"I never get tired of that," said Lissette, settling into the bedspread upon her stomach. "For someone who does not enjoy sex, you are very good at it."

I wiped my mouth, even though I knew there were no lasting remnants of blood upon it. I put my clothes back on quickly.

"Aw," she pouted, "you make me feel cheap. Do you only want me for my blood?"

I scowled, and she giggled.

"That's not funny," I protested.

She made a very dismissive sound in her throat.

"Lighten up, Édouard," she all but commanded. "It is funny. This can be funny. Sexy can be funny. Why are you always so dower?"

"I am using you," I said, pulling a shirt over my head. "And that doesn't seem to bother you."

"Should it?" she asked. "People use each other all the time. It is called commerce, it is society. It is relationships. You do unto me and I do unto you."

She stood up, the sheet falling from her as she looked up into my face, her face wide open and calm.

"Why does it bother you so much?" she asked, touching my face.

I placed my hand over hers, closing my eyes. I stood there, taking her in as she touched me, as she worried over me, as she cared for me in her way, a way I was becoming very accustomed to.

"Speak to me, mon vampire," she whispered.

I swallowed.

"I don't know why it bothers me so," I said. "I simply… feel it."

I reached out and took her to me.

"I wish that I didn't feel this way," I said. "I wish that I could simply have you and give myself to you in turn, but… it feels like a lie. I am giving you what you want, but I am only doing it so that I can get what I want. It feels like that isn't enough."

She pulled back, looking me in the face, her eyes wide.

"How can you say this to me?" she asked.

I blinked at her.

"What?" I asked. "What did I say?"

"That this isn't enough," she said, sounding and looking hurt.

I kept her hand and squeezed them.

"What I am offering," I explained. "That is what is not enough."

I looked at the floor.

"I don't want to make love to you," I said. "Everytime that I do, I am conjuring. I am creating a persona, using my own body as a puppet, going through the motions of an act I will never truly desire the way you do. It is not some life affirming expression of my love for you; it is a hoop that I jump through to get your blood into me."

She twitched. All and once, she pulled away and turned her back on me, leaning to look out the window. I stilled myself where I stood.

"Now you understand why it bothers me," I said softly.

She didn't move. Her thoughts were like a resonant tone, a hum that I had no words for.

"You do not love me?" she asked, the words stiff and half choked, and though they resisted coming out of her.

I didn't move. I wanted desperately to go to her, to comfort her, to deny it all, to confess myself to her. I did none of those things.

"Lissette," I said, sighing. "The last time I professed to love someone, I lied. I lied to her and to myself. I thought I knew what love is, but I didn't. I still don't. Until I do know, I will not make the same mistake again."

I shook my head.

"I am not sure that I can love you," I said, "not well enough, certainly not in the way you deserve."

Had I not been a vampire, I would have sunk to my knees.

"I understand if that isn't-"

And then she was kissing me. She wrapped herself around me, the way she did when she was desperate for me, desperate not to let me go. I kissed her carefully and succinctly back, not wanting to get her going again. I hadn't the heart for it.

At least she relaxed herself back to the floor. She kept my face and my lips until the last before relaxing back from them too.

"You are enough, my love," she said, her words trembling a bit. "I know that you care for me the best that you are able. It is good enough. How could I possibly ask more from you?"

She kissed me once more, drawing me to her by a grip upon the collar, then landed the slowest and softest and most drawn kiss she had ever planted upon my lips.

"Je t'aime," she whispered, "même si tu ne m'aime pas."

I kissed her again. I kissed her as sweetly as she had kissed me, then withdrew.

"I do not deserve you," I said.

She gave me a coquettish smile.

"Absolument pas," she said. "But still, you have me. I am yours. There is nothing you can do about it, mon amour."

I was about to say that she had me as well when something touched my mind.

