taught Eliza, Masen, Allison, and Jackson to play the piano, they had been moved onto the violin. It would be a few more years yet before I had the lot of them turned into a real symphony with violas, cellos, and a string bass or two, but four violins and eight keyboards was a start.

After music, was wrestling, so I would pack up my sheet music and stick around for another hour, because Emmett and I were assigned to help Jasper out with wrestling practice, which was held on a cleared patch of dirt just outside the schoolhouse. We wanted the children to be well rounded and able to defend themselves if need arose, and that meant wrestling every afternoon. This way, our little bloodsuckers would not be sitting ducks if the Volturi came for them.

But not every day was filled with lessons: some days were exam days. Now that the bloodsuckers were in school, tests were a part of our lives. Said testing invariably had mixed results and we quickly realized that we were testing their cheating abilities more than their ability to retain knowledge. Many of the children were frequently caught off topic, but received high marks, so we knew they were cheating.

Eliza looked to Emmett and Jasper's memories of preparing the tests to learn the answers, even though they made sure not to think the answers to prevent Masen's cheating. But, Masen would just get the answers from one of the other children instead, so there really was no point. As long as someone in a three-mile radius thought the answers and was not being shielded by Bella, he knew. Same with Eliza, only the person did not need to be actively thinking about it.

During tests Jackson looked to visions of the lecture that he had not bothered listening to in order to fill in all of the answers. And Scryan would look to the future when he would get the test back with his wrong answers crossed out and the correct ones circled in red ink. Then he would change his answers accordingly. Whenever Ashley did not know an answer she would call Emmett over and ask a leading question. He would refuse to answer it, but his emotions would give the correct answer away. Her cheating was slightly more work and less accurate, but if she paid the slightest amount of attention while actually in class, she would ace the test.

Allison had a natural advantage with math and anatomy, while Jackson had the advantage with history. And Alice's children were excellent writers, because of all of the time they spent on art work at home. So even though it was harder to fake writing because it involved learning motor skills, they did well there too.

The other children actually had to pay attention in class and rely on their perfect vampiric memories. That is, unless they bribed Masen beforehand, which was not hard to do. My son was amazingly corrupt. He would transfer answers from Allison, Scryan, and Jackson into the minds of anyone who was willing to pay his fee. So it came to be that mine and Bella's presences were required at all examinations.

If Jackson or Scryan looked for visions of answers they automatically failed. Eliza and Masen's cheating was harder to circumvent, which was where Bella came in. She shielded everyone's thoughts from the mind-reading duo. And I made sure Masen was not touching or shielding anyone else and observed the other children's thoughts to ensure that no cheating ensued. As for Ashley, I was a bit stauncher with my emotions than Emmett, so it was left up to me to refuse to answer her questions.

And so cheating was curbed, but not eliminated. The little monsters just became more creative with it and they learned to not think of how they were cheating to avoid my scrutiny. It was The Red Queen Effect in action, because every test they would devise a new way to cheat and every test I would find a new way to counter it. Now I had a new method of cheating to monitor for every test.

Today was the last Friday of the quarter, which meant it was a major test day, so Jasper and Emmett took the day off, headed out on a hunting trip, and left the exams behind for Bella and me. The tests were going well, with no signs of cheating, and for a moment I thought that we might get through an entire exam without supernatural cheating.

I must have jinxed the test with such absorbed thoughts, because halfway through I began to notice an odd pattern: all of the children not only knew all of the answers, but they had the same correct answers. Their answers were the same, right down to the essays being eerily similar. I checked Allison for electronic transmission devices, the method they had used last time, but came up empty. They really had nothing on them and they probably would have gotten away with it if it were not for their weakest link.

Eliza was a horrible liar, so she would have been the weakest link if not for her shield. In reality it was Aiden with his conscience that tended to be the easiest to crack, so I made it fairly obvious that I was suspiciously observing his every move. It only took three minutes for him to give and start thinking about the answers Scryan had passed around the day before.

Emmett and Jasper had written the test early that morning, right before heading out, but they had made the mistake of deciding what to put in it days ago. By yester evening, the composition was mostly set in stone, even though neither teacher had discussed it or agreed to it. Scryan simply chose the future with the test he wanted and passed out the answers. In return, everyone who wanted the answers forked over their allowance, providing Scryan with enough money to order a new snowboard. Snowboards were very popular among the children at the moment, although they were rather fragile and had to be replaced frequently.

