I have several sad/horror one-shots in mind for this collection. The Twilight timeline is full of intriguing forks (ha!) in the road where things could go wrong. But I'd like to start on a happier note, so this one deserves to be first.

Disclaimer: This contains a direct quote from Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer.

1927

Kettering, OH

Edward POV

No moon tonight—that seemed fitting. It comforted me, somehow, that I had an extra layer of darkness to hide what I was about to do. The sleepy countryside of northern Ohio streaked past and my conviction grew with each mile. I was done with Carlisle's way of life.

I still loved him and Esme; I was sure I always would. My departure, however sudden and painful for them, was a gift, one I hoped they could someday feel grateful for. My presence had grown… well, intolerable was the word Carlisle had thought just this past weekend.

My doubts and difficulties had always been a thorn in his side, despite his love. And now he had Esme; sweet, gentle Esme, whose warm nature only served to remind me how cold my spirit felt. The more she brightened our home, the darker my silent questions sounded. The sweeter her and Carlisle's love for each other grew, the more bitter my loneliness tasted. They'd both been walking on eggshells for weeks now, afraid to ask me what was wrong for fear they might get an answer.

I'd tried, I'd really tried, for the past nine years, to live up to everything Carlisle had taught me. Everything he stood for. Despite the praise he always insisted on heaping on me, that had been a losing battle from day one. The one thing I had managed to excel at was resisting the siren call of human blood, and that was the one thing I could no longer do. I could no longer deny myself the one pathetic happiness our kind was intended to enjoy. With each day that passed now, the need pulled harder. If I didn't give in to it soon, I would be torn in two.

I didn't know why it was getting so much harder now. To be sure, the battle had been fierce when I was a newborn. I'd fought tooth and nail against the strange new monster that reared up inside me at the barest whiff of human presence, and I'd won. With Carlisle's relentless support, I'd wrestled the monster into his cage and rejoined human society. So why was it so much harder now?

It was hard to say. Maybe it was that first taste back in '21—the briefest moment of ecstasy when Carlisle had bitten Esme and the flavor had overwhelmed his senses. He mastered himself quickly, doubly ashamed when he realized what it had meant for my gift. Or maybe it was the other tastes I'd gotten through Esme's mind when she'd had her newborn accidents. She didn't have Carlisle's years of practice when it came to mental discipline; not only had I been struck with the heavenly taste of human blood when those accidents had happened, but she'd also pored over the memory of what had happened many times in the weeks that had followed. Again and again I'd savored those memories along with her, even as I comforted her.

Or maybe it was the deluge of human scent I was forced to endure day in, day out as I trudged through high school with nothing better to do than fantasize about how certain individual scents might translate into tastes.

Or maybe this was Siobhan's doing. She'd come to visit Carlisle when I was a newborn, surprised when she saw he had created a companion. I was surprised to hear the pity in her mind… the blame she'd laid at Carlisle's feet. Poor boy, she'd thought when she saw my amber eyes. I supposed Carlisle has imposed his odd habits on the lad. That's why his eyes are so strange. How tragic—to be deprived of the greatest joy of this life.

It didn't matter. This was my choice, and after several weeks of careful debate with myself, I'd made peace with the fact that I was only following my nature. Carlisle, of all people, couldn't deny that; he was the one who'd turned me into a monster in the first place. He'd known exactly what he was doing when he brought another predator into the world. I couldn't blame him for his choice, not really—he'd acted out of hope. But that choice he'd made was the wrong one. He had known all along that this was how it might end. I could only hope that, in time, he could forgive me… that he could forgive himself.

My brooding thoughts evaporated when I reached the small town of Kettering. A late-night visit to the Columbus post office had told me where to come. I was ready to shake off the burden of Carlisle's expectations and find out what it meant to be a real vampire… but I didn't want to kill indiscriminately. Just because I was a predator didn't mean I had to become a monster in every sense of the word.

I'd been giving it a lot of thought. My gift—the special insight I cursed nearly every day as an unmanageable burden—was truly a gift in this instance. I would be able to wander the streets of human civilization and select my prey based solely on their thoughts: murderers. Kidnappers. Rapists. Embezzlers. Dirty cops and thieves and abusers and poachers… anyone without whom the world would be a better place. In my more generous moments, I liked to pretend that the lives I'd be saving were the true inspiration behind my decision. My childhood dream of being a hero, a protector of the weak, reborn.

Carlisle had dedicated his life to giving back to the human world. Well, I was going to be taking from it now, in the very best way I could manage. It was the least I could do to live up to the tattered remains of my human conscience. To Carlisle's hope that he had chosen a son worthy of the name Cullen. To Esme's stubborn refusal to see the darkness growing inside me.

