It's perfect. Being here with you, our fingers interlaced, lying in bed, talking just like we used to. Soon it will be midnight. The droop of my eyes and slow slur of my speech are reflections of every hour that I have been awake. You have been awake for months. You look better than you ever have. You are dead.

I write it like a letter in my mind while I stare at her inhuman beauty. I don't want to find her so captivating, and I tell her as much. She wishes I didn't have to either. It's all a part of the 'package', she says. A little taller, a little curvier, straightened teeth, thickened hair. Unquenchable thirst for human blood.

I want to drift off, give in to the sleep my body is calling for, but Bella won't let me. She's giggling nervously about something. You could almost forget that she is a monster. Having waited long enough, she leans in close and speaks in a whisper. She wants to know about Jasper. Where did we go? What did we talk about? The questions are flying past her lips even as I try desperately to cover her mouth. She giggles, I shush her, there's a gentle rapping on the bedroom door. Bella calls for them to enter before I can clap my hands back over her face. Esme lingers in the doorway. She informs Bella that Ren is sleeping soundly, and that Edward will stay with her at the cottage. She turns to leave when the thought occurs to her.

"Careful, dear," she points to her own mouth before gesturing back to us, "sharp teeth."

A little shamefacedly, Bella zips out of my grasp and starts tucking me in before I can protest. She tells me she should never forget how frail I am. I tell her I want to climb another tree. It is then that she tells me how I sound just like she used to: reckless and stupid. It's easier for her to infantalise me than to engage in a serious discussion about our predator-prey relationship. I want to tell her that she sounds just like Edward but my eyes are heavy, and my mouth is full of cotton.


Breakfast is a quiet affair. I am the only one eating though Bella, her husband, and daughter all sit with me making idle chatter while I chew. I have never enjoyed idle chatter. When I finish my meal I wash the dishes. The crockery is modern and white, and it looks perfect stowed away next to its counterparts. All seldom used, all expensive beyond my estimation. I am weary for the early hour.

When their conversation lulls I clear my throat. I have an appointment in Seattle, the time has changed, I cannot stay as long as I have promised. I provide them with little more detail and this upsets Bella. It upsets me, too. It might only have been one more day but we could have made that day last forever. Could have written it in the sky.

She tells me to come back. She says it without consultation or hesitation, without any regard for a life that is not hers or mine. Come right back, she pleads, meet Rosalie and Emmett. At that statement, Edward grimaces. Whatever dark thought he has captured in his pinched face - it is not for me to know. I tell her that I want to, that I would if I could, that returning here would make me happier than I have ever been. The truth of that leaves me raw. In the end I acknowledge that it is a family matter, she should discuss it with them.

Exiting the kitchen, Carlisle crosses my path.

"Bartók," I greet.

"Frankenstein," his reply.

I laugh all the way up the stairs.

My hands are clammy, resting on the handle of the bedroom door. The air is thick with a feeling, I swallow it deep. It is heavy like mud in my lungs. Before I can turn the handle he opens the door and beckons to me, shutting us in. This is part of his gift, as I understand it. A cloud of emotion that he is prone to wearing around as though it is his Sunday best. I cannot name it, only feel the weight of it upon my shoulders. It will crush me to death.

"Please stop," I plead. And it does. I know better than to expect an apology. If I have found my emotions twisted and strange it is because he wants them to be.

He asks me what is in Seattle. We appear to have moved beyond formality and in to familiarity. I do not like the change. I do not think he cares. Rather than answer him, I take a seat on the bed. It still smells sweetly of the creatures who normally reside here. The scent is a trap. One weapon in a thousand.

"You know," he begins, "some humans are gifted with a quality that grants them exceptional power. Those qualities are what evolve in to the supernatural gifts we possess after our transition."

"Do you think I'm gifted, Jasper?"

"Perhaps." He stares at me for a time, my heart gives an irregular thump. "We're all surprisingly willing to share our secrets with you, yet you seem to share so little with us."

I tell him I am an open book, that there is nothing more to me than what can readily be seen. Ask me anything, I challenge, knowing he will. He asks me what is in Seattle. An impasse, apparently.

"Come on. You get one question, one guaranteed answer, don't just throw it away!"

