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12. VISITOR
(INTRUDER)

For the first several seconds, I couldn't remember where I was. My bleary eyes scanned the darkened room, slowly registering the familiarity of my surroundings, but with recognition came remembrance. Bits and pieces of the day's events were starting to come back to me. Sam's gang. Jacob and the secrets he knew. Josie leaving me alone in the rain.

I didn't want to think about any of it right now.

I glanced toward the window, wondering how long I'd been asleep, but the world outside was covered in darkness. The weak light spilling out of the kitchen into the living room was just bright enough that I could make out the hands of the clock on the mantel. It was almost midnight. Surely no one would be knocking on my door at this late hour. It must have been a dream.

And then the knocking came again.

I was wide awake in less than a second. Nightmarish visions of Victoria swam in my head. Was this it? Had she come for me? For a moment, panic flooded my senses, clouding my thoughts. I forced myself to take a deep breath, to fight back against it. No, whoever was knocking on my door couldn't be Victoria. The old stories about vampires needing to be invited into a home were nothing more than myths. If Victoria wanted to kill me, a locked door would do nothing to stop her.

Taking another deep breath, I crept toward the front window to look out through the gap between the curtains. There was enough dim light filtering down through the clouds that I could faintly identify the shape of a single car in the brick driveway, but it was mine. I pushed the curtains aside just far enough to see the little stoop by the front door, but it, too, was empty.

As I stared out the window in confusion, the knocking came a third time, and I realized it was coming from the back of the house, not the front. I moved slowly through the darkness, trying to hide in the shadows. Nothing good could possibly come from someone knocking on your back door at midnight . . .

I was still trying to decide what to do when the knocking came again, even more insistent this time. "Edward!" someone called softly. It was a voice I knew, but it belonged to the last person I would have expected to see after everything that had happened that afternoon. I reached up to turn the deadbolt, then opened the door.

"Josie?"

She was standing on the back step, looking more than a little relieved that I'd finally heard her.

"I was starting to think you'd accidentally left the kitchen light on when you went to bed." But that was all she said. She offered no explanation as to why she was standing outside my door only hours after she'd told me we couldn't hang out anymore.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Mrs. Russo is still awake. She was standing at her window when I drove by, so I didn't want to use the front door. I had to park around the corner and sneak through a couple of backyards so she wouldn't see me."

I shook my head. "That's not what I . . . it's almost midnight, Josie."

"I know. That's why I didn't want Mrs. Russo to see me. By noon tomorrow, the whole neighborhood would know you had a girl sneaking into your house in the middle of the night."

I stared at her, trying to make sense of what was happening. It felt like I was still asleep, like this was all just a part of some strange dream.

"I thought you said we couldn't hang out anymore," I finally managed.

"Actually, what I said was that maybe you shouldn't come to our house."

If she was hoping to clarify the situation, it wasn't working. I was getting tired of evasions. What would it take to get a simple answer?

"Does Sa—Does Billy know you're here?" I could hear the bitterness creeping into my tone, but I didn't care.

She shook her head. "Jake's covering for me."

I hadn't been expecting that.

"Jake knows you're here?"

"It was his idea," she said, shrugging faintly.

The conversation kept throwing me off balance. Realizing belatedly that Josie was still standing outside, I stepped back to let her in. I waited until she'd stepped through the door, then closed it behind her, clicking the locks back into place. And then I did nothing. I just stood there, waiting for her to say something that would actually make sense. After a few tense seconds, she frowned and glanced away.

"I'm sorry, Edward. We thought that once things got a little more . . . settled we could sort everything out with you, but we hadn't had time to figure out how. And then the guys were all there, and everybody was on edge, and . . ." she trailed off, shaking her head before looking back up at me. "I'm really sorry about what happened this afternoon. Jake is, too."

She watched me, waiting for my reaction, but I didn't know what to say. I was still only halfway convinced that I was even awake. I felt like I was stuck in the middle of one of those dreams where one random illogical event follows another until you finally wake up with no idea why you've been dreaming that you were wearing a Santa Claus suit and riding a zebra through the outfield in the middle of a Mariners game.

"What's going on, Josie?"

"I can't tell you," she said.

I sighed and turned away, flipping on the lights as I headed back toward the living room. I could feel her following.

"So you can't tell me what's going on, but you came here anyway?"

"Yes," she answered.

"Why?"

"Well, we did want to apologize for this afternoon."

