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15. THE PLAN
(PRESSURE)

Pale light filtered down through the clouds outside my bedroom window as I opened my eyes on Monday morning. In some parallel universe, some version of me must be lying in bed, enjoying the feeling of drifting slowly toward wakefulness without the blaring of an alarm clock in my ear, but not in this one. It was spring break in Forks, and while some of my classmates had headed out of town or were making arrangements to pick up extra hours at their part-time jobs, my thoughts were focused on Victoria and the wolves' as yet unsuccessful attempts to stop her.

Rising from bed, I limped out into the hallway. A quick glance out the upstairs window revealed my mother's car parked in its regular spot in the driveway. A few steps in the other direction allowed me to press my ear against her bedroom door, where I could only just make out the sound of her soft snores on the other side. I made a trip downstairs to check the living room and kitchen, relieved to find that nothing seemed out of place—and that nothing had tried to kill me—and then I stumbled back upstairs toward the shower.

I didn't have to think too hard to remember where I'd been exactly a year ago. On Monday morning of spring break, I'd been headed south toward Phoenix in the back seat of a black Mercedes, Alice and Chief Swan in the front, as we tried to convince James that the place we were headed to was the last place we could possibly be. In the end, it hadn't worked very well, and now here I was again, one year later, with another blood-thirsty vampire out to get me. I seemed to be setting a dangerous precedent.

I took a quick shower and ate an even quicker breakfast before heading back to La Push. I planned as I drove, sorting through different possibilities as the trees flew by. I knew that if I wanted my plan to have even the slightest chance of success, it would have to be perfect.

Josie and I spent most of the day watching basketball and old movies while Jacob kept watch with the rest of the pack. He checked in with Josie from time to time through their connection, but there was no news. There had been no sign or scent of Victoria, and there was nothing left for any of us to do but wait.

That night, Mom and I had dinner at Billy's. As the conversation flowed from one mundane topic to another, I wondered if anyone else could feel the weight of the secrets we were keeping from her. It was almost a relief when Jacob announced that he had some adjustments to make on the Rabbit, and Josie and I followed him out the back. It was just a cover story, of course. Jacob's break from guard duty was over, and he needed to get back to patrolling the forests around Forks and La Push.

"He looks exhausted," I noted as Jacob disappeared into the trees. "He hasn't been getting much sleep, has he?"

"He naps when he can, but he needs more rest." Josie's eyes were fixed on the place where her brother had vanished. "He's afraid to sleep for too long because he can't sleep as a wolf. If something happens while he's human and they need him, he won't know." Pulling her attention away from the shadowy forest, she turned toward the garage. I followed.

"He can't sleep as a wolf?" I asked as Josie reached up to switch on the work lamp beside Jacob's toolbox.

"Well, theoretically he can." She opened the driver side door of the Rabbit and slid behind the steering wheel. "He's tried it once or twice when he was really tired, but it's hard to sleep when you've got everyone's thoughts bouncing around in your head."

I opened the passenger side door and sat down beside her. It made sense. I'd never considered how distracting it would be for Jacob to be constantly listening to the others' thoughts with no way to tune them out. But Jacob needed more rest. They all needed more rest. They needed help.

"Any news on Quil?" I was almost afraid to ask. No one wanted Quil to be sucked into this world, even if they did know how badly they needed his help. Josie shook her head.

"It could be any time now. His grandfather says you could fry an egg on his forehead."

The confusion must have shown on my face because the corner of her mouth lifted when she caught sight of my expression.

"It's one of the signs, one of the ways you know it's about to happen. Remember how Jacob had a fever the night we went to see the movie?"

I nodded.

"It wasn't really a fever. The pack just runs a little warmer than the rest of us do. Jake is usually about one-oh-eight or one-oh-nine."

"Really?" I tried to remember what little I knew about fevers. "Isn't that high enough to kill someone?"

Josie shrugged. "Someone who isn't a werewolf. But it does keep them from getting sick, running a fever all of the time. And they never really feel the cold. That's why they usually don't bother wearing shirts."

