A little over a week before Elspeth's artificial due date, Tanya called Carlisle again.

I wasn't near enough to hear the call on this occasion - I was with Edward in our cottage - but the subsequent morning I heard the news. Laurent had been gone for seventeen days - more than double his previous record excursion length. He wasn't answering his phone, hadn't been for the past week, hadn't called to check in with Irina once in that time. While the very fact that he didn't bring Irina on his trips meant that he didn't want to be witnessed partaking of his unethical food, or doing whatever else it was that made him take so long, she was out of her mind with worry and wanted to prevail on Alice again.

When Carlisle had passed on the message, though, Alice had come up completely blank.

"No," she said when I asked her about it, "not like you - it's subtly different."

"What are the different kinds of blank you can get?" I asked.

"There's four," Alice said. "There's you, there's Elspeth, there's Gianna-while-pregnant-with-Elspeth, and there's Laurent - all different. Your future looks like Swiss cheese. Sometimes it veers off into patches I can see, sometimes when you're in the middle of a hole I can't see anything about you, but a lot of your futures are normally visible. Elspeth per se is just not there. I can't see her at all and that casts shadows on everything she affects, so I can only see the big obvious regularities that she can't change. Gianna's mostly in a shadow like that, but I can see around Elspeth in a limited way and get possible futures of Gianna's that don't directly involve Elspeth. But it gives me a killer headache to try, so I've been doing it only when Maggie or Ilario badgers me into checking that I can still see Gianna alive in some futures. And Laurent is..." Alice bit her lip. "He's not there to see. It's not like trying to look for someone invisible like Elspeth, because he doesn't cast any shadows. It's like trying to look for a person who doesn't exist in the first place. I think he's dead."

Irina had heard this suspicion before I had, of course - "How's Irina taken it?" I asked Alice quietly.

The little vampire shook her head. "I can't even imagine what she's going through. She's insane with grief, of course, but she's still got a sliver of hope that Laurent isn't really dead and something else is interfering with my vision. She does have a point that a lot of things seem to be foiling me lately."

"Have you tried looking for people who turned out to be dead before?" I asked.

"Several times," Alice replied. "They were all humans, though, so... But I still think that Laurent's somehow died."

"What exactly does it take to kill a vampire?" I asked, pacing. "Is it the sort of thing that could remotely happen by accident?"

"Not likely," said Alice. "Possible, but not at all likely - he'd have to be caught in a very serious explosion, to be unable to escape or put himself back together."

"Has anything like that happened in a plausible radius of Denali?"

"He's been gone long enough that "plausible radius" means "anywhere on the globe"," Alice pointed out. "If he was in Gaza and got in the way of a missile, or near that volcano in El Salvador, for instance, and he wasn't paying enough attention to get to safety, he could have been killed that way. Or taken apart thoroughly enough that he's still incapacitated, but then I'd expect to see him put back together and going home."

"But you don't think that's what happened."

Alice shook her head. "It's way more likely that he got into a fight with another vampire, and lost. I've never heard of any vampire dying in a natural disaster, I just know it's theoretically possible."

"How densely populated by vampires is North America?" I asked. "I realize he could have gone anywhere, but at least we know he started in Alaska."

"Mmm... since the Volturi cleaned out the newborn armies in the South, not all that densely, but you can definitely find us in population centers and roaming around."

"Ballpark population on the continent?"

Alice thought. "More than a hundred, fewer than a thousand, if I had to narrow it down I'd say something like three or four hundred. Mostly in big population centers, because you need more territory to be inconspicuous if the area's rural."

"How territorial and inclined to fight are average vampires?" I asked. "I've only met the Volturi, friends of the family, and Huilen, who was alone when Edward and I showed up. Plus Laurent's old coven, but I was human then, and don't remember them too well."

"Laurent's old coven is the closest to normal you've met, considering that Huilen's in contact with her nephew..." Alice trailed off, closed her eyes, and then opened them with a small gasp. "Oh, how strange," she exclaimed. "Elspeth doesn't take after you - or perhaps she does, but that isn't why I can't see her. I can't see Nahuel either, any more than I can see Elspeth."

My eyes flew open very wide. "It's a species thing."

She nodded emphatically. "I can see Huilen... but only about as much as I can see you. It's Swiss cheese. Huh, I wonder why your immunity works that way."

Because I'm only invisible to you when I'm being acted on by another invisible species. "Maybe only a bit of my brain has the hang of being invisible and you see me when other bits are in charge," I said, affecting uncuriosity with a shrug.