My first kill tonight would be for her.

I sped past the few blocks of small businesses in downtown Kettering and out toward the quietness of the more rural homes. Toward 18 Maple Lane, the home of the one man who'd already earned my vengeance: Charles Evenson, Esme's human husband and the source of all the misery that had driven her to suicide. I'd gotten to know this human monster all too well in the past six years through my new mother's thoughts. The rightness of wiping him off the face of the earth was the trump card I'd played in my mind every time I had tried to talk myself out of this whole thing.

I veered away from the main road when I saw the street sign for Maple Lane. To my surprise, a sudden shyness crept over me as I checked the number on each mailbox I passed. I'd already expected that it would take time for me to shake off the heavy guilt that came with Carlisle's outlook. But now that it came to it, I didn't feel brave or guilty or even monstrous at all. I felt silly and awkward and grotesque, creeping into these people's neighborhoods in search of my victim.

My self-conscious hesitation didn't last long. As their scents thickened in the air around me, the simmering heat of thirst sparked into a piercing flame. I felt my muscles coil in readiness and it felt so good to know that I was about to use them in the way they were meant to be used. My focus sharpened to a point as sharp as my teeth. I was ready.

Number 18 was set back from the road by a driveway that rivaled ours: nearly impossible to find, long and tortuous and unkempt. Designed to discourage visitors for fear of what they might discover. That didn't surprise me in the slightest.

I stopped dead in my tracks. The house still wasn't in view, but a sharp, sweet scent in the air hung before me like a brick wall. Vampire, I was sure of it. I'd met others of our kind, but never when I was alone… vulnerable. Fear rippled through my body, tightening all my senses to the breaking point. Should I run? For all I knew, I was encroaching on someone's established territory. I was a nomad now; I would have to act like it. I raced through the details I'd gleaned from Carlisle's mind over the years about the customs regular vampires observed. At the same time, I stretched out with my gift to see how close the stranger was. One golden mental voice rang out above the white noise of human dreams. A female, less than a mile ahead.

After another moment's hesitation, I started up the driveway at a walk—that should be less threatening. I was curious how this first meeting with a fellow nomad would go. Hopefully, once I explained my vendetta, she would allow me to have Charles anyway. If she said no, and I killed him while he was at work in another town, would that be a breach of etiquette? What should I do if she attacked me on sight? Maybe this was a bad idea.

But just then, possessive anger surged through me when I realized the vampire's scent was leading me straight to Charles's house. The vampire's mental voice was irritating, very high-pitched. Excitable.

… coming or not? What if I got the wrong house?

And then, plain as day, I saw my prey in the female's line of vision. She had him in her arms. I ran the last five hundred yards up to the house and burst in through the open front door, forgetting my manners completely. The blaze in my throat burst into an inferno when I saw them.

"He's mine!" I shouted. My enemy turned to face me, gave a little scream, and dropped the corpse of Charles Evenson unceremoniously onto his own living room rug. There was no doubt he was dead; his neck lay at an unnatural angle and his mind had already been silenced forever. She'd just now killed him; I could feel the warmth still radiating from his body.

"Hi, Edward! You've kept me waiting a long time," the female said, taking a giant step over the corpse to greet me. I edged away from her, crouching back in defense. What the hell?

"I'm Alice," she went on cheerfully. "I knew you would come tonight, but you sure took your time about it, didn't you? It was getting awkward chatting with him so I just went ahead and killed him for you. You're welcome."

"He was mine," I insisted, unsure what to think. I looked down at the corpse again, noticing the smoothness of its neck. The scent of fresh blood was decidedly missing from the scene. "You didn't feed?"

"No, I didn't," she said. "And you're not going to either." She folded her arms—she really was a tiny thing—and speared me with a sharp look. With her golden eyes. I startled when I realized the color. She'd had human blood at some point, judging by the orange tint, but there was no mistaking the color. Her elfin face had the angelic beauty that was common to our kind. Her short black hair was a little more unique; it sprang away from her head at all sorts of angles like she had just received some kind of shocking news. I wondered if it had ever seen a comb. Her white dress, more of a tired-looking gray, had also seen better days and didn't fit her quite right. She was barefoot. A nomad, through and through, but with golden eyes? And what was this about her knowing my name?

"Yes," she said with a smile. "I'm like you. I feed on animals too. Oh, we have so much to talk about!" She bounded toward me and eagerly opened her arms, looking for all the world like a little sister asking for a hug. I backed away again and nearly tripped over the coffee table behind me. The girl—Alice—looked hurt.