"Oh. I thought that was just some kind of a macho thing."

Josie laughed. "Well, maybe a little." But then she sobered again, and the car fell silent. Something about the silence felt too awkward, too heavy. I searched for some way to break it.

"Quil's getting taller," I remembered, thinking back to Saturday, when I'd given him a ride into town. Had it only been two days? "He's bulking up, too. Is that a wolf thing? They all look like they're on steroids."

"Yeah, the growth spurt. I thought Jake's was normal, but sometimes Dad would look at him and get this funny expression on his face. I figured he was just being paternal or something, but now I get it. He knew what was about to happen. He was doing what we're all doing now with Quil. He was just watching . . . and waiting."

"I guess it's a good thing it didn't happen while you two were working on the Rabbit. He would have destroyed this car."

"He'd have ruined the upholstery, if nothing else." She poked her finger at the less-than-perfect upholstery in question. "I do wish there was some way to know," she mused. "I just remember how Jake felt, how scared he was. If there was some way of knowing exactly when it would happen with Quil, maybe someone could be there with him. But it's not an exact thing. It's not like you wake up on the morning of your sixteenth birthday, and suddenly you're a werewolf. It's not the same for everybody. You never know what will finally trigger it . . . or how long it will take you to figure everything out."

"How long did it take Jacob? To get a handle on things, I mean."

She shrugged. "A week, maybe two. But he still has trouble with it, sometimes. Whenever he gets angry, he has to fight to hold it together."

"Like Paul?" I asked.

"No! Not like Paul." But then she grinned, and a touch of pride came into her voice as she continued. "It takes time to get used to it, but Sam says Jake got used to phasing back and forth a whole lot faster than any of the others did."

"I wonder why . . ."

She shrugged. "Probably because he gets it from both sides of our family. Ephraim Black was our father's grandfather. He was in the last pack, but so was Old Quil's father, Quil. He was our mother's grandfather."

"That's a lot of Quils," I muttered, trying to keep them all straight.

"It does get a bit confusing. Old Quil is actually Quil Ateara the Third. Our Quil is the Fifth."

I shook my head. I'd have to sort out the Ateara family tree later.

"So is everyone in the pack now descended from someone in the last pack?"

Something dark flashed in Josie's eyes, and she glanced down to where her hands rested in her lap.

"Apparently so. If not from either of my great-grandfathers, then from the third member of that pack, Levi Uley." She looked up again. "But the old legends say it doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes just being descended from some wolf at some time is enough."

I'd touched a nerve. There was something she wasn't saying. I could see it swirling in the depths of her eyes. I was curious, but if she'd wanted me to know, she would have told me. I decided it was best to leave it alone . . . for now, at least.

"I remember a time when you and Jacob didn't give so much credence to old legends," I said instead, smiling faintly as I glanced across the seat toward her. She took a deep breath, then let it out.

"More innocent times." Her eyes moved back to the darkness outside the garage. "It's all there, though. Everything they need to know about how to do what they need to do. If it isn't instinctive, it's been passed down carefully from father to son, from one generation to the next potential generation of wolves."

"Father to son," I said, echoing her words.

"Yeah," she answered, looking back down to her hands again.

Father to son. It occurred to me suddenly that Josie wasn't either of those things . . . and that she never could be. It seemed wrong, somehow. For all the years I'd known them, Jacob and Josie had always seemed to be two parts of a whole, as if one couldn't exist without the other. I'd spent years watching them finish each other's sentences, seeming to share each other's thoughts. For sixteen years, nothing had separated them, not until this, until Jacob had gone somewhere Josie couldn't follow.

Beside me, I heard her soft sigh, and I realized that she and I had something more in common. She could spend time with her brother and the rest of the pack. She could listen to her brother's thoughts inside her head. She could stand beside Emily in that bright, happy kitchen and listen to Sam discuss hunting strategy, but she could never really belong. She would never really be a part of the pack that had taken her brother from her.