"We?" I asked, spinning to face her. "Jake's not here."

She winced. "I know, but he's still sorry. We haven't been very good friends. Things are just . . . complicated right now."

I turned away again, just as frustrated with her as I'd been with her brother only hours before. Sitting down on the sofa, I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees as I stared down at the rug between my feet.

Quil had been certain Josie knew whatever secrets Jacob and the other members of Sam's gang had been keeping, but Jacob knew things now, secrets he hadn't believed before. Did that mean Josie knew those secrets, as well? That she believed them, too? What if Quil had been wrong? Maybe Josie wasn't as far into this as we'd both assumed.

"Josie, are you sure you know what's going on?" I asked, glancing back up again.

"Yes," she answered solemnly as she sank down onto the sofa cushion beside me.

"Are you sure you know everything?" Our gazes met, her brown eyes boring into mine with an intensity I'd never seen in them before.

"Yes," she said again, "absolutely everything."

I stared back at her, fully understanding what she was trying to tell me without saying the exact words. The secrets I'd guarded for so long were out. Jacob knew. Josie knew. Sam and the rest of his gang knew. But how?

I turned my head to study the floor again. Whatever was going on in La Push was bigger than just that one secret, and I needed to know more if I had a chance of understanding any of it.

"Every time I ask you something, you say you can't tell me. Why can't you tell me?"

Josie shook her head. "I can't explain it. It's not that I don't want to tell you. I just can't. It's not my secret to tell. Jake is . . . bound, and because he's bound, I am, too. Maybe not in the same way, but by a promise, if nothing else."

Riddles. She was speaking in riddles.

"So what can you tell me?"

Her eyes lit up, and a smile touched the corners of her mouth. Had I finally asked the right question?

"I can tell you that you know more than you think you know."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Jake told you I was in too far."

I nodded slowly, wondering how she could know exactly what her brother had said. She hadn't been in the garage. Had he repeated the entire conversation to her as soon as I'd left?

"But the thing is," she continued, "you're in too far, too. The others don't trust you, but I think . . . whether they want to admit it or not . . . I think maybe we need you."

"Need me to do what?" But I knew what her answer would be as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

"I can't tell you," we said in unison.

"Look, Jake figured this out. There's a . . . secret that you're keeping." I felt my stomach twist. Her brown eyes were locked on mine again, but I couldn't let myself react. Even now I couldn't acknowledge that I knew what she meant. "There's a secret that we're keeping, too, but the thing is, they're all part of the same big secret. You already know everything, Edward. You just have to remember and put the pieces together."

I didn't have to fake the blank look I gave her this time. I really didn't understand what she meant.

She paused, apparently considering what she could and couldn't say, then took a deep breath. "Do you remember that day last spring when you came down to First Beach with your friends?" she asked.

"Yes." It was a day I wasn't likely to forget.

"Do you remember what we talked about?"

"The Rabbit," I answered. "You were trying to find a master cylinder."

"What else?"

"We talked about some of the old legends your father used to tell at bonfires on the rez."

"Which ones?"

I knew what she was getting at, but still . . . "I don't remember."

"You don't remember?" she asked softly. "Or you don't want to tell me?"

We watched each other, each waiting for the other to break first.

"The cold ones," I finally admitted, glancing away. When I looked back toward her, there was a ghost of a smile on her lips.

"That's the one. Do you remember the rest of it?"

I shook my head, genuinely confused now. What else was there? All I remembered from that day was that Josie and her brother had unintentionally spilled their tribe's greatest secret—a secret they hadn't believed was real. That was the day I'd learned of the existence of vampires and the truth about the Cullen-Swan family.

Josie sighed. "Just think about it, okay? Promise me that you're going to try to figure it out."

I nodded silently, but what more was there? Nothing I could remember from that day could possibly explain what was happening in La Push.

Josie frowned and glanced toward the back of the house.

"I should probably be going."

Later, I would realize how strange it was that something behind the house had made her decide to leave. She hadn't glanced toward the clock on the mantel even once during our conversation. It wasn't the time that had made her think she needed to go.

"Will you be safe, Josie?" It was night, and even if Victoria hadn't decided to come to Forks to kill me just yet, there were other dangers out there.

"Of course."

"If Billy or Sam find out you came here . . ."

A mysterious little smile touched her lips. "I think Sam already knows," she said. She didn't seem bothered by the thought.

"You can stay here if you need to."

"Why?" she seemed genuinely confused.