And as it turned out, all eleven of the others just happened to want the answers. Even Allison did not know every subject and had been daydreaming during so many lessons that she was worried about possibly receiving a poor grade. But now that Aiden had given them away, I called the test to a halt, ripped them up, and announced the Fs that would be going home to their parents. It would be nice if we could get just one accurate measurement on how much they knew and even a C would look good on the refrigerator next to all the Fs.

With no test to finish, school was dismissed early today. And with Jasper and Emmett away hoping to catch a few walruses, this meant that both Alice and Rosalie were left alone, all day and all night, with their children. This was not a problem in Rosalie's case, because she had no problems handling her three girls. Alice, however, could not watch all four of hers at once, especially not for the twelve additional hours it would take Jasper to return.

Jasper could not be called and asked to return sooner, because he had not taken his cell phone with him hunting. Although now that they were waterproof up to two thousand feet, maybe he should start, because even with Alice's vision, things like this still happened.

Alice could watch only three of her children at a time before her monsters overwhelmed her and it was a very specific three: Jackson, Allison, and Scryan. Ashley was the biggest problem causer, because she liked to play pranks. Scryan was a prankster too, but only when Ashley was around. So whenever Jasper had to step out at night, he always took Ashley with him.

I knew from Alice's thoughts that she did not want to ask others to watch her troublesome monsters, so instead of sending Ashley away during hunting trips, she sent Allison and Jackson. They were much better behaved and did not embarrass her when they spent the night away from home. And removing the well behaved leaches from the situation reduced the targets for pranks, making Scryan and Ashley easier to deal with. Thus when school let out early, Esme picked up her own three boys along with a fourth for the night: Jackson.

While my parents were watching Jackson, Bella and I were watching Allison. We let the kids play outside until five, to blow off some steam. Then we started off the evening with painting to make Allison feel more at home, because Alice has art time with her brood every night. The painting went smoothly at first, but eventually Masen and Eliza started throwing the stuff at each other. Allison ducked out of the way, but Eliza and Masen needed baths.

Bella had bathed Masen first and was currently upstairs bathing Eliza, and while my wife was bathing his sister, a freshly cleaned Masen was sitting quietly in the corner holding Allison's hand. Masen was shy around Allison. Normally he was an out-going touchy-feely type kid, always holding hands, but with her he was quiet and even more insistent on constant skin contact. She calmed him down.

Allison was sitting next to Masen in the corner, holding hands and looking bored, as usual, so I decided to pester her with questions, as always, because that was my way of keeping her entertained. "Allison, why is Scryan taller than Jackson. Jackson is a hundred years older, so he should be taller."

"Maternal effects," she answered out loud, because Masen was shielding her from me.

"Maternal effects?" I asked.

"Yes, maternal effects occur if there's a difference between the two parents, when both parents are capable of being the mother. It matters which parent is the mother. In humans, the female is always the mother, so they don't notice the maternal effects. But in hybrids, like tiglons and ligers, we notice."

'What are tiglons and ligers?' Masen asked telepathically to all of us.

"Tiglons and ligers are both lion slash tiger hybrids. But, the tiger's the mother of the liger, while the lion's the mother of the tiglon. Tiglons weigh less than both lions and tigers, while ligers weigh more than both parents, because of epigenetic imprinting. A growth gene is turned on in the copy inherited from the female tiger and the male lion. This same gene is off if inherited from the male tiger or the female lion.

"An offspring is normal sized if it has one copy of the gene on and the other off. Ligers have both copies on and are huge, while tiglons have both off and are small. Since the difference is caused by which parent is the mother, the phenomenon is referred to as maternal effects. The same concepts hold with vampires.

"Vampires have imprinted genes that differ between the male and female?" I asked for clarification.

"Yes. It matters which parent's the 'mother,' or more accurately, the egg bearer, or cotia. Epigenetic modifications are influenced by which sex one's egg-bearer is. Females are typically smaller than males, so a female would benefit from having a smaller child than the male.