"I'm sorry," she sighed. "I know this must be very confusing, I'm not much good at explaining things, I mean I never actually talk to anyone, well of course you don't know that yet! Like I said, my name is Alice, I woke up seven years ago and I don't have any human memories and I've always been alone and I have these visions and I've been watching you all and once I find Jasper we're going to be a family someday and it's going to be marvelous! Just look!"

She pictured a group of vampires in her mind. I was there, and Carlisle and Esme, and she was there too. There were three others in the mental photograph: strangers. Alice beamed, waiting for my reply. I frowned back at her. She was showing me the image like she knew exactly how my gift worked.

"Look, Miss… Alice, I don't know who you are or what you think you're…" I trailed off, shocked when she showed me a series of other images: memories, every detail perfectly recorded in her immortal mind. But they were my memories. I saw myself at the piano, composing with the usual pencil stuck behind my ear. The manuscript paper in front of me showed the beginnings of Esme's favorite song. I saw Carlisle's anxious smile as he reached around Esme's shoulders to teach her how to hold a baseball bat. Their wedding day. Esme scolding me in a department store—just two months ago—because I didn't want to let the sales clerk measure me. Several still shots of Esme at home, Carlisle at work, and myself in school.

And then I watched, with an uncomfortable swallow, as Alice swept through the past few weeks. She'd watched me grow more surly and short-tempered at home, more vampire-like in my movements at school. She ended with a picture of me clutching Charles Evenson's corpse with clawed hands. In her imagination, I looked up at the "camera" with bright red eyes, blood running down my chin. I winced to see that last image; I'd imagined this first kill often enough, but it was a little different seeing it from the outside. Not that this would be my first kill anymore.

"How—"

"Police siren," she interrupted. Not two seconds later, a siren wailed several blocks away. Her thoughts swirled again to show a picture of me holding up my hands.

Is it really that hard to believe, Edward? For you, of all people? She gave me a knowing smile and tapped her temple with one finger—exactly the way I always did when I was joking about my mind-reading.

"Okay," I said, holding up my hands to match the picture that had just appeared in her mind. "I believe you about the visions, at least. But what about that last image, the one where I killed him myself? That didn't happen, thanks to you. And who are those people standing next to us in that other picture? Who's Jasper?"

Alice opened her mouth to explain, but we both glanced over at the stairs when we heard a rustling sound coming from the second floor.

"That's his new wife," Alice said. "We'd better get out of here. Unless you want to kill her, too. If you do, you'd better keep your eyes closed. She looks a lot like Esme." She glared at me again, daring me to do it.

I looked sheepishly up at the ceiling, listening. The woman was just beginning to wake up. Her first conscious thoughts reminded me of Esme's memories: Had Charles been out all night again? What mood would he be in when he got home? What could she do to placate him? She rubbed a bruised shoulder, remembering his abuse just the night before. Even though she thought she was alone, she held herself back and only let out a tearful sigh. If only I'd known what he was like…

I didn't need to see whether she looked like Esme or not. She was every inch the kind of human I wanted to protect, not hurt. She deserved the freedom Alice had just given her. "No thanks," I told Alice. She let out a "Hmph!" and walked right out the door. I stood alone for a minute, running my fingers back through my hair in bewilderment, and then I picked up the corpse and followed her.

"I think you'd better start at the beginning," I said once we were under the boughs of the nearby woods. It was beginning to rain. Alice plopped right down in the mud and got comfortable, straightening out the ragged hem of her dress the way Esme did every time she sat down. She looked up expectantly. I sat down too, and she began to talk.

It was an intriguing tale. She had woken up truly alone: no creator, no memories of any part of her human life, no concept of what she was. For all intents and purposes, her life had begun seven years ago. Her powerful visions had begun immediately. They'd been chaotic and involuntary at first, but she'd learned some control over them by now. She explained that most of the everyday visions she saw were caused by whatever choices people made, including herself. Then if she changed her mind, or anyone else did, the visions changed to match the new future that had just been created.

The person she saw most often was this Jasper fellow, a world-weary soldier down in the Southern Wars. She'd never even met the man, but she claimed him as her own. She was confident that they would meet when the time was right and that he would return her love in due course. And then she and her star-crossed lover would come knocking on our door and join the family. This outcome had been her "destiny" all along, as she put it.

The other strangers in the family photo she'd shown me earlier were strangers to her, too. She didn't even know their names. They seemed to be a mated pair: a hulking male who towered over the rest of us and a blonde woman who was stunningly beautiful. "Those two are a bit fuzzy," she admitted. "That means their future with our family isn't certain. Or maybe it's because they're not vampires yet. Humans are always fuzzy for me in general. I'll see either the man or the woman every now and then, but it's very jumbled."