"Édouard?" she asked, so attuned to me that even this minor flicker of a distraction caused by my telepathy was noticeable, especially when it could mean that the Volturi might be nearby. Even in Britain, you couldn't be too careful.

"We aren't in danger," I said. "I don't recognize her at this range, but she is a vampire, a familiar one."

I focused as best I could, all but blocking out the rest of the world as I reached out. And then, I heard it.

Come for a visit. Just you. Arrive tomorrow night. You will only be staying one night, then you can return. You can trust us. And I'm not happy, but I will forgive you if you don't die.

I felt a sharp sting against my cheek and pulled myself out of my mind.

"Garçon morte idiot," she growled, obviously far from her first attempt to get my attention. "What is it?"

I shook off the odd feeling of having a body again. I reached back out just enough to know that she was gone.

"I have to go," I said.

"Go?" she asked. "Go where?"

"I can't tell you that," I said. "I need to meet with some acquaintances of mine."

"Need to?" she asked. "Who? And why?"

I smiled, "I can't tell you about them, you know that. It is for their protection. As for why…"

I sighed.

"I have never really told you about my family," I said. "And I can't tell you much, other than we are a family. We have an adopted mother and father, and I have many siblings, and we are the only one of two families that I know of who live as we do, so many together who abstain from human blood. But, like me and my telepathy, I have one sister who has a special gift. She can see the future."

Lissette blinked.

"The future of what?" she asked.

"The future," I reiterated. "She can see the path people will walk, and vampires in particular. Occasionally she can see probabilities of some futures, but usually, she will see what people will do, until something comes along to knock them off their path. She sees the future as people choose to live it."

Lissette looked suddenly frightened.

"Could she see my future?" she asked.

I shrugged, "I don't see why not?"

Lissette looked less than comfortable.

"So," she asked, "she could see if things end poorly between us?"

Again, I shrugged.

"I suppose so," I said, "but only if that was going to happen of our own free will."

"But," she insisted, "if she could see the future, couldn't she break us up? If she wanted to, could she?"

I snorted, "That isn't her style."

"Her style?" Lissette said, sounding skeptical or perhaps dubious. "What exactly is her style?"

I stretched my legs, but only because I needed some space between us.

"She doesn't work like that," I said. "She would only break us up if it would be worse if we didn't. She doesn't force people to do anything, she opens paths we didn't know were there, not forces us down the path she wants."

Lissette sniffed, "I do not see a difference."

I shook my head, "What is the matter?"

Lissette rounded on me, jabbing a thumb at her chest.

"I decide my fate," she said. "Not some sangsue clairvoyante!"

I stepped back. I am not sure what my face conveyed, but it made her more defensive, not less.

"So," she said, "she crooks her finger and you come crawling."

"Be careful," I said softly. "You are being rude, to me and to my sister."

"We cannot have that!" she mocked. "I cannot believe you would do this! One word from her and you are off. Hardly an explanation! No word when you will return! But why should any of that matter!? You are my lover, but I am not even that to you, am I?"

I grabbed her. For a mortal, it would have been rough, perhaps causing her injury. For Lissette, it was merely startling.

"Stop," I said sharply. "You are condemning me for crimes I have not committed, yet if ever. I will be visiting acquaintances because I trust my sister. I will be gone tomorrow night, while you are a wolf and don't want my company anyway. I will be staying only one night and will return the day after, if not sooner. I have broken my sister's trust by even telling you this much about her, but I thought it was important. I thought you were important."

Lissette slumped in what I thought was relief, until I realized it was just the opposite.

"She could take you away from me," she said. "They all could. If your family would have you back, would you not go to them?"

I shook my head.

"I couldn't," I said. "They would be at risk from the Volturi. And it isn't as though I would go anywhere without you."

She looked up at me, her expression trying not to be hopeful.

"Truly?" she asked.

I smirked, "As though I could get rid of you so easily…"

She stifled a guffaw.

"True," she said.

Finally she stood and walked towards me, placing both her palms on my chest.