Alice frowned, her brow furrowed. But she didn't pursue that topic. "Anyway, your standard vampire wanders around - or lurks in a big city where a lot of people can go missing without it being big news. Eats every three, four days, one or two people at a time, or lies low for as long as a couple of weeks if one of their meals gets too much attention. They usually steal stuff; maintaining legitimate funds is too much of a hassle under those limitations. About a third of them travel alone, another third in mated pairs, last third in covens of two or three, rarely four or more, which may or may not include mates."

"Doesn't quite answer my question," I said.

"Lone vampires are more likely to avoid confrontations," Alice said. "But if we assume Laurent was alone too, he'd run some risk of provoking one if they just didn't like the look of him or felt like getting into a fight... some think of combat, even lethal combat, as recreational. Pairs and covens will stake out territories and are pretty likely to attack anyone who won't clear off when told to. Less likely to attack an individual for fun, though, because without the individual being a witch, the odds are in the group's favor to the point of being unsporting. And I don't understand why Laurent wouldn't just get out of other vampires' way if he ran afoul of one - but I'm not sure why he'd have to leave home for so long to begin with anyway."

"He was eating people," I reminded her. That information had filtered through to everyone in the family.

"Even so. Denali's remote, but it's not that remote," mused Alice. "I'm sure he could get to enough potential feeding grounds that there'd be no reason for him to spend more than twenty-four hours round trip each time."

"He might have eaten a few people each time he went out, and needed to spread it out," I said, and with a sinking feeling it occurred to me that there was one exceptionally dangerous location that was a twenty-four hour round trip from Denali.

But if Laurent had gone there, he wouldn't have made the return journey.

"Bah," said Alice. "You wandered into one of the holes in the cheese that is your future again."

"Huh," I said, feigning surprise. "Anyway, I guess there's no way to find out what happened to Laurent, is there?"

"Not really," Alice said regretfully. "I see the future, not the past."

I patted her shoulder, pursing my lips sympathetically, and excused myself.

I had an awkward question for Rachel.


Rachel was actually not sure if wolves had killed Laurent.

I know it wasn't anyone in my pack, she wrote back. I checked. But things are rocky enough between me and Becky that I haven't communicated with her much - mostly about practical things like who's on duty doing lookout where so the packs don't have to run into each other. We've been tending to fight, which really sucks. Turns out the non-alphas can move between packs however they want, and she's collecting the hardcore anti-vampire wolves and they're just barely not going after Harry and Sue and Cody. If you know where he would have been I can tell you if my guys were there then.

But I didn't know - it was only a wild guess. Can you ask her directly? I wrote back, and attached a description of Laurent.

She didn't get back to me for two days after that, and I occupied my free time hovering near Gianna, discussing parenting with Edward, and wondering what I would even do if I learned that Becky's pack had killed Laurent.

I still didn't have the answer to that question when I got Rachel's reply. Promise me you won't hurt my sister for killing your friend, was all she wrote.

He wasn't my friend, I wrote back. If he was near you guys, he was probably going to kill somebody in La Push or Forks, maybe even Charlie - I just wish they'd been able to capture him instead of killing, because if Irina ever finds out, then there's a potential small war on your hands. I explained the relationship between Irina and Laurent and the reason the other Denalis had tolerated his lifestyle. If Irina figures out what happened to her Laurent...

I didn't really know Irina well. The only vampre I'd ever met in my life who'd lost a mate was Marcus, who I had never seen utter a word or do anything but wander around, touch Aro's hand, and stare into space. I didn't know how long ago his mate had died, or what he'd done when the grief had been fresh. The next most available source of information I had was to imagine Edward dead.

Every fragment of my self refused to let me imagine this in any detail. It was the only intolerable concept in the world. I could imagine being flung back into the agony I'd felt when turning, though it had been incomprehsibly tortuous. I could imagine my own death, though I loved being alive and hoped to cling for it for all time. I could imagine Gianna miscarrying, little Elspeth failing to survive, though I felt more attached to my daughter-to-be with every passing hour.

But Edward had to exist, or something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.

Filled with unreasonable panic, I restored the original names in my mental scenario and gradually forced my rebellious mind to calm. If Irina found out who had killed Laurent. That was the hypothetical at hand. My husband was safe, my mate had not been killed by a pack of anti-vamipre wolves, my Edward was mine for all eternity.

I wrote, If Irina figures out what happened to her Laurent, she will kill whoever killed him or die trying. The rest of her coven might help her.

I sent the e-mail, and I went to soothe the ruffles in my thoughts by finding Edward.


"What happened to Marcus's mate?" I asked Edward, some time later.

"Didyme? She died," Edward replied. "Less than a year after Aro turned her - Marcus met her right after she became a vampire. Marcus wasn't with her at the time of her death, so he didn't see the specifics, but Aro found the coven of vamipres who'd killed her, and he and Marcus destroyed them together. She was Aro's sister," Edward added, as an afterthought.