Alice was a nomad, as I had thought. She lived alone, often taking up residence in abandoned human dwellings. A cabin here, an old camper there. She spent very little time playing human and admitted she wasn't much good at it yet. In any case, her visions kept her busy. She'd learned of the animal diet several months into her first year.

"I saw Carlisle feeding from a deer," she explained. "At first I couldn't figure out what he was doing! My visions were still out of control back then. Pictures would just come and go without warning. It wasn't until a few days later that I saw you and Esme hunting and I understood."

"And you've fed on animals ever since?"

She nodded. "Right. Well, I mess up sometimes. And tonight was a bit… unusual."

She explained that she'd seen me kill Charles a couple of days ago—the horrifying image she'd shown me earlier. "I came as soon as I could figure out where he lived. It wasn't easy," she said proudly. "I thought I'd never make it in time, but it turns out I beat you by half an hour. Ha!"

I scowled down at her. "In time for what? He's dead regardless. I wanted to be the one to do it."

"I know," she said with a sigh. "I'm sorry about that. I could see it was important to you, although I can't imagine what this human ever did to you. I thought about letting you kill him yourself, but then you would have fought me for the blood. And we couldn't leave any blood on the floor anyway…" Her attention drifted again as she flipped through the "pictures" in her mind. This time, she was remembering a vision of the woman upstairs being taken away by the police.

"It's not what he did to me," I said through clenched teeth. "It's what he did to Esme."

Delicate eyebrows arched upward. "He's that Charles? Well, in that case, I'm very glad to have killed him." Her angelic face twisted—just for a moment—into the sneer of a killer. She gave the corpse lying beside her a little kick.

"Why'd you stop me at all?" I asked. "You don't seem to lose any sleep over the humans you kill now and then—"

"Sleep?" she said with a pretty little laugh.

"You know what I mean. Visions or not, it wasn't any of your business."

"Yes it was. You're my brother, you silly boy... I just couldn't watch you do this to yourself. This plan you have, it's a mistake. The whole thing is wrong."

"What plan?" I asked hotly. I didn't like the feeling of nakedness that washed through me every time she made it clear she'd been watching me. That she thought she knew me.

"Hunting humans," she answered with a maternal frown. "This isn't who you are, Edward. You know that. You need to go home to Carlisle and Esme before you do something you'll regret."

"I'm about to do something I'll regret right now," I hissed. "You may have been spying on us, but you don't know me, and you certainly don't have the right—"

"I don't think Carlisle suspects," she quoted. "I find myself undecided as to whether I should tell him anything when I go. Surely the pain of confusion would be a lighter burden to bear than the pain of knowing exactly what his 'son' had become."

I shot to my feet. "You've been reading my journal?!"

"Not on purpose!" she squeaked, scrambling back away from me when she had a vision of me grabbing her by the throat. I flinched to see more evidence of the depravity I was capable of. Had I really been about to hurt her?

"Sometimes you just happen to be sitting at your desk, writing furiously, when I peek in on you. It's not my fault you spend so much time scribbling about how you're such a monster!"

A boiling rage flashed through me, but it died just as quickly when her face changed. At the word "monster," her thoughts derailed completely. She stared blindly ahead as she swept both of us away to watch… I didn't even know what to call it. It was some kind of battle, but the soldiers carried no weapons. It was a battle of vampires fighting vampires. They all crowded together in a writhing mass of fists and teeth and the hideous sound of torn flesh. The scene was eerily illuminated by a sweltering bonfire to the left of the scene and by irregular flashes of lightning coming from above. Rain pounded down on the miserable wretches as they fought, but they paid it no mind. Not even the fire acknowledged the rain's attempt to put it out; it burned with unnatural power, belching out a cloud of purple smoke that I'd only ever seen in Carlisle's memory. The Southern Wars, no doubt.

I watched in horror as Alice focused in on one soldier in particular: it was her Jasper. He fought without mercy, slicing and biting and ripping his way through his enemies. His teeth gleamed in the firelight, dripping with venom, as he looked around for someone else to kill. Just then, a bigger vampire lunged for him from behind. Alice gasped as the gigantic arm wrapped around Jasper's scarred throat. But it was all right; Jasper managed to twist himself around just enough to sink his teeth into the arm. A few seconds later, his attacker's head was hurtling through the air and into the fire.

We watched for several minutes as the fight wore on. I didn't dare try to snap Alice out of it; she seemed like she would shatter if I did. In Jasper's more vulnerable moments, her hand drifted up to her mouth and she chewed on her thumbnail. She whispered encouragements and warnings and curses—all directed at Jasper—with practiced fervor.