"If you must go," she said, "might I have something to remember you by."

I knew where this was going, and she could see it in my face. She smirked, walking back to the bed with a lithe grace.

"You owe me," she said. I rolled my eyes and began stripping off the clothes I had just put one. An hour later, I was off, heading to the Irish Coven.

I had never been to the home of the Irish Coven before. I knew it was in Dublin, and little else. However, after waiting out the day in a hotel room, I began searching that night and was able to find it quickly enough. There were very few vampires to find in the city. When I finally found their home, I was doubly surprised.

"Garrett," I greeted him. "What are you doing here?"

He turned from where he stood upon the corner.

"Edward?" he asked, laughing. "What are you doing here?"

I rolled my eyes, "Alice?"

"I assume so, if it wasn't you," he said. "I was in a hotel in Barcelona and there was a message waiting for me when I came back to my room three nights ago. It said to come here, to this street corner, tonight, five minutes ago."

He shook my head.

"Alice," I said.

He gave me a look.

"Are you alright, Edward?" he asked. "You look different."

I felt my face twitch.

"I'm well, thank you," I said. "How has life been treating you?"

He considered.

"Europe has been nice," he said. "The money has been running out, so I had planned to return to America soon. Is that plan out the window, so to speak?"

I shook my head.

"I doubt it," I said. "Whatever Alice has planned, she said it will be finished tonight."

Garrett nodded, "Well enough."

We walked to the home of the Irish Coven. It was smaller than I would have expected, considering their age and funds. It was hardly enough room for three people, and definitely not conducive to long staying guests. It was two stories and old, but remarkably well kept. There were three vampires inside, thus I knew the whole coven was here.

I walked to the door and waited, as was the custom when asked entrance to a vampire's lair. Humans knock. Vampires can hear when other vampires come to the door.

It opened, and Siobhan herself was at the door. She was a handsome, rubenesque vampire with a firm, no nonsense sort of personality, a forceful presence in most situations.

"So, you've come at last, have you?" she said. "Mind you, wipe your feet, or you'll be cleaning the landing yourselves."

I tapped my feet and wiped them politely. Garrett's boots looked as though he had come the entire way from Spain on foot. He removed them before stepping inside.

The interior was neat but densely packed, filled with all manner and configuration of furniture designed for storage, and each filled and ordered with just about anything a body could want. In the entryway, I had everything I needed to write a letter, fix a boot or repair a tool, carve wood, have tea, spend an evening reading, prepare for an outing, mend a garment, or defend a home. Further in, I could see storage for odds and ends of every sort. Beads and buttons or leather staining and working tools next to wire crimpers and breadboard circuit boards. It looked like you could do just about anything in this house from building your own canvases and painting them to making clothing from the gin to repairing house shoes to building circuits and repairing vacuum tube televisions to grinding lenses for telescopes and examining bacteria.

I glanced to the stair just in time to Liam standing about, looking glowery and displeased with the state of affairs.

"Don't you say nothing, my dear," said Siobhan. "I know your mind and we'll have no never mind about it."

His frown deepened and he adjusted his hat and stepped through a door that was only up one landed from the ground level.

"The economy of space here is quite impressive," I commented as she inspected our feet, giving Garrett a raised eyebrow at the state of his likely homespun socks, and led us into a drawing room from off the main hall.

The room itself might have been a library. It didn't have walls so much as recessed shelf space. One stack of shelves was swung forward, revealing that there were more shelves behind the first. The room was oriented in such a way that if the comfortable high-backed chairs were pushed at the ornately hand carved table in the center of the room, no furniture would be disturbed if any shelf was open, not even the end tables in each corner. So tight was the space, I was not entirely certain that all the shelves could be opened at once, but it wouldn't have surprised me, only amazed me.