But I knew what it was to be on the outskirts, too. I'd spent months breezing in and out of the big white house in the woods. In and out of Bella's house, as well. I'd known her family's secret, and I'd listened to their stories, but no matter how many times Esme had hugged me, no matter how many times Carlisle had reached up to lay his hand on my shoulder, I'd never really been one of them. I had been on the outskirts, too, peering in through a window at a world I was never meant to be a part of.

"Do you feel left out?" I'd asked her this question once before, as we'd sat in the Rabbit on Saturday afternoon. At the time, she'd claimed that she didn't, but she'd immediately changed the subject, and I couldn't help but suspect that her denial that day hadn't been completely honest.

"Sometimes," she admitted after a moment. "I know it's not . . . I know I shouldn't." She sighed again, clearly frustrated with herself. "I know it sounds like Jacob has everything under control, but he doesn't always, and I know it scares him sometimes. He'd never wish it on someone else. He hates that it happened to Embry, that it's happening to Quil. But sometimes," her voice grew softer, "sometimes I feel like I'm losing him, like the wolf is taking him away, and I think I should be there with him." She paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. "And sometimes I think I'd like to experience it all, just once. Jake talks about how fast they are, how they can outrun a vampire, and I think, just once, I'd like to know what that feels like." She smiled sadly. "He says they can see things other people can't see, hear things other people can't hear. What must it be like to be something more than human?"

I'd wondered the same thing myself on more than one occasion.

It wasn't easy in the cramped quarters of the Rabbit, but I reached across the space between the two bucket seats, doing my best to drape an arm around Josie's shoulders. It wasn't easy for her, either, but she leaned to the side, stretching toward me so she could rest her head on my arm.

We sat together in silence, staring out into the darkness as we waited for Jacob to return.

. . . . .

My mother went to La Push again on Tuesday. She'd made plans to help Sue repaint her living room. It was a ploy, of course, one of the projects Sue had come up with to lure my mother to the reservation and the protection of a pack of werewolves, but it was a project Sue had been talking about for a while, so my mother had no reason to be suspicious.

"So, uh, you're spending a lot of time in La Push, lately," Mike noted that afternoon as I started my shift at Newton's. "Are you dating that girl, Josie?"

That was the million dollar question, wasn't it? I put my vest on slowly, stalling for time as I considered my answer. Josie and I had talked about this once, that night at the theater, and I still felt, for the most part, the same way I had felt back then, but things had gotten a lot more complicated since that conversation. I was fairly certain Josie still felt the same way, too, but Josie didn't know what I was planning, and if, by some miracle, my plan actually worked, she may never want to speak to me again . . .

I glanced up to find Mike watching me, waiting for my answer, the pricing gun in his hand momentarily forgotten. Why was he so interested, I wondered? He'd only met Josie once or twice, when she and Jacob had picked me up after work, but I remembered, suddenly, the way Mike had watched her on those occasions, the spark of interest in his eye.

"It's complicated," I answered carefully. Somehow, I didn't like the idea of Mike being interested in Josie. I knew how his relationships usually went, and Josie could do a lot better. "We're . . . friends," I added, frowning as I glanced down toward the stack of printed circulars on the counter beside the cash register. I was hoping to leave Mike with the impression that Josie was the one who was dragging her feet. He and I weren't the closest of friends, and our friendship was driven mostly by his guilt over my ankle, but I knew that if he thought I was trying to get Josie to go out with me, he'd back away and respect my earlier claim. Apparently, it worked.

"Girls are cruel," Mike said as he turned his attention back to the bags of trail mix he was pricing.

"Yeah," I said. "Sometimes they are."

. . . . .

Wednesday afternoon, after Josie, my mother, and I had helped Sue put her living room back together, Josie and I went down to First Beach while my mother stayed behind to help Sue hang her new curtains. We weren't alone on the beach, but it wasn't exactly crowded, either. Anyone who'd really wanted to spend spring break by the ocean had made a pilgrimage south to warmer waters.

As we walked along the shoreline in companionable silence, I thought about the plans I'd been making, about the steps I would have to take, and what I hoped to achieve. Reaching down, I rubbed absentmindedly at the scar on my arm, my souvenir from the previous spring break.