"Is it safe if Sam knows you came here to talk to me?"

"You know, Sam was another one of the things we were wrong about. He's actually an incredibly cool guy. I mean, he won't exactly be happy that I came here, but it's not like he'd let anyone hurt me. If it makes you feel better, I can promise you that I'll be safer on my way home than I was on my way over. Don't worry."

Safer? How? She was talking in riddles again.

"I'll be okay, Edward, I promise." She rose from the sofa, and I followed her toward the back door.

"You don't have to go out the back. Mrs. Russo might have gone to bed by now."

She smiled faintly. "I'm not going out the back because of Mrs. Russo."

She turned as she reached the door and leaned up to wrap her arms around me. I hugged her back, even as she squeezed tighter and lifted her lips toward my ear.

"Think about that day," she whispered. "Try to remember. When you do, I promise someone will answer the phone."

She pulled away, reaching down to give my hand a squeeze, just as she'd done when she'd left me outside her house in the rain.

"Goodnight, Edward."

"Goodnight, Josie."

I stood in the doorway, watching as she disappeared into the darkness. Then I locked the door behind me and headed upstairs to bed.

I should have known there would be another dream that night. It had been so long. I was overdue.

The forest I found myself in this time was a familiar one, but it wasn't the forest of my nightmares. It was a happier place from a happier time. I knew this trail, though it had been months since I'd last walked this way. I knew every tree, every rock that I passed, and I knew what I would see next. Up ahead, just around the next turn, a beautiful log chalet would emerge from the trees. I paused in the path, turning to look behind me, but the big white house was hidden by the forest I'd already passed through.

"Have you been looking for me?" asked a melodious voice, and I turned again to find the angel standing beside me. For a moment, I could barely breathe around the lump that had formed in my throat at the sight of her. I reached out toward her, my left hand curving against her cheek as her golden eyes gazed up into mine.

"I've missed you," I whispered. "Where have you been?"

"I've been where I've always been," she answered, stepping closer to lay her palms against my aching chest. "Have you been looking for me?"

I couldn't pull my eyes away from her. It had been so long, and I had missed her so terribly. The urge to lean forward and kiss her was strong, but I'd made that mistake before, so I simply leaned down to rest my forehead against hers and tried not to move any closer as I brushed the tips of our noses together. Time, already a mystery in this false reality, seemed to stand still as I breathed in the scent of her, as the cool touch of her hands sank into my chest. The ache was still there—I could always feel it—but being here with her helped to soften the ragged edges of the hole.

It could have been minutes or even hours later when she pulled away and reached down to take my hand. She led me through the forest toward the end of the path, but though we walked and walked, I couldn't see the log chalet. Around us, the trees began to change. This wasn't the same forest we'd been in before. It still seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite place it . . .

Finally, I began to see a distant brightness and a break in the trees at the end of the trail, and I realized that this was the path that led out of the forest at First Beach. I could see the pebbles spreading out along the ground up ahead. I could hear the waves crashing in the distance. Beside me, my angel froze.

"I'm not supposed to be here," she said sadly.

"Why not?" I asked.

"The treaty," she answered.

There was something about a treaty, yes, but I couldn't quite remember what.

"They violated the treaty once," she continued. "It's only fair that I should get to come here one time, too, isn't it?"

"They didn't mean any harm," I heard myself say. "They didn't know it was all real."

"I know," she said, "and I promised I wouldn't hold it against them. My presence here won't harm anyone. No one will ever know."

She led me away from the shadows of the forest, out into the sunshine. I watched as the sunlight reflected on her skin, glistening and sparkling as if diamonds were embedded there. I tried to pull her back beneath the cover of the trees, but she wouldn't budge.

"Someone will see you," I warned.

"But there's no one here to see me," she said, and then she pulled me gently toward the beach.

She was right. We were alone. Even the seagulls had vanished. I rubbed my thumb along the back of her hand as we walked. Some small part of my mind was still trying to remember that day on this beach, but the beautiful girl beside me was making it hard. I didn't want to think about anything but her.

"What am I not remembering?" I finally asked, but she just shook her head.

"I've already broken the treaty by being here. I can't do it again."

As we walked along the beach, the clouds began to gather, blocking out the sun. I led her toward a driftwood log that had washed up along the shore. Sitting down on the weathered trunk, I pulled her down beside me, gathering her into my arms. I buried my nose in her hair and gave in to the temptation of thinking about nothing but her, but time was passing in the real world. I could feel it ticking away.