Sitting in one of the chairs already was Maggie, the third, youngest, and last member of the Irish Coven. She had a cherubic face and bouncy red curls. So young and innocent was she in face and bearing that she could have passed for a child with the right clothes and minimal acting. She was wearing a Victorian era dress, black and highwaisted topped in white with a black bow at the high collar and beautifully polished black brocade buttons. She seemed to perfectly match her environment, yet somehow so did Siobhan, in her thoroughly modern, elegant simply styled dress of rich fabrics that displayed her ample curves that was so at odds with Maggie's outfit. Maggie placed a spare sheet of stationary in her book and closed it as Siobhan took a seat furthest from the door, to Maggie's left, seated second furthest from the door. Garrett took the seat third furthest, leaving for me the seat with the quickest escape route without going through a wall. It suddenly occurred to me that I was, in point of fact, the youngest vampire here. I suddenly felt as though I was an unruly child for whom the grownups were making allowances. I didn't like it.

"Greetings, Edward," said Maggie. "And who is your guest?"

Garrett stood efficiently and bowed beside his chair.

"Ladies," he said formally. "I am Garrett, Vampire of the American Revolutionary War. I am nomadic and am a long time associate of Carlisle Cullen's. I have spent much of the last year watching over Edward's shift into a lifestyle to something more in line with how the rest of his family prefer to live."

I looked at Maggie. That wasn't a lie, but somehow, I felt like that wasn't the whole truth either. I also felt like I might have started there, but I felt like the choice to walk that path was far away and many decisions ago.

Maggie looked at me.

"Edward?" she asked.

I looked at her and listened. Maggie was honest. She was so honest in fact that she could tell a lie from the truth in an instant before she was made a vampire. Now, it was an ability like mine, a nearly infallible gift. As honest as she was, her thoughts were crystalline before me, clear and firm and true.

Alice had called her. Her request was brief and adhered to perfectly. Siobhan was to go to a specific intersection in the city I was staying in with Lissette last night and think exactly the words that she thought. She had said I would be arriving tonight with a guest, but not who the guest was. They were to ask me about what I was up to and if I became defensive in any way, ask me to remove my contacts.

I came up short. I had been wearing the same contacts I always had, the black ones. I had hoped that I might switch to green once my eyes had corrected themselves upon a diet of animal blood, but they never had. Once I had started feeding on Lissette, I knew that my eyes would return to their reddened state and had done everything in my power not to see them myself. It felt too much like failure to me.

So, that is why I was here.

"Is this an Invention then?" I asked. "Am I here for judgment to be passed over my life?"

Garrett didn't miss a beat. Long had we been a part, but somehow, it also seemed less than a day.

"Do you feel judgment needs to be passed over you?" he asked.

I glared at him.

"It isn't that simple," I said.

"Then explain," said Garrett.

"I have broken the law," I said, looking at him. "I don't want to make you culpable."

Maggie waved a hand.

"You are both here for a visit," she said. "We will not harbor you or aid you in any way that the Volturi can use as evidence. Should a representative from them arrive here, we will be honest and leave nothing undisclosed. Speak, but also keep that in mind."

I clenched my jaw, my fists, and my stomach.

"I met someone," I said, "who is a Child of the Moon."

Garrett looked confused, but both Siobhan and Maggie stilled in vampiric surprise.

"A what?" he asked, his interest starting to peak.

"A werewolf," I said to him.

His eyes went wide, "I thought they were extinct."

"Nearly," said Siobhan. "There are none in the Americas, as far as these things are known. They are very rare here, nearly gone. The Volturi kill every single one they come across, and those that stand beside them."

"Why?" asked Garrett.

"It is said," said Siobhan, "that under the light of a full moon, they can kill vampires en masse."

Garrett looked at me, and I nodded.

"It isn't an exaggeration," I said. "We came across another wolf in Russia, and it all but tore my heart out in a single leap before I even heard it. They can hunt vampires without contest. It would take a majority of The Guard to kill one on a full moon and a group of mercenaries to do it otherwise."