"Aro seems to have borne up under the loss a lot better than Marcus," I observed.

Edward nodded. "I've never heard Aro thinking about Didyme at all. Marcus thinks of almost nothing else, so I picked it all up from him. Aro did love her, but... it's not the same. It's like Ilario and Gianna, as opposed to Maggie and Gianna. Ilario is her brother, and that's a very human sort of relationship. He loves her, he'll do everything in his power to protect her, but he could eventually move on if she died. Maggie's in a different position."

"Irina must be going through hell," I said, pulling Edward a little closer. Mine, mine, mine - I knew my brain was being taken over by spooky mate bond magic. I'd signed up for exactly that when I'd said I was ready to turn. And if I hadn't, then I would have eventually died of the disease of mortality, and then Edward would have lost me, and then he would have gone through hell and I would be dead and have no Edward, and that would not be satisfactory at all. Much better for us to be both immortal and together. Albeit a little nerve-wracking when I considered the chinks in our undeath.

"She's still not convinced that Laurent is dead," he said, stroking my hair. "She has some hope."

"How long can she go on hoping that? If he doesn't come home, and doesn't come home, and goes on not coming home..."

"Not forever," admitted Edward. "Maybe longer than you'd think, though."

Because anything, even throwing oneself into an increasingly crumbly and obvious lie, would feel better than that sickening black hole of grief that I could not bear to contemplate. But Irina was living it. Whatever she thought, her worst nightmare - or close enough as to make no difference - was reality. I was concealing that all-important information from her.

Because if I didn't, she'd die and might take a wolf or two with her.

Would Irina rather die, if she found out what had happened to Laurent? Probably she'd rather kill Becky's entire pack first - maybe Rachel's too, maybe the whole Quileute tribe, who knew how widely she'd assign the blame - but after. If she wreaked all the vengeance she wanted, somehow picked off wolves one at a time until they were gone without losing her own life, what would she want to happen next?

I was sure I knew the corresponding answer for Edward. I'd been able to figure that much out even before I'd turned. He had the tragic self-sacrificing streak; he wouldn't want to live in a world that didn't contain me. Irina, though, I wasn't sure. Would she consider her life worth living anymore? Could she even consider the question?

I wondered suddenly what would happen to wolves whose imprints died. Their human, mortal imprints, afforded no special lifespan or unusual resilience. Maybe that was why the tribe didn't contain any hundred-year-old holdovers from the last pack; maybe they'd all imprinted and quit their anti-aging regimen of periodically turning into giant wolves, so they wouldn't have to outlive their loves by long. When little Claire caught up to Quil, would he abandon his other form, turning physically thirty and forty and fifty with her, so he wouldn't have to be young while she was old, alive while she was dead? Was Jared already trying to get himself under control so his age-matched girlfriend wouldn't rush by him?

How could I make sure that this disaster never, ever befell me?

I decided that I was not going to continue flying off to La Push whenever there was a hiccup with the pack. Rachel was a smart cookie and could handle her stuff, with long-distance consultation and funding handled via the Internet. I didn't need to be physically present, especially not with Harry and Sue and Cody nearby to be resident venom sources if they wanted someone turned. (Rachel had mentioned, in a pre-Laurent-revelation e-mail, that in order to keep the peace with Becky's pack, Harry and Sue and Cody were living in the shack full-time. Harry was fixing the place up to be a fit home. Leah and Seth still lived in the family's house on the reservation. But they were still within spitting distance.)

But simply being present wasn't necessarily enough to fend off the specter threatening my peace of mind. I would need to be present and effective. I had some advantages against some of the foes I might have to face eventually. But these were known to those very foes, and if I were the only one left standing while Alec caused my family to fall senselessly to the ground around me, then I'd just be one vampire, not very good at fighting, to be targeted separately by some non-mental attack while my helpless brothers and sisters and in-laws and Edward were unable to defend me.

And then they - he - could be destroyed. That hurt. It hurt to think about it so much that I wanted to think about anything else, or not to think at all - just to snuggle closer to my gloriously alive Edward and pretend that our "immortality" was invulnerability. But it wasn't. Neglecting that fact wouldn't make it less factual. Edward could be taken from me. I couldn't defend him against every threat the world might throw at us.

Not okay.

I wondered about the limits of my shield. What might I eventually be able to add to it? Becoming immune to Jasper had been easy. I'd practically just repeated a mantra to myself. The first mantra I'd even tried. Was that a coincidence, just a feature of Jasper's power existing close to the line between what I did and didn't block? Or was my witchcraft very extensible?