And then, finally, it was over. The battle turned into a rout as the few remaining enemy soldiers realized they were doomed. Jasper shouted a command to his fellow soldiers and the rout became a massacre. I turned away in disgust at the final moment, but it didn't stop me from seeing Alice's darling Jasper grab for a half-grown boy—he couldn't have been more than thirteen. He had only a second to scream, to plead for mercy, to protest that he hadn't wanted to fight at all. Jasper tore him in half without hesitation and chucked the pieces into the fire.

"It's over," Alice sighed in relief, and suddenly we were sitting in the woods outside Kettering again. Charles Evenson's corpse still lay at our feet; it was beginning to stink. Alice's nose wrinkled at the smell, too. She got up and hefted the corpse up onto her shoulder like a kid picking up their knapsack on a school morning. But she was badly shaken by what we had just seen. As she began to head deeper into the woods to look for a good hiding place for her baggage, she turned around to face me. She looked like she was about to cry.

"You don't know a thing about monsters," she said.

.

.

.

In the end, we decided not to bury Charles Evenson at all. The best way to draw suspicion away from the wife, Alice said, was to make it look like he'd been killed in a robbery. We dumped his body in a seedy-looking alley and turned out all his pockets to make sure the police would get the hint. Alice had had the foresight to give him a good punch on the jaw when she'd first arrived at his home. The bruise had only just begun to bloom when he'd died, but that suited the cover story just fine. I hoped the new Mrs. Evenson would be happy when she discovered she had been widowed. Maybe I should do something else for her. At least Alice had stopped me from landing her in jail! It hadn't occurred to me that hunting criminals might endanger the very lives I thought I was saving.

I pocketed Charles's wallet. A gift for Esme, whenever I saw her again. I supposed I could just drop it in the mail…

"You still haven't changed your mind," Alice said with a huff as we left the alley behind. I didn't know what to say to that.

We ran together up into the hills to the southeast. Alice followed her visions to a nice little outcropping of rock, the perfect spot to watch the sun come up over the smaller hills beyond where we sat. The view would be breathtaking in an hour or so.

I sat with my "sister" in silence, thinking through all she had said as I watched the stars wink out one by one. A little while later, the eastern horizon took on a golden glow. Alice sighed happily and quieted her own chaotic thoughts, determined to enjoy the moment. I've never shared a sunrise with anyone before, she thought dreamily. At least not in person. She scooted up close to me and laid her head on my shoulder. With anyone else, it would have felt terribly awkward. But she was thinking how very pleasant it was to finally have a piece of her family beside her, if only for a moment. She really did seem like someone who could, possibly, be my sister someday. After a moment's hesitation, I put an arm around her shoulders.

Following her lead, I let my thoughts drift away and just enjoyed the beauty of the sunrise. The first hints of red sunlight became streaks of gold, yawning and stretching up into the sky to drive away the blueness of night. Soon, the glitter of early morning adorned our faces. When the sun was high enough, Alice closed her eyes and tilted her face upwards to savor the light and the warmth. My heart ached at the sight; it was something Esme had always done.

"I can't go home," I blurted out. "I couldn't, not even if I wanted to."

Alice opened her eyes and studied me—or rather, my future. Nothing had changed, she decided, except that now she saw me slipping a handful of cash into Mrs. Evenson's purse when her back was turned. "Don't you want to?" she asked in a whisper. "Don't you love them?"

"Of course I love them! But you don't know what it's like." I sighed and ran my fingers back through my hair. "Carlisle is just so… he's so good. And Esme is so kind and warm and loving, and they're so happy together…"

Why didn't things come out right when I said them?

"Sounds… awful?" Alice said.

"Don't you see? I'm not any of those things. I'm not good or warm or happy or any of it. I'm just me, and being around them is just…" I sighed, remembering the rest. "Anyway, I had to leave. It's been harder and harder to resist human blood—I knew I was going to give in sooner or later. And I have every right to give in! This is what I am. Carlisle's been holding me back." I suddenly felt too agitated to sit. I began to pace up and down the rock, leaving Alice to sit by herself.

"I don't blame him for wanting to keep me on the straight and narrow," I added hastily. "Not really. But he knew what he was doing when he changed me. And he should have known that not everyone can live up to his ridiculous standard! When he chose me in that hospital nine years ago, he thought he'd seen something in me that… well. You just don't know what it's like, that's all."

Alice looked down for a moment, fiddling with the frayed hem again.

