It's Midnight Sun Day! I decided to take a break from reading — I'm on 6. Blood Type — to post early updates. This isn't the most thrilling chapter, though I enjoy it, but stick with me as the next chapter is an important one and then we will finally get some open dialogue and answers from Carlisle and Bella.

Happy reading xxx

Chapter Eighteen

On arrival at the airport in Anchorage, I went to rent a car, but there was already someone waiting for me at the desk.

"Irina," I said with a smile of greeting. "What are you doing here?"

"Alice called ahead and told us you were coming. I thought I'd save you renting a car."

"Thank you," I said, embracing her briefly. "How are you?"

"Curious," she said. "We all are. Alice didn't say why you were coming back so soon, especially after you and Edward came and failed to see us at all…" She raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"I apologize," I said. "It was a difficult time, and we left in a hurry."

She stared at me a moment, her golden eyes assessing. "Why are you here, Carlisle?"

"I wanted to see you all, ask you something."

"Hmm… Carlisle Cullen coming to us with a question. That's rare. Let's go."

I followed her to the parking lot and climbed into the passenger side of her SUV. She got in behind the wheel, started the engine, and then pulled out of our spot and joined the queue of cars waiting to get out of the busy lot. She turned on the radio, and an upbeat pop song played. She scoffed and tuned it to a classical station.

I relaxed back in my seat and allowed the music to wash over me. It was a Mozart piece that I'd once heard performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra before Edward joined me and we began to create our family.

It made me think of a date I was hoping to take Bella on. The Oper Frankfurt were coming to Seattle in the new year to perform La Dafne with Jane Archibald in the title role. I had not seen La Dafne in person before, and I liked the idea of experiencing it with Bella. It would be a deviation from our usual time spent together, and I thought she would like it as I had seen a few recorded operas among her CD collection—a discovery that surprised me for her age. The thought of seeing her dressed up for the event also appealed, and Esme always said I was dashing in a tuxedo.

"What are you thinking?" Irina asked.

I pulled myself from my thoughts and said, "I've met someone."

Her eyebrows rose, and she said, "You've met a woman? Who is it? I didn't know there were any of us in your area."

I bit my lip and said, "It's a long story."

I didn't want to mention that Bella was a human to her or her sisters, not yet at least. I thought the situation would be better explained when I had a chance to assure them all she didn't know the secret, as Tanya and her sisters were purists about the law, understandably following the fate of their mother.

"It's a complicated story, too, isn't it?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"Are you in trouble, Carlisle? Is that why you're here?" Her tone was wary.

I frowned. "Do you really think I'd bring my troubles to you, Irina?"

She considered a moment and then said, "No. I'm sorry, I should not have thought it. I've never known you to be like this before, though; you're not yourself."

"In a way, I'm not," I said. "In another way, I am the man I was in the very beginning."

She frowned at me and then seemed to decide on patience for the story as she turned the radio up a little louder, and we spent the rest of the journey to her house in silence.

When we reached the sprawling cabin where she lived with her family, with its rich redwood walls and vast windows that were a result of Esme's assisted renovations, she pulled up in the garage. We walked together to the front door, which was opened by Kate, who greeted me with a smile.

"Carlisle," she said, a hint of her former Russian accent creeping through. "It's good to see you."

"You too, Kate," I said.

Tanya greeted me next, and then I was invited to join them on one of the couches arranged around the roaring fireplace.

"Eleazar and Carmen are hunting, but they know you're here and will be back soon," Tanya said. "They're eager to see you. We are all curious to know what made you make the trip to see us again so soon."

"I am eager to speak to you all," I said. "We had fortuitous clear days in Forks, so I was free to make the trip."

"And you came alone?" Kate said questioningly.

"Yes. The rest of my family have gone on a hunting trip."

Tanya sat down, crossed her legs, sat back against the couch cushions, and fixed her intense eyes on me, though her pose was relaxed.

Her sisters sat down either side of her, the perfect line-up of beauty and grace that was more than just an attribute of our kind. The succubae sisters were even more attractive than any vampires I'd met, excepting Rosalie, though their beauty was not a lure to me. Beauty for me came from ivory skin, cheeks that occasionally flushed, and rich brown eyes.

"How is your family?" Tanya asked.

"We're all well," I said. "We've settled in Forks. Though things have been…interesting lately. And you?"

"We've been fine," Tanya said. "Unlike you, we have nothing interesting to report."

I heard soft footsteps brushing against the snow-covered ground outside, and then the door opened, and Eleazar and Carmen appeared.

I stood and shook Eleazar's hand and embraced Carmen. After polite questions of each other's wellbeing, we settled down on couches, Eleazar and Carmen sitting close together with hands entwined, and the air became filled with anticipation.

"I come with a question," I said. "But first, I should give you reassurance and explanation before I ask."

Kate leaned forward and said, "Reassurance?"

"Yes. I have met someone," I said. "Or perhaps have been reunited with someone is the correct term. Her name is Bella, and she's human."

The anticipation became stress, and Kate said, "Have you revealed our secret, Carlisle?"

"No," I said solemnly. "I would not come here and include you in the situation if I had. Bella knows there is something different about us, there was… an incident that made her aware, but she has shown no curiosity. In fact, she has outright refused our offers to know."

Irina narrowed her eyes and said, "This is still a dangerous situation."

"I don't see the risk," I said mildly. "Bella has her own secret to keep. That's why she is allowing us ours. It's that secret I wish to talk to you about." I pressed my fingertips to my temples and tried to gather my thoughts. "I need to know if any of you have experience with doppelgangers." My eyes found Eleazar. "Did you ever come across them in your time serving the Volturi?"