He asks again why I'm going to Seattle and again I stare mutely in to his eyes. Edward could pluck the thought from my head, he tells me. I imagine he already has. There is nothing for him to gain from that answer other than the knowing, but my only power lies in the withholding. It is childish. But I am little more than a child. He asks me again as I climb off the bed, he asks me again as I put on my coat, and he asks me again as I am leaving the room.

The clouds are bruised, ripe with rain. My boots squelch in the sodden earth, sinking deeper the closer I move to the tree line. I want to be angry. I want to hate him just a little, but I can already feel the lethargic creep of his manufactured calm upon me. My legs are heavy. My feet are dragging. I do not know exactly how far I have walked carrying the burden of my own body but I hope that it is far enough. I turn to find him behind me. He was always right behind me.

"Can they hear us?"

"No," Jasper says, "not from here."

He is waiting for me to tell him my secret—a secret he is sure I have—but I am frozen in front of him. Always. Crushes are cruel like that. So awful to the heart that holds them. His eyes pin me in place and scrawl illegibly on my lungs, stealing my breath. I want to embrace the panicky euphoria that should be here in my ribs where all I feel is cold calm. I plead with him to stop again, and he returns my emotions to me. Sweat crawls across my brow, hidden in the rain. He has perennial patience and I wonder if my silence will ever find the end of it.

"If you don't plan on tellin' me, why come all the way out here? Why care what they can hear?"

"Scheherazade."

"Scheherazade?"

"I'm worried. What if my story isn't interesting enough to keep me alive? What if you kill me before I get to finish telling it to you?"

"Why would I kill you?"

I press my chest against his, I clutch his sweater in my fists, I kiss him with my eyes closed. He lets me. Even damp, strange, and disgustingly human as I am - he lets me. I shouldn't have. Never without permission; maybe never at all. I step back and the air is electric. His jaw twitches, his fingers flex, his skin can barely contain him. This cannot be fixed if it is broken, it is the sort of bridge that burns too easily. I tell him I am sorry, and he asks me why. The answer is obvious. The answer is manifold. The answer is a many-splintered thing.

It happens too quickly for me to comprehend. His hand is inside my coat, resting on my hip; the other on my nape, knotted in my curls. My body aches and my mind is stained when he slants his mouth over mine. I gasp. He captures one lip between his two. I shatter. My hands reach out for him, my heart pushes up into my throat, my blood boils. When I imagine that there are no more thoughts left in the universe, I hear it.

Careful, dear. Sharp teeth.

I am choosing from one million ways to die by moulding myself against him. The panic strikes me, and blood that once burned with rebellion runs cold in my veins. I am frozen in front of him. Again. Always. He hovers around my unresponsive form, lips linger over my pulse before his body makes an earnest retreat. My lungs are full of coal and I am breathing in fire. I want it to burn forever.

He reaches for me and I flinch. Before I can finish the end of my breathy apology he is reaching again. Slowly. So slowly. His thumb ghosts over my cheek, and drifts under my eye. His eyes were brown once. Dark, like mine.

"Am I in danger?"

"Always."

"Do you think that you'll kill me?"

A crooked smile stretches up one side of his face. It's all sharp teeth and southern charm. "Well, not on purpose."

And just like that he has ruined me. My hand is not my own when it reaches out and presses against his mouth, fingertips lightly tracing. My thumb draws back his upper lip. My body shakes. It could be the cold, it could be my nerves, it could be my end. He steals my wrist away, grips my pulse in his fingers. I am saved from the inconvenience of tearing myself open on his teeth, from bleeding into his mouth.

We walk back towards the house and I am slowed by the damp. He makes no move to aid me. There are some things, he says, that we must do for ourselves. But he opens the door for me. He offers to take my coat.


I am in pieces by the time the rain stops. I worry at my lips,and rub at my eyes. She issues me some kind of warning but I cannot process even a single sound. There is thunder in my ears. She milks me for information even knowing that I cannot hide from her husband's gift. He has picked my brain clean. I want to be principled, keep this memory safe because it is not mine alone, have them take it forcibly if they must at all. There are no secrets kept from them, only the secrets that they keep. So why does he keep my secrets?

Edward must have told her, I say. It is a statement, and a question, and a mystery beyond my imagining. She shakes her head. There is a lot he doesn't tell her, she says. It is both sad and true. What she doesn't know can't hurt her, ignorance is bliss. He thinks that he protects her. He shelters her like a child.