"You're right," she said. "I don't know. I don't know what it's like to have a mother to turn to when I'm sad or when I want to share something exciting. I don't know what it's like to have a father to help me solve my problems. I don't know what it's like to watch my parents"—her voice caught on the word—"be in love and hope that I might have that someday, too. I don't know what it's like to have a nice home and a beautiful piano and colorful clothes that fit me hanging all in a row. I don't know what it's like to go to school and be human for the first time. And I certainly don't know what it's like to be chosen… I don't even know who made me! Did they care about me at all? Why did they abandon me? Why did they change me in the first place?"

"You don't know how good you have it," she said louder. She was getting angry now. "I'm tired of watching you be so spoiled and loved and lucky and miserable and now you want to throw it all away?! Some of us have never had a life like that! Some of us…" She pulled suddenly at the fabric in her hands and tore it away in a jagged strip that she tossed over the edge of the rock. "Some of us are alone."

"Maybe you don't have to be alone," I said. I rushed over and sat down beside her again. "Why wait? Why not go ahead—I can tell you how to get there. And it would do Esme a world of good to have a daughter… just now."

Alice smiled sadly. "That's very sweet of you. It's not time for that yet, but it's very sweet of you to say that you think it could be."

"Why not now? And why haven't you come before?"

"I've thought about it… I've decided to, many times, just like I've decided to march down to Mexico and find Jasper. But… it simply isn't time for those things. Don't ask me to explain why it isn't. I just know I have to wait. Even coming today was cheating. I wasn't going to come meet any of you until I had Jasper with me."

"Oh right, Jasper," I scoffed. "He seems like a real winner."

"He's not much," she admitted with a tender smile. "Not yet. But look what he can be." The pictures in her mind shifted to other visions she had stored away. The cruel, unhappy soldier was transformed in those pictures. The scars remained, but everything else was different. His eyes were golden, and they were full of happiness. He wore fine clothes and had an odd-looking black bracelet on one wrist. In one picture, he was holding Alice in his arms, kissing the top of her hair. In another, he was laughing, pinning me to the ground in a mock fight. Another showed him sitting with her in school. His eyes in that picture were a little dark with thirst, but a gentle smile tugged at corner of his lips as he watched his Alice with an expression that bordered on reverence. She showed me a dozen more pictures that starred herself and Jasper. Carlisle, Esme, and I were in several of them, as were the nameless brother and sister she'd shown me in that first picture. Eye color and the occasional blood-coated chin aside, we looked like a happy, human family.

"We're all going to be together someday," she insisted. "And no matter how much you whine about the home you're determined to leave behind, we're all going to be happy. Even you. Even if you don't listen and you go out there and start murdering people, you'll come back."

"I don't know about that."

"I know, and you're just going to have to take my word for it. But Edward, if you do this… you'll only be hurting yourself. You'll come back and get your eyes golden again, but you won't be the same."

"Prove it," I demanded. "Show me the visions."

She shrugged. "I don't have a pile of evidence to show you. Oh, it's easy enough to see that you'll come back no matter what." She stretched out for new visions, easily finding me safe at home with golden eyes. I watched with fascination as she sorted through several possible chains of events at once. In most of those pathways, she had to fly past unsettling pictures of me with red eyes. But in the end, I always came home.

See?

"I see, but... I don't see how. I could barely stand to hunt animals at all the past few months. I couldn't even do it right now." I winced as the fire burned hotter in my throat at the thought. I'd forgotten about my thirst in the hours since I'd met Alice.

"Couldn't you?" Alice said. "Clearly, you're going to be able to do it again. The question is, do you really have to go kill a bunch of humans in order to get there? I honestly don't see why, Edward. But I know you. Don't you know yourself? Can't you see how much pain and guilt it's going to cause you down the road when you think back to when you gave up and became a murderer?"

"It's not murder," I protested weakly. "It's one creature preying on another. The most natural thing in the world."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know you've been working to convince yourself. Shall I quote your journals again?"

I scowled down at her. "No."

"I think I will anyway," she said briskly. "Why couldn't I see what I had? Why was I so determined to figure this out on my own—so childishly desperate to find out what I was missing, when I knew I was destroying everything good in my life to find it?"

"That's a lie," I said harshly. "I never wrote those words."

"Not yet," Alice said. In her mind's eye, she scanned the rest of the picture. At the top of the page I was writing, it said November 5, 1931. Plain as day. "I have a few more of those pages," she went on. "Care to see them?"

I shook my head, defeated.

"Well then, let's look at something else. I wonder what's going on back home? Right now?"

"Alice—"

"Shut up and watch." She changed her focus again. This time it was my bedroom back home. The calendar hanging on the wall confirmed that this was the present. Carlisle and Esme were sitting together on my leather couch, holding each other tightly. Esme's face was pressed into Carlisle's chest… she was crying. Carlisle looked as though he might join her any minute.