"What's wrong?" Josie asked.

"Nothing. I was just thinking about what I was doing a year ago right now." I pulled up my sleeve to show her the scar. I watched her face as she studied it casually–she must have seen it a hundred times—but then her eyes widened. Knowing what she knew now, I realized belatedly that the bumpy little crescent would take on an entirely new meaning.

Grabbing my arm with both hands, she pulled it closer for a better look, forcing us both to come to a stop.

"How did you get this scar, Edward?" I could see the suspicion . . . and the understanding dawning in her eyes.

"That's where James bit me last year in Phoenix."

Josie pulled her eyes away from my arm to stare up into my face.

"Bit you?" she asked, her voice quivering. She was starting to look a little green.

"Yeah." I offered her a lopsided smile, hoping to ease the weight of my words. "He got close enough to break my bones, remember? He wasn't about to miss the opportunity to take a bite."

Horror filled her expression as she released her grip on my arm. For a second, something flashed in her eyes, and then she winced.

"How did you . . . how are you not . . ."

"Bella sucked the venom back out before it could change me." I tried to say the words without remembering the actual event, but little flashes still broke through.

Josie was starting to look queasy, but she swallowed bravely.

"I didn't . . . I didn't know something like that would work."

"They didn't know if it would work, either," I said, fighting a different kind of battle than Josie was fighting, "but the venom hadn't spread all the way through me yet, and it was the only thing they could think to try."

"But . . . why?"Josie asked.

"Why what?"

"Why did they want to stop it? And how did she not kill you?"

I glanced down toward the pebbles at my feet. Someone had shoved a blade into the center of my chest, but I had to get this out. "She said it wasn't easy to stop, but she did. She had to. The only other choices were to let it change me or to let me die. She didn't want either of those things."

The green tint was beginning to fade from Josie's face. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that she looked more confused now than disgusted.

"But why didn't she want you to be one of them? Isn't that what vampires do? Destroy everything, one way or another?"

The anger that flashed through me was strong enough to push the knife away. Josie must have seen it in my eyes because when I jerked my face toward her, she took a step back.

"They aren't like that," I snapped.

She lifted her hands, palms facing outward in surrender, then stood watching me, her lips parted slightly as she tried to decide what to say.

"I . . . I'm sorry, I didn't mean . . ."

I took a deep breath, waited a few seconds, then let it out.

"They aren't like that," I said again, quieter this time. "It's why they live the way they do. They are what they are, but sometimes they don't really want to be. They can't . . . un-be what they are."

Josie's face looked stricken. She was horrified that she'd hurt me, terrified that I wouldn't forgive her. I shook my head.

"It's like Quil. If Jacob could do something, anything to keep it from happening to Quil, wouldn't he do it?"

Josie nodded softly. I waited another moment, then continued along the stretch of beach, pausing when she didn't follow, just to make sure she understood that I wanted her to.

"I'm sorry," she said again, closing the distance between us with a few quick steps, but I just shook my head. Considering what I had decided to do, I may owe her an apology of my own soon enough. We continued down the beach in silence.

"Jake says . . . the others are wondering if there's anything else you can tell them that might help."

Jacob. Of course. I remembered the moment when Josie's eyes had gone distant, when she'd winced. She'd been upset. Had it been an instinctive reaction, sending her panic to her brother through their connection and bringing him into the conversation?

"Like what?" My thoughts had been swirling around Bella. I could still see how she'd looked at me, her determination to save me from becoming what she was. I needed something else to think about. "What do they want to know?"

Josie paused for a second, clearly sending the question to Jacob and waiting for his reply.

"You said that sometimes vampires are gifted. That's one of our legends, too, but the stories aren't very specific. What kind of gifts do they have? Are there only certain things they can do?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I don't have that much experience, but from what I've seen, they seem pretty random. James was . . . he was a tracker, and he was impossibly good at it. Every time we made a move, he seemed to know about it just as soon as we made it. Every time we tried to trick him, he figured it out. It was like instinct or something, like he had some extra sense that told him exactly where we were." I lifted my eyes again, glancing momentarily down the shore. The knife was sliding out of my chest, the sharp pain easing into the same dull ache I'd learned to live with. "We even concocted a plan to make it look like I was going to Phoenix."