I tell her she is a supernova, that she is whisky and wine. I tell her that if she lets me keep this secret, lets me hide it in my heart just for now, that tomorrow I will tell her anything. But I won't. Because I am tomorrow what I am today, and today I am a liar. If she sees that I am shot full of nervous holes—or too transparent to her eyes—she does not say. Instead, she asks when I will return from Seattle. Wednesday, at the latest. We spend the afternoon running, talking, and biding our time.

At night they light a fire in the yard. It is hot, and bright, and it scorches our names into the horizon. The doctor and his wife dance to the music, the stereo swells with a tune I cannot name. Ren perches on her uncle's shoulders, weaving flowers through her mother's hair. They are all beautiful. Each one of them so perfect in death that living seems like a mistake. I close my eyes tight and try to burn this memory there, keep it etched on the back of my eyes. Let it haunt me in my sleep.

"Would you do me the honour?"

His hand is outstretched, his expression almost sombre. I want to carve a smile on to his lips just to prove that they exist.

"Of course, Edward." The name sticks like glue in my teeth. I knew an Edward once. I had disliked that boy, too.

With my hand wrapped in his, and another on my back, he moves us gently to the music. I feel weary and calm when our dance becomes no more than a subtle sway, and Bella's smile is a blur hidden deep within her silhouette. There exists a peculiar temptation to rest my cheek against his chest. I do.

"You're such a hypocrite," he says. "You hate Bella's choices, and then you mirror them. You can't stand the way I treat her, but you treat her much the same." He takes care to keep his voice low, his lips close to my ear. "If you come back here you'll be making the same mistake she did."

"Her only mistake is loving you." It is a stupid thing to say. It is ugly, and mean, and I believe it with every cell in my body.

"I know," he says. It sounds like defeat.

I take his face in my hands and our dance has ended. I call him a fool and his cheek ticks, his jaw grinds under my palm. The beast is awake. If only it will listen. I tell him that his daughter is proof of his kindness, that his music is proof of his soul, that his family is proof monsters are only what we make them.

"There's only one thing I truly hate about you, Edward. You torture them when you torture yourself."

My hands move to his chest. There's a hole here where a heart would fit, I tell him, it's a perfect place to keep one.

"And what about you?" he asks me, "Don't you need one, too?"

I stand outside long after the fire has died down, long after the Cullens have retreated into their warm, wooden homes. I stand outside until my fingers turn blue and my lips are numb, heavy with regret. The sky is punctured with stars, swollen with life. I could almost feel immortal. Out here I bleed moonlight.

Darkness settles around me as I close my eyes. The memory is there—scratched inside, inked with fireflies—the perfect family on a perfect night. Forever is not long enough to stand here watching the doctor twirl his beautiful wife around the fire. And besides, I do not have forever. All I have is now and everything that came before it. It will have to be enough. Even open, my eyes can see their ghosts, see the smoke, see their souls. It fills me with a longing that tugs at my sleeve, begging for me to let it wash me away. For a second I think that I might.

There is a rustling in the trees. I hear the snap of a twig. Fear grabs me by the ribs, shakes bile in to my throat, and sends my heart crashing against my chest. One careful step backwards is all I can make. My legs turn to jelly, I am sinking in sand. He emerges from the tree line: he is tall, he is big, and he is entirely unknown to me. I whisper Bella's name. I draw a jagged breath in between my teeth and hiss her name again. My lungs are filled with broken glass, it shreds my attempt at a scream. If my terror is reflected on my face, it does not bother him. The stranger narrows his eyes to take me in. He stalks closer until I can plainly see each muscle working under his dark skin.

"Stop."

My voice is thready and hollow. As I draw in breath to try again, he speaks.

"Haven't seen you here before. You a friend of the family?"

There are questions in his questions, there are questions in his eyes. If I am meant to know what they are - I do not. Two more steps back. His one giant stride forward is worth any three of mine.

"Please stop." Niceties with a stranger. Manners for my killer. "Just stop and tell me who you are."

"You first." His voice is a bark, a gunshot, a fire under my feet, and I am running for the door.

I take all of the steps in two long strides but I do not reach the door. Between the beats of my heart it opens and closes again and I am caught up in stony arms, slammed firmly against a chest. My bones jar with the impact. My teeth rattle. The stranger halts his pursuit and my rescuer murmurs in my ear. Jasper.

"Easy Jacob, you're scarin' our guest."