"I just don't understand," Esme wailed. "What could we have done differently? Where did we go wrong?"

Carlisle didn't answer right away. He looked the way he did when he was considering several answers at once, examining and discarding each in turn. My gift ached to hear his thoughts. It instinctively reached out toward the phantom in Alice's mind as though I could reach across the miles.

"I don't know," Carlisle finally answered. "I just don't know, Esme. We just have to believe that he'll come back… when he's ready."

"And how long will that take?" Esme said, sitting up abruptly. Now she looked angry. "A year? A hundred years? Will he be safe?" She hugged herself tightly, looking out the window and shaking her head. "Who's going to pick out his clothes? Who's going to remind him to comb his hair and tuck in his shirttail and tell him that his music is divine… Oh, Carlisle, I can't stand to go downstairs and see his piano!"

"I'll get rid of it," Carlisle promised in a rush. "Today, if I can—"

"Don't you dare!" Esme cried, and Alice abruptly ended the vision without even meaning to.

"I don't like to watch them fight," she said in a small voice.

I shook my head. "Neither do I."

I couldn't get that last image out of my head. It wasn't the first time I'd seen them argue about me; those little talks when they'd thought I was farther away were one of the things that made my gift so uncomfortable. But this time, I couldn't barge in and fix it. I wanted to.

… I wanted to go home.

It only took a few seconds. A light dawned in Alice's eyes and new visions swirled in her mind. "Oh, Edward!" she cried happily. "You decided!" She jumped up and threw her skinny arms around my shoulders, squeezing me so hard I almost cracked.

"Okay, okay—ow! Alice!" I peeled her off and set her back down.

"Promise," she ordered, fixing me with that glare again.

"I promise," I said with a sigh. "I'll go home. And… somehow, I'll sort it out. I still don't know how, but… I trailed off, noticing the sadness in her eyes as she pictured me walking away. "Alice, come with me. Please? Carlisle and Esme are going to love you. You can figure out the Jasper thing later."

"I know they'll love me," she sighed. "But it's not time." Her visions reached south again. Jasper was alone now, staring up into the sun. His eyes were blacker than ever. He turned around and trudged over to a nearby building—a barn, or something like that. He undid the lock on the door and we heard several cries of human anguish ring out to greet him when he opened the door just a crack. He stood there, looking over the humans for a minute, and then he dragged a woman out by her arm. She screamed and fought hard, but he easily held her away with one hand while he locked the door again with the other.

"No, please!" she cried as he pulled her away from the barn. "Please let me go! My family needs me…"

"Your family is waiting for you," he said gently. "They've negotiated a deal for your release. We're going to meet them now." The woman gasped, surprised at her change in fortune. She pestered Jasper with questions as they walked, but he never spoke again. He merely looked down at her from time to time. There was an intense focus in his eyes. After a few more minutes of walking, she had calmed down.

"He does this sometimes," Alice whispered, as though she might disturb him.

"One good deed doesn't change—"

"This isn't a good deed. I mean, I suppose it's a kindness, in a way."

We watched a little longer. Once Jasper had the woman far enough away that the barn was out of sight, he focused on her one more time. She closed her eyes and let out a peaceful sigh. And then, bracing himself as if it was difficult, he struck. It happened so fast; one moment she was standing beside him and the next his fist had smashed in the side of her head and she was collapsing heavily into his arms. His teeth were lodged in her throat before her eyes had a chance to close.

Alice flinched, even though she had been expecting it. "Jasper has a gift, like you and me," she explained as we watched him guzzle the woman's blood. "It's easier for him if he makes it as easy as possible for them, too. He can feel what they feel. You see… he doesn't know there's another way. Not yet. But he will."

Before he could even finish feeding, misery began to spread over Jasper's face. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to feed faster, but whatever he was feeling—terror from his victim, presumably—was too much. The woman's body tumbled out of his arms and he sank down numbly into the dirt beside her.

"It's not usually this bad," Alice said. "It's worse after a battle."

Jasper's suffering was difficult to watch. I'd never killed anyone before—human or vampire—but I'd heard that the moment of death wasn't as clear-cut as it appeared to be. If emotions lasted this long when someone was killed, what might their thoughts be like? I shuddered when I realized I would have carried those thoughts with me forever, along with the last thing their eyes had ever seen: myself, a red-eyed monster.

"Thank you," I said softly. "Thank you for stopping me."

She shoved me gently. "Oh, what are best friends for?"

"You're sure you won't come with me?"