"I don't want to wake up," I told her. "I don't want you to go." She drew back in my arms just far enough to look up into my face.

"Then look for me," she said.

I sighed. It was what she always said, the same old song with the same refrain, but there was nowhere else to look for her. I'd run out of possibilities, and my last attempt had nearly gotten me killed.

"Always," I promised, not knowing what else to say. She smiled and curled up against my chest again. We watched as the sun set over the water, as our day ended and another day—a real day—drew closer.

When I awoke to the beeping of my alarm clock some time later, I could still feel the place where her head had rested against my chest.

. . . . .

Newton's seemed busier that morning than it usually was on Saturdays. Or maybe I was just more distracted. Though I'd spent most of the first few hours alternately helping customers and restocking fishing lures, my mind kept wandering, flipping back and forth between the dream I'd had the night before and the half-remembered day at First Beach so long ago.

"Hey, crazy about that hiker, right?" Mike asked as I stepped behind the front counter for a utility knife.

"Hiker?" Mike had spent most of the last two hours moving a display of first aid kits closer to the front of the store. We hadn't really had much of a chance to talk, but I was fairly certain he hadn't said anything about a hiker during the few words we'd managed to exchange.

"Yeah, the hiker. The one the wolves got?"

Wolves. I froze. With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I'd completely forgotten about the wolves in the meadow. Mike couldn't possibly be talking about the same wolves . . . could he?

He pointed toward the front of the store, to the pane of glass where a new flier had been taped beside the week-old picture of the missing hiker. I walked around the end of the counter, headed toward the sign, but Mike was already giving me the details.

"Rangers were in again this morning. Another hiker went missing. It was close to the resort, by the hot springs. The guy's wife said he was about a dozen yards from the road and he just . . . disappeared. One second he was there. The next he was gone. She thought he'd just wandered off, but when she went looking for him, she saw this huge gray wolf, so she ran for help."

"Wolf?" I asked.

"Yeah," Mike said. "They found some blood"—I could hear the wince in his voice—"but that was it. They found some animal prints, too. Really big animal prints, like the ones at that other guy's campsite. The rangers said there has to be more than one of them to leave that many prints. Could be a whole pack."

But I was only halfway listening, and though my eyes were focused on the large red letters printed at the top of the bulletin, I wasn't reading the words.

"Wolves," I said again, mostly to myself.

"Yeah. Crazy, right?"

I could see them still, all five of them, as they emerged from the trees at the edge of the meadow. They'd been huge. The leader had been black, and the one closest to me had been a reddish brown, but at least one of the others had been gray. They hadn't been paying much attention to me, though. Human prey hadn't seemed to interest them. They'd been focused on Laurent that day.

Laurent.

Could a wolf—even a huge wolf or a pack of them—kill a man without making a sound, without giving him time to scream or call out to his wife in warning? I didn't think so. There was only one predator who could do that, only one who could take a man and vanish, never to be seen again, and it wasn't a wolf. Laurent was still out there.

My heart stuttered in my chest. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. I couldn't let Mike know anything was wrong.

"They're offering a reward for wolf carcasses," he continued. "The rangers were rounding up some of the locals to go hunting. They were headed down to La Push, too, to see if any of the men there would be willing to help."

"But the Quileutes don't . . ." I stopped, trying to remember how I knew killing wolves was against tribal law. There was something pressing at the back of my mind, some memory trying to fight its way to the surface. I turned back from the window to find Mike watching me, waiting for me to finish my sentence.

"Nevermind." I shook away the thought and headed back to the fishing section to clean up the mess I'd left there.

It must have been part of a story I'd heard, I decided as I stuffed used packaging materials into an empty trash bag. It had to have been part of some old legend Billy had told around a bonfire in La Push back when I was still a little kid, but somehow it didn't feel like that. The memory wasn't intertwined with hot dogs and toasted marshmallows. It felt more like . . . like something I'd heard on a stretch of beach . . . Josie sitting beside me on an old driftwood log as Jacob repeated a well-guarded secret, a story they were never supposed to tell . . .

"Do you remember those bonfires we used to take you to on the rez?" Jacob's voice drifted back through my memory. I remembered nodding.

"Do you remember any of the old legends they told?"

"Not much."

"Did they ever tell you any of the legends about wolves?"

I shook my head again, wondering what wolves could possibly have to do with the Cullens.