Garrett began putting pieces together in his own mind.

The shooting in the club, he thought and I nodded.

"Why are you so defensive then?" asked Maggie.

I turned my gaze to her, "Defensive?"

She raised an eyebrow at me.

"You say Intervention with such contempt," she points out. "Why would you be so against input from those around you, from your peers and those older and wiser than yourself?"

I stared right back, "Because they don't know me or her or what we've been through."

"So tell us," said Siobhan. "This is now the second offer we have made to hear what you have to say. Will it take a third or do you truly have nothing to fear in the telling of your tale?"

I looked at her sharply.

"I am not afraid," I said.

Maggie clicked her tongue.

Liar, she thought. She sensed the lie.

"You are afraid," said Garrett.

"Fine!" I snapped. "I am afraid."

"Of?" asked Maggie.

I tried to loosen up with little success. My body felt tight, twisted and gnarled, and would not easily let go.

"I…" I began, my jaw almost fixed in place. How to voice my fears so that they might understand them…

"I want to be loved," I said. "And Lissette loves me."

Maggie's tongue clicked, "Liar."

I stared.

"She said she loves me," I said.

"But do you really believe that or do you just want to?" asked Maggie.

Again, I stared.

"Can you be wrong?" asked Garrett.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw the table through the wall. I want to spit fire and denial while condemning their notions of truth.

"She loves me the best that she can," I cried, "the best that she knows how!"

Garrett could not reach my shoulder, but I knew he would grip it if he could.

"I never claimed otherwise, Edward," he said, "but that does not mean she loves you well, or at all."

"No," I said, "you don't understand. I was alone. I am someone who is not skilled in the way of loving. But I found her. We are the same."

Click.

The only thing you said that was true was that you found her, thought Garrett.

"You were not alone, Edward," said Garrett.

I rolled my eyes at him, "But you don't love me."

He looked a little sad.

"Not romantically, no," he said. "But I care about you, my brother. I want for you happiness, and I will work for it on your behalf, even if you will not. I will do nothing to take away your will, but that doesn't mean I will let you walk blindly into danger."

I rolled my eyes, "What danger?"

"It is the same, Edward," he said. "You would like to think that you have changed more than you have, but you have not. You are still doing the same behaviors you did with Bella Swan and expecting different results."

"What behaviors?" I asked.

"You tell me," he said.

I glared at him, "I am doing nothing the same!"

He raised both his brows.

"If you think that," he said, "then you are definitely doomed to do so."

I laughed humorlessly.

"That makes no sense," I said harshly.

"It's still true," said Maggie.

I gave her a hard look, and Siobhan turned the full force of her imposing presence on me in warning. I backed down.

"Edward," said Maggie. "I can tell you if you are lying, even to yourself. But I can't make you believe anything if you have a mind not to. If you won't hear anything I have to say, I will say only one more thing. Take off your contacts."

I didn't want to. By God, I would rather be back in the woodlands of Russia with my heart half removed. I would rather my life be ended than feel the crushing defeat of failure once more. With a negligent thumb and forefinger, I rubbed the contacts out of my eyes and discarded them upon the table before. Sullenly, I raised my head and looked at them.

"What on heaven and earth have you done!?" asked Siobhan.

It was not a reaction that I was expecting. Disappointment on Garrett's part, maybe some indifferent regret on the part of the vampires who hadn't a care if I drank the blood of mortals or not. But this shock was entirely different.

Maggie was up, and within three seconds, she had found a small hand mirror from the hall outside and brought it to me. I looked.

My eyes were as dark as ever, as I hadn't actually expected them to be. However, there was another significant difference. Around the center of my iris was a thin line color, as though pigment was beginning to seep into it from the inside outward. My pupils were, in effect, lined in silver, just like Lissette's were.

"You are feeding off of her, Edward?" asked Siobhan. "You are drinking blood from a Child of the Moon?"