She nodded sadly. Then she stretched up onto her tiptoes and brushed that stubborn stray lock of hair out of my eyes the way Esme always did. "I'll come when the time is right," she promised. "And maybe…" She fished through her visions briefly to see if it was all right. "Maybe you could tell Carlisle and Esme about me? I don't think that would change anything too much. It might feel nice, knowing that you're all waiting for me like I'm waiting for you."

"I will. And I'll do you one better—have you ever had your picture taken?"

Alice blinked. "Huh? You mean with a camera?"

"That's generally how it's done," I teased her. "Come on."

I took her down into Kettering, but her visions told us we wouldn't find a camera in any of the stores there. I hailed a taxi, a procedure that thrilled Alice with its novelty. She was a little hesitant about getting into the taxi, and even more hesitant about walking into a department store in the daytime. She wasn't used to playing human even to that extent, and she was shy about moving among them with her clothes and hair in such a state. She got a number of disapproving looks, but I assure her she looked lovely, and that was good enough for her.

The cash in Charles Evenson's wallet was just the right amount to buy us a brand new 35 millimeter camera. It was a small, ugly thing, but I was pleased to give Alice an adventure before we parted ways. I made her stand up against the brick wall of the department store so I could take her picture. Then we decided that probably wouldn't look very nice, so we took the camera back up into the hills and snapped a few more. For one of the pictures, I even turned the camera around backwards in my hand and took a picture with both of us in it.

"I wish I could see the pictures," Alice said eagerly. She tried to cheat, scouring whole years' worth of visions over the course of a full minute just to find a photograph that happened to be in someone's hands. No luck, but I promised that she would see them someday. I decided then and there to have the pictures hanging up in every house we lived in for the foreseeable future, just so that Alice herself could see us waiting for her. The moment I made the decision, she beamed up at me.

"And here," I added on a whim. I pulled out my wallet and slid out the picture of Carlisle and Esme I always carried with me. Alice gently took it and cradled it in her hands like it was a priceless treasure. I supposed it was.

Neither of us wanted the day to end quite yet. Alice decided that we should go on a hunt together; she said it was to celebrate our meeting, but I had a feeling she was testing my resolve. I couldn't blame her. I felt a fair amount of anxiety as I took down a black bear, worried that it would be just as difficult as the last time, but relief flooded through me as I fed. It was easier. I'd have to spend some time thinking through what that meant—that my difficulty was psychological more than anything else—but later. And this time, I would seek out Carlisle's opinion on the matter.

I was distracted by the feral, girlish roar Alice let out when she took down her own bear a few minutes later. I kept my distance while she fed, considering the fact that I now had a sister. It felt so strange, and so good, to have someone in my life who didn't fill the role of mother or father. An equal, though somehow I had a feeling she'd be bossing me around for the rest of eternity. I looked forward to it.

Finally, it was time. As much as I didn't want to leave Alice alone, I was eager to get back to Carlisle and Esme so their painful vigil could end. We had been planning to move fairly soon; I was sure they were terribly upset at the thought that they might be moving on without me. I was concerned that Alice wouldn't know how to find us after we moved, but she assured me it was easy enough to get our address off any mail we received. All she had to do was peek over our shoulders, as she had been doing all along.

"Maybe we'll even talk to you now and then," I told her as we hugged goodbye. "I already talk to the voices in my head; it shouldn't be that much of a stretch." Alice giggled her thanks, burying her face in my chest one last time.

After we parted ways, she ran back up into the hills to stand on the rock from which we'd seen the sunrise. When I had almost walked out of sight, I turned and waved. She waved back, clutching her new prized possession in her other hand.

See you soon, she promised. Give them my love.

.

.

.

The run home was over all too quickly. I'd gone over a dozen ways to explain myself, and it all went out the window when I burst into the yard and took a deep draught of the two scents I loved most in all the world. Before another second had passed, I was sandwiched between Carlisle and Esme, truly unable to speak because of the bone-crushing pressure of their embrace. Their thoughts washed over me and I drank it all in: their anguish, their anger, their love, their forgiveness. I could only remember four words of the speech I'd ultimately decided on.

"I've been a fool," I said once they let me breathe again.

"Yes, you have," Esme said sharply. "But you're our fool, and if you ever forget that again…!" I nodded and swept her up in my arms. She was still anxious.

"I'm home for good," I promised. I spun her around, humming one of her favorite waltzes. She buried her face against my neck, so relieved that it was over. I felt Carlisle's hand on my shoulder.

"We still don't know what's been troubling you," he said in a low voice that threatened to break. "And it's high time we talked about it. But not right now—right now you're going to march right into that living room and play us our favorite music until your fingers fall off." He finally broke into a cheesy grin, the one that always made him look twenty-three.

"You got it," I said. "And then we're going to drive into town and get these developed." I held up the new camera. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."