"A smaller child is easier for a smaller person to carry. The cotia needs to be able to carry the offspring in his or her arms during the dependency phase, to protect it from harm. If the offspring is too large, it's more likely to be killed by rivals, so the eggs born to female cotias are shorter than those of male cotias.'

"Then why are you and Jackson the same height? And why are Masen and Eliza the same height? Should Eliza and you not be taller because your cotias are male?"

"Gender of the offspring also plays a role in height determination. My cotia is male, but I'm female, so I'm average height. Jackson's male with a female cotia, so he's also average height. Same with Eliza and Masen. Aiden and Scryan are the tallest, because they're male with male cotias."

That was when Eliza ran down the stairs at lightning speed and jumped into my lap, finally done with her bath. "Music time," she trilled in her ringing voice.

"Allison, do you want to play with us?" I asked. She had been learning violin at school and had already mastered piano. We had both in the house.

"Sure!" she exclaimed, sounding excited for once. Masen had already run into the music corner, strapped on his bass guitar, and was tuning his instrument. He was also learning violin at school and had the piano mastered, but at home he was glued to his bass.

"Come on, Ali!" Eliza sang as she danced over to her electric guitar that she had gotten for her most recent birthday.

'Is Mom coming? She's shielding,' Masen projected so everyone could hear, except Eliza and Bella. Everyone thus amounted to Allison and myself.

"Bella, Masen is calling for you again," I said out loud so that she would know to throw her shield.

If Bella was in the same room with him, she could tell when he wanted to "speak" whenever he caught her eye, but if she was not in the same room, communication was much more difficult. Masen had suggested using Morse code tapped out on the floor, but she refused based on principle, because she wanted to force him to speak out loud for Eliza's benefit. They had eventually settled on a texting compromise, which meant he was allowed to communicate with her through texting whenever they were not in the same building.

At the time, which was almost a hundred years ago now, we had of course hoped that getting Masen his first cell phone would encourage him to speak, because it was impossible to telepath through a phone, but Masen had just gotten frustrated and smashed that phone to pieces. Bella had been upset over the lack of effort on his part, but he was still so little and he just started crying, so she eventually gave in, pulled out another phone, and taught our son to text. He has been texting ever since.

"Masen! What've I told you about using your telepathy in front of Eliza?" Bella asked as she came in and took a seat at her drum set. She was not particularly musical when we met, but with as many years to practice as we have had, she was definitely improving.

"S- s- s- s- 'rrry E- i- e- li- i- li- zaaa. I o- a- o- ossed iii' iii' M- m- m-m- um 'as c- c- c- c- cooommm- mim'," Masen stuttered at barely a whisper, mispronouncing all of the words, despite his best effort not to. His speaking voice was a higher pitch than his telepathic voice, as well as being raspy from disuse.

I had never met a stuttering vampire before, but that was not the worst of Masen's speech problems. He spoke so quietly that despite our super hearing, it was difficult to hear him if there was any other noise in the room. And if he spoke quickly, he would mispronounce the words so badly that his speech was incomprehensible. At least when he slowed it down his pronunciation was not as bad and it was easier to understand him, even if the stuttering was the trade-off.

Masen's speech was most similar to that of deaf humans who try to speak aloud even though they were unable to hear the words coming out of their own mouths. Although he could hear fine, the muscles necessary for speech had never been used or trained sufficiently to make the correct sounds. He hated how he sounded and especially hated practicing, because Eliza would make fun of him for it, so his speech was still highly flawed, despite the progress he had made.

In fact, teasing Masen about his speech was one of Eliza's hobbies, to the point where it was her most frequent cause of grounding, even more so than cheating. Once when they were a little over two hundred, Bella had sat Masen down with a book of animals and tried to teach him to say the names. But when they had gotten to duck, and Masen replied, "Guck," Eliza had started laughing hysterically. And ever since then, he has refused to say duck and she has teased him mercilessly about gucks. So it was a common occurrence for me to say the phrase, "Sorry, Eliza cannot play today: she is grounded for saying guck again."

So I am sure you can understand why Bella and I spent the next several minutes praising Masen for his extremely articulate, for him, reply, before we broke into our usual all night jam session. This one turned out to be particularly successful because we learned how well Allison could sing. A lead singer was the one thing our little band was lacking and we would have to invite her over more often.