My silence was confirmation enough.

"Oh Edward," said Garrett.

"Is that bad?" asked Maggie.

"Hard to say," said Siobhan, "because no one is usually foolish enough to do such a thing. It is pretty unprecedented, but if it is affecting his eyes, then it is affecting his body."

"How did this happen?" asked Garrett.

"I…" I said, feeling my mood sour even further.

"I was dying," I admitted. "It was either drink her blood or take a human life."

"Animal blood wasn't enough?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"The animal blood quit working," I said.

"What were you doing about it?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked back.

He shook his head.

"Nothing," he said. "You were not getting what you needed from the blood you were taking in, so, in effect, you were dying, and you were doing nothing about it, until it was too late."

He looked at me.

"Again and again you do the same thing for the same reason," he said, "and expect different results. Can you not see? Are you unwilling to see?"

I could see the recurring pattern. It had been the same, before when I had first nearly killed my first innocent victim. No, wait. It had come before that too, when I was with Bella. I had done all I could to be with her, to the neglect of feeding, unwilling to see that it was beyond me. Had it happened even before that?

"Okay," I said. "I see what you are saying. I neglect myself when I attempt to pursue love. Thank you for showing me the error of my ways."

Garrett's face fell even further, if that were possible.

"No, Edward," he said softly. "That isn't what I am saying, and you won't get out of this so easily."

I rolled my eyes.

"Will you torture me until I see the truth?" I asked.

He all but sagged.

"No," he said. "I do not mean that we won't let you out; I mean that if you do not start to look at what you are doing and how it is affecting your life, it will only get worse from here."

"What am I not seeing?" I asked heatedly. "If it is so dire, then tell me!"

He shook his head, "Edward, do you see? What good will come from me telling you? You will have done none of the work yourself and can deny or dismiss my words at your leisure. You have to look and see yourself, be willing to take your ego and fear out of it and understand on your own. If you don't, your issues will grow until you cannot ignore them, for they will be too big or dangerous for you to ignore any longer. By then, it could mean your death. It already might be too late to prevent that. You aren't just consorting with a Child of the Moon, you are feeding from her. Who knows where this could end? When your eyes are silver and your will is completely at the mercy of your fears, will that be enough to shake you awake? Will it take death to take you off this path?"

I stood up. I had had enough. I was halfway to the door when Maggie spoke up.

"Truth has a feeling," she said. "Just because my sense of it is heightened does not mean you can't sense it too. Learn to hear the ring of truth and you can never again be deceived, not even by yourself."

I paused just long enough to hear what she had to say, then I walked out. I was just getting to the edge of town when I sensed Garrett behind me and waited.

"I know that you believe that I was harsh," he said, "but it needed to be said. You might not be able to hear me now, but hopefully you will one day. I care about you, my brother and want well for you. I expect no thanks and need nothing from you. Can the same be said of your wolf girl?"

I left him there. I seriously considered swimming back to England, but I decided it was unnecessarily overdramatic. I made it back to our hotel room just in time. If it hadn't been for the heavily overcast winter skies, I would have had to seek refuge from the dawn long before I had arrived. I was glad that I arrived when I did.

Lissette was back. She was all but destroying a series of takeaway boxes that she must have sent for the night before, before she had run under the full moon. As soon as she was aware of me, she all but tackled me in a hug of frenzied worry.

"We have to go," she said breathlessly.

"Go?" I asked. "Why?"

"It is mon frère," she said. "Paris. He lives en Paris."

It took me a moment to realize what she had said.

"Wait," I said. "You have a brother? Name Paris, who lives in Paris?"

"Oui!" she said in exasperation. "Can we go?"

I shook my head.

"It is day," I pointed out. "What is the hurry?"

"He is dying," she said.

I looked towards our room.

"Call for a car," I said. "Tinned windows. Have them bring it to the west side of the building. I'll pack."