Jacob nodded. "I figured they probably edited their stories when you were there. Some of the old legends aren't told to anyone outside of the tribe." He settled himself back against the root, preparing for a long tale.

"There's a legend that claims that we descended from wolves—that wolves are our brothers still. It's against tribal law to kill them." He paused to take a deep breath before continuing.

"Then there are the stories about the cold ones." He lowered his voice at the last two words, and his eyes darted back up the beach toward the fire. There was no one around but the three of us, but he seemed afraid that someone might catch him telling this story.

"The cold ones?" I asked, trying to draw his attention back to his narrative. After a moment, he relaxed and continued.

"Yes. There are stories of the cold ones as old as the wolf legends, and some much more recent. According to legend, our own great-grandfather knew some of them. He was the one who made the treaty that kept them off our land."

"He was a tribal elder, like our father. You see, the cold ones are the natural enemies of the wolf—well, not the wolf, really, but the wolves that turn into men, like our ancestors. You would call them werewolves."

Werewolves.

I nearly dropped the utility knife I'd been using to cut the tape on the empty boxes. My knees started to feel wobbly. I sat down on the floor.

Werewolves. That was what Josie had been trying to tell me. There were werewolves in La Push. The wolves I'd seen in the meadow weren't just really big wolves—they were werewolves. Werewolves. But no, that wasn't all of it. Sam, Jared, Paul, Embry, Jacob–five members of Sam's gang and five wolves in the meadow. Sam's gang were the werewolves . . . which meant Jacob was a werewolf . . .

Jacob was a werewolf.

I felt like I needed to sit down again, but I was already sitting.

How was this even possible?

I'd been here before, I realized, in this place where fantasy and reality collided, where the lines blurred between the real world and the world of make-believe. Maybe I should have known that if vampires were real, anything was possible, but I couldn't in a million years have imagined this.

I stared down at the tiled floor with unseeing eyes as the rest of the memory fell into place.

"So you see," Jacob continued, "the cold ones are traditionally our enemies. But this pack that came to our territory during our great-grandfather's time was different. They didn't hunt the way others of their kind did—they weren't supposed to be dangerous to the tribe. So our great-grandfather made a truce with them. If they would promise to stay off our lands, we wouldn't expose them to the pale-faces."

"That's you, pale-face," Josie whispered.

"But if they weren't dangerous, then why did they need a truce?" I asked.

"There's always a risk for humans to be around the cold ones, even if they're civilized like this clan was. You never know when they might get too hungry to resist."

"What do you mean 'civilized?'" I asked.

"They claimed that they didn't hunt humans. They supposedly were somehow able to prey on animals instead."

"Okay, but what does this have to do with the Cullens? Are they like the cold ones your great-grandfather met?"

"No," he said after a moment. "They are the same ones."

The truce—the treaty. I'd even dreamed about it the night before. Jacob had said that vampires and werewolves were enemies—that was why they'd needed to make the treaty in the first place. It was what had kept the peace between the Quileutes and the Cullens for decades, and although the twins had technically violated it when they'd told me their story, the Cullens had chosen to overlook the breach.

But Laurent hadn't made any treaty with the Quileutes, and he was hunting humans in their territory.

This was what Sam and the others had meant when they'd called themselves "protectors." They were trying to protect not only the people in La Push, but the innocent campers and hikers who wandered through the forest, as well. That was why the wolves—no, not wolves, werewolves, and not just werewolves, but Jacob and the other members of Sam's gang—had been chasing Laurent, chasing the cold one who'd been hunting humans in the forest around La Push. But what could they hope to do? Only another vampire could kill a vampire. They'd caught up to Laurent once, in the meadow, and it was a miracle that none of them had been killed that time. The next time they met, Laurent might not be so surprised at their appearance. If he stood his ground, Jacob or one of the others might be hurt . . . or worse, much worse.

Was that what Josie had meant when she'd said they needed me? Did she think I had information that would help? The only knowledge I could give them was that they were doomed to failure. Their only hope was to give up now, before it was too late, and pray that Laurent would move on to new hunting grounds soon.

Only it wasn't that simple, I realized with growing horror. There were hunters in the forest now. They didn't know werewolves were real . . . or vampires, either, for that matter. Laurent would hunt the rangers while the rangers were hunting the wolves that were hunting him, and if I didn't do something to stop it soon, there was only one way this could possibly end.

Laurent was going to kill them all.