Just how much could I immunize myself to, if I tried?

There was probably some limit, and I'd need to be able to cover for that with some competence in physical combat. I'd avoided sparring since getting my scar. I didn't have any clothes that I normally wore which could cover my wrist in even the most casual mock fight - sleeves were mobile sorts of things. I still didn't have a good story to explain it. But it was possible that Elspeth would be venomous, and then I could claim she bit me. The sample of half-vampires numbered five, so far - four of whom were half-siblings. It wasn't guaranteed that my daughter would be like the other female hybrids before her.

In less than a week, I'd find out if that was a viable cover story. Until then I wore long sleeves when around anyone other than Edward.

And then I'd have motherhood to take up a huge chunk of my time.

At least Elspeth would sleep nights.


The sheer ferventness Maggie applied to her anxious writhing over Gianna's condition was impressive. It made Elspeth's birth nearly anticlimactic. While Maggie held her breath and Gianna's hand, and Ilario fidgeted nearby, Carlisle administered some heavy-duty anaesthesia and a sedative. Edward cut down to the shell; Rosalie handed over a tooth and he cut through the shell with that and gave it back to her. While she rinsed the blood off it and let it re-adhere to her mouth, I pried the shell open, and there was Elspeth.

My baby.

I grinned from ear to ear and thrust my hands into the liquid to retrieve her. She opened her mouth, and I had a sudden idea - I leaned my arm in such a way as to present the inside of my left wrist for biting, and obligingly, she fastened her teeth onto the correct location. She wasn't venomous, but the fluid my arm was immerse in was like venom - it could explain the scar, and I didn't expect anyone to experiment with the stuff to check my story. "Ow," I muttered as I picked her up, because she did break my skin. But I felt the wound healing smooth, and she apparently didn't think I tasted good, because she didn't bite me again when I cradled her close. Carlisle handed me a blanket and patted me on the back, and I wrapped her up.

Gianna had held up so well through the procedure that Carlisle was able to put her in a coma before Ilario administered Maggie's venom. Maggie's release of tension was palpable - Gianna was out of the woods, and after some unconsciousness and some mindboggling torment, she would be fine. Unbreathing, Maggie assumed a protective position, holding her turning mate like she was made of glass. Ilario discarded the syringes and started pacing while Carlisle cleaned up the blood.

And I was a mother.

Elspeth had my eyes. Not my amber vampire eyes, gradually lightening with every meal I had - the brown ones I'd sported when human. The shade exactly matched the photographs I had from my first seventeen years.

This didn't escape Edward's notice. As we left the room where Gianna lay, he remarked on it. "I admit I missed your eyes," he said. "I'm glad they weren't lost completely."

"She has your hair, though," I told him, once we'd gotten far enough away. She did: the same bronze-red-brown. Just a little fuzz of it. A question occurred to me while I stared raptly at our daughter. "Can you hear anything from her?"

"Not yet. I've never been able to hear a baby less than two months old, and usually it takes six - I'm sure she'll be far faster than that, unless she's got her mother's brain, too," he said wryly.

"The bit where Alice couldn't see her turned out to be a fluke," I said. I touched Elspeth's nose and she expelled a small puff of air with a pah sound.

"But as you pointed out, that wasn't something you had while human," he replied, grinning involuntarily at the baby.

I nodded. "Oh," I said, when we were out of earshot of the main house, "if anybody asks..." I shifted Elspeth in my arms and pointed at the torn sleeve that revealed part of the scar on my wrist. "I got this when Elspeth bit me. She's not venomous but the amniotic fluid was close enough."

"Understood," he said. "If Maggie asks?"

I considered what he could say to her. "I don't know the really fine points of what she'll notice and what she won't. Can you just say, "Elspeth bit her"? She did, after all."

"Not in response to a direct question about your scar," he said, "not when I know the scar predates Elspeth. The statement has to be something I believe to be true in context, not just in isolation."

I exhaled a breath through my teeth, petting Elspeth's hair as I did so. She was very warm. "She'll never buy that you don't know where it's from. Ugh. If Maggie asks you... a baby half-vampire bit me. I trust she can be allowed to extrapolate incorrectly."

Edward's eyes widened, but he nodded. "Can I hold her?" he asked after a moment. I handed Elspeth over, missing the heat and the vital thrum of her heart immediately.

The look on Edward's face was indescribably paternal as he cradled our child. "She's perfect," he murmured.

"I know," I said, gloatingly.

"Oooh," said Elspeth, with an uncannily toothy smile for a newborn infant, and we arrived at our fairytale home in the woods to try to interest her in non-blood comestibles.