Please Note: Alternating points of view—Bella/Edward/Bella

38. Sly looks in corridors

I'd expected Jasper to follow me when I'd run out of Tanya's cabin, but after an hour or so of sitting alone on the mountain ledge, it appeared he hadn't. I didn't much mind because I didn't really want to be found, and had he tried, I surely would have evaded him.

With my stealth vampire abilities, I could evade them all, or so I thought.

"Can I join you?" Tanya said, climbing up onto the ledge and crawling toward me on all fours. "Jasper is beside himself with worry because he can't find you."

"I thought he'd followed me."

"Not immediately, no."

"Oh. He'll have followed you now, though, won't he?"

She looked sheepish as she sat down beside me with her knees bent up. "I may have sent him and Emmett off in another direction in case you needed some space."

A shower of tiny rocks rained down on us from above as another figure landed on the ledge. I shook the dust out of my hair and looked up.

"Hey, Edward," I said, wondering how many more of the family would be stopping by. "Your flies are undone."

Edward's long fingers quickly set to work on his buttons. "Um, thanks, Bella," he said, smiling shyly as he crouched down beside Tanya.

"We would have been here sooner," she said, "but I had to take care of him after I'd got him all worked up. He couldn't run."

"How was it?" I asked.

"Mind blowing," Edward replied wistfully.

I stared at him open mouthed until Tanya snorted, and then we were all giggling.

Once I'd regained my composure, I tried again. "How was it after I left the cabin?"

"Chaotic," Edward said. "Jasper just about had everyone calmed down when Alice declared that she can't be within a mile of you."

"That's fine by me," I said.

"I know you don't mean that, Bella. If you could have seen inside her mind… I didn't notice it before when the two of you were in the same room because her thoughts weren't coming at me as they usually do. But when I consciously looked, there was nothing but black.

"Carmen and Esme have taken her back to the other cabin, and Kate and Irina followed them in case they can be of help. Perhaps when you're ready to return… Carlisle wants you to try one more thing."

"And what would that be, exactly?"

"He wants you to try and let me under your shield."

I looked at him blankly. I might not have known how, but I was sure I had been doing exactly that when I'd unconsciously blocked Alice from seeing the futures of those in my company.

Edward sighed, his shoulders dropping, and then, as if he had already done so, he said, "So that I can read your mind."

Tanya must have sensed the rigor mortis setting into my limbs because she started the count before I did. "One, two, three…"

…

"Have you gone stark raving mad?" Emmett towered over Carlisle in the centre of the room, his bulk making him all the more intimidating as he positioned himself between our father and Bella.

"I beg your pardon, Emmett!" Carlisle said, his eyes darkening. It was rare for him to show such fury.

Emmett didn't flinch. "You shouldn't mess around with something you don't understand."

"Oh really. I bow to your better judgment. Please, enlighten me as to why?"

"Despite all your efforts, you've only a vague idea of what Bella can do. All you've got is that she can guard her feelings by boxing up memories to protect herself, and look what happened when she opened one of those back up. None of you can explain how she blocks Jasper's or Edward's gifts, or how she interferes with Alice's."

"Jasper is more complex, I'll grant you, but Eleazar and I believe it is a mental shield that is blocking Edward and Alice. We believe that is controlled by what she refers to as her filing boxes. She simply has to find the relevant box."

"So what if you're right, and she succeeds in letting Edward into her mind?" Emmett asked.

"That is precisely what we're hoping for. I don't see the problem."

Rosalie got up from the loveseat and stood by her husband. While watching him stand up for his sister, she had come to the conclusion that her fears for our family were about to be realised. She put a hand on Emmett's upper arm, and though his body relaxed, his mind remained sharp.

"What if by letting him in," he said, "she unblocks something else into the bargain, and it changes everything back to before she was changed? Do you really want to launch that kind of clusterfuck on all of us right now?"

"That could happen at any time," Eleazar said, calmly moving to stand at Carlisle's side. "Maybe it's better now than later."

In less than a second, I was pushing my way between Emmett and Carlisle. I was seething with rage. "You'd willingly destroy what I have with Tanya?"

"Bella is your mate, Edward," Carlisle said.

"You were the one who encouraged me to find love again when we thought Bella was dead, and I found it. Now that I am finally happy, you want to put that in jeopardy?"

"Your place is with your family, Edward, as is Bella's."

"What!? This is about maintaining your coven?"

I felt Tanya's arms come around my waist from behind and the front of her body press firmly up against my back. She was just gearing up to tell the pair of them where to go when Bella flitted to my side.

"Carlisle," she said as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth (which of course it wouldn't, her being as cold as a slab of marble in a pantry), "how about I open up the box which contains the memory of when you and Esme said I was your daughter. Or the one in which your son was so distressed by an unfortunate turn of events that he felt he had to leave me to keep me safe, and you supported his decision. You and Esme let us both down then, and you're doing it again now."

Her forefinger jabbed into his sternum. "You are not my father!" she said. He recoiled. "A father would not have deserted one of his children in favour of another. A father would not ask one of his daughters to hurt one of his sons. I love Edward and I love Tanya. They are my friends. Why would I want to destroy what they have between them? Why would you?"

Carlisle sunk down onto the couch behind him and put his head in his hands. "I want my son back," he said. "I want my family back."

And then, Bella turned around and offered me something I would never have expected.

…

Though it pains me now to admit it, Carlisle and Eleazar may have been right about one thing, it just hadn't occurred to me to investigate it.

When we'd returned to the cabin, I'd initially been horrified by Carlisle's suggestion. He'd wanted me to undergo some kind of vampire hypnosis, though how he expected to achieve that with my shield in place was anyone's guess.

Tampering with the mind can be a dangerous game, even for the most eminent of psychologists, and psychology wasn't Carlisle's field.

All the time we'd been on our feet and up in each other's faces, I'd been searching through my memories of Carlisle and Esme in particular. What I'd discovered along the way, however, was that my subconscious had been a busy little beaver and had reorganised that blasted room almost beyond recognition.

Or should I say corridors of rooms?

Edward had once told me that the vampire mind is ever expanding because our kind can never forget. All that information has to be stored somewhere, doesn't it? Maybe my special ability wasn't so much shielding as it was administration. It appeared I was set to store new information and memories for the next millennium or two.

After he'd sat down on the couch in defeat, I turned my back on Carlisle and faced my friend.

"Edward," I whispered, "I'm giving you the choice."

"What do you mean?" he said.

"I don't need to understand my gift, my ability, whatever this thing is, but if you want me to see if I can let you into my mind, then I'm willing try."

Edward closed his eyes and swallowed, and in that brief moment of hesitation, Tanya turned away from us and wrapped her arms tightly around her body. Rosalie was beside her in an instant, glaring back over her shoulder at me and her brother.

When Edward opened his eyes, they were a clear golden yellow, beautiful and trusting. His nod was slight, but it was the go ahead I needed. I closed my eyes in concentration and began to open the small, shiny, black cube I'd found hidden in a dusty corner behind some larger boxes.