"Doppelgangers?" Eleazar said, his brow furrowed. "You mean a copy of a person?"

"Exact to the last detail," I said. "Have you heard of it?" My eyes fell on Tanya and her sisters. "Or you? Outside of the Volturi, you're among the oldest vampires I know."

Tanya smiled, though it looked a little forced, and said, "It's rude to refer to a lady's age, Carlisle."

I returned her smile and said, "I'm sorry. I was just hoping with your experience, you would know something I don't."

"I've never heard of it," Eleazar said, and my heart sank. "And I spent time studying in the castle library while I was in Volterra."

"It's this woman, isn't it?" Kate asked. "She's the doppelganger."

"She is. The woman I met is the perfect copy of one I knew when I was human. Every detail is exact, her features and her voice; even her nature is close—though she's a little more exuberant than the woman I knew. I believe that's a product of the time she's living in, though. Things were very different in the seventeenth century."

"We remember," Irina said thoughtfully. "And this woman is definitely human."

"She is," I said.

I had already decided not to tell them about Bella's inexplicable ability to heal. She was not trusting us with her secret, though I hoped one day she would, so I would not betray what I knew to others. She respected our privacy so I would do the same for her. Though I knew it might be able to help me discover more about her.

"Then I have no explanation," Eleazar said, and Tanya and her sisters shook their heads. "It's something I never heard of before. If it were not you telling us, I would say it was a mistake. A human could not live that long, only a vampire could, and there is no reason I can think of for someone being the copy of another. Not even identical twins are exact."

I sighed. "I worried that would be the case."

"You're in a relationship with this woman," Carmen said.

"I'm not sure it counts as a relationship yet," I admitted. "We're spending a lot of time together, and I love her as much as I did the day that I lost her, but I'm not sure how she feels about me. Alice sees her in my future, in all of our futures, but love… No. Not for her yet."

Carmen nodded thoughtfully. "Have you considered that it's your love that's created this reunion?"

All eyes fell on her, the sisters' curious and Eleazar a little doubtful.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Carmen gave her mate a small smile and said, "Magic, Carlisle."

"There is no proof of magic existing, mi querido," Eleazar said softly.

Carmen held up a hand to him in dismissal and fixed her eyes on me. "I have heard of doppelgangers, though not as more than sinister legends, but I have also heard of magic, and I believe in it." She ran a hand through her hair and looked thoughtful. "I believe you have found your love through a haltija."

"A what?" I asked.

In answer, Carmen smiled and said, "I do not have my mate's experience of vampire life and abilities, and I am not as well-read as anyone here, but I do like to study myths and legends as I am a living myth. In Finnish legend, there is mention of a haltijas. They are a kind of guardian spirit of a person. I think the woman you knew was an etiäinen—one who came before. An etiäinen has all the features of the one that follows: their voice, scent, and nature. Ordinarily, this is a vague spirit that enters a room an hour before the true person comes. Still, there are instances of the etiäinen being the prearrival of a person in life."

"You mean the Bella I knew was a kind of spirit?" I asked doubtfully. The Bella I'd known was a living breathing person that I had touched, spoken to, connected to. I had loved her.

"Perhaps," Carmen said. "It's is just a legend. What if it's a hint of something more though, some truth? I believe our lives are preordained in part. I was always supposed to be with Eleazar, but our paths would never have crossed as humans. We lived too far apart and belonged to different worlds. We needed to become vampires to meet."

I nodded. "Yes, I can accept that, perhaps, but why was Bella not changed when I was? She died the same night I was bitten. I believe she was killed by the vampires I was hunting. If it was destined, we could both have been changed that night and could have had centuries together."

Carmen shrugged. "That is down to the Fates. But she was not bitten, she died, so your paths diverted. Perhaps it was fated that you should be together in this time and place, and your years without her were the price of your happiness now." She smiled. "You had to wait for her, and now you have her true self."

I wasn't sure I accepted that the Bella I had known was this etiäinen, she had been too alive to me to be anything but human, but I did believe in fate. The fact I had found Edward on that Chicago hospital ward, dying, and had gained in him my true son; that Esme, the vital sixteen-year-old I'd met in 1911, had come back into my life on the brink of death in 1921 was too perfect to be a coincidence. Also, that I had smelled the blood the night Rosalie was attacked, and the fact we had chosen to live in Tennessee and that she had ventured to hunt alone in the Smoky Mountains the very day Emmett had come afoul of a bear, couldn't be pure chance.

Was it too much to believe that Bella had been brought back to me in a second life so that I could be with her now?

"You see it," Carmen said a little smugly, and then glanced around the room at the other dubious faces. "You are the only one to see." She didn't sound upset that her family didn't believe in what she was saying.

"I do," I said. "I am not sure how or why it has happened this way, but I truly do believe in fate, and if the price of my happiness now is the years I spent without her, then I will not resent the cost."

Carmen nodded. "Good. Now, Carlisle, tell us all about her. I do not think we're going to be able to meet her." She shot Tanya, whose lips were pressed into a thin line, a glance, and then went on. "But I wish to know everything about the woman who has stolen your heart."

"We all do," Kate said, settling back in her seat. "Tell us everything, Carlisle."

I smiled and indulged in what was my now favorite topic. "Well, she's a history teacher, and I have moved into the house beside hers…"

So… Carmen has theories. The next chapter is a very important one and will lead to the answers you have been waiting so long for. I can't wait to post it.

Until next time…

Simaril xxx