Josie looked confused. "But you did go to Phoenix, didn't you?"

"Exactly. We made it obvious that we wanted him to think we were going to Phoenix. That way, he would assume that Phoenix was just a cover story, that Phoenix was the last place I could possibly be . . . and then we went there anyway."

Josie lifted one corner of her mouth in a sneaky little smile. "Clever. Sam likes it."

"It was . . . Bella's idea." Another stab with the knife. "But it didn't work. James saw right through it." I stopped to consider for a moment. "I wonder if Victoria has some kind of ability? No matter what the pack does, she seems to keep getting away . . ."

Josie frowned, clearly reflecting the tone of the thoughts Jacob was sending back to her.

"What else can they do?" she asked instead.

"Well, there was this other vampire in Phoenix—the Cullens killed her, too. She could twist anything you saw or heard into something else. I don't know how it worked exactly, but she made me think she was my father. She looked like him. She sounded like him. Up until the moment when she let the illusion go, I'd have bet my life that my father was right in front of me."

I had bet my life. And I'd nearly lost.

Josie was frowning again. There was a troubled wrinkle between her eyebrows. I let out a bitter laugh.

"What is it?" she asked.

"This has got to be the weirdest game of telephone I have ever played."

She smiled faintly at my joke, then grew serious again.

"Are there any others that you know about?"

I hesitated. There were other things that I knew, but telling would feel like a betrayal. Still, maybe more than one vampire could have the same gift. Maybe telling them what I knew could help them in some other fight somewhere in the future . . .

"I don't know how to explain it, but Jasper could . . . control the emotions of people around him. He didn't use it in a bad way, but he could calm people down when they were upset, make people feel confident if they were uneasy. I guess it would work the opposite way, too, but he never used it like that."

I glanced over at Josie, who was watching me curiously, waiting for me to continue.

"Alice could see the future . . . sort of. I mean, not always with absolute certainty because stuff is always changing when people change their minds, but she could see what might happen, how likely it was."

Josie's eyes were wide. "The future?" she asked.

"Yeah, kind of crazy, huh?" I glanced back down toward the ground. "Charlie"—no, even now, that didn't feel right—"Chief Swan had this kind of telekinesis. I mean, he couldn't move things with his mind, but he could stop things that were already in motion, and Bella . . . she had something, but she could never figure out what it was exactly or how to use it." I kicked uselessly at the pebbles underfoot. "Sometimes it's like that, too, I guess."

I waited for her to ask something else, but apparently both she and the pack had run out of questions.

As we turned south again, making our way back toward the parking area, I realized that the other people on the beach—what few there were—had vanished. A cool breeze had picked up, blowing the moisture from the ocean toward us. I dug my hands deeper into the pockets of my jacket.

"So, what should we do tomorrow?" Josie asked.

It was like a gift. The perfect segue into a topic I hadn't known how to bring up.

"How about some sight-seeing?" I suggested, my eyes moving down the beach toward the cliffs at its southern edge.

"You've lived here forever. What sights haven't you seen?"

I gestured down the shore.

"The views. You've been up on the cliffs. I bet you can see for miles."

Josie frowned. "The view isn't that much different than it is from the road."

"Maybe, maybe not. But it has to be better when you're right at the edge. When you don't have to look through gaps in the trees."

She studied me for a moment, and for just a second, I thought she might be suspicious, but then she shrugged.

"Okay, sounds like a plan." She grinned. "More hiking for Edward."

We had reached the little path that led back through the weeds toward the parking area. I took a few steps forward, stopping when I realized Josie wasn't beside me anymore. Turning, I glanced back to see her still standing at the edge of the beach. She was studying the pebbles at her feet with a faraway look in her eyes.

"Do you remember when we were kids?" she asked. "How I used to take a souvenir home every day we spent here?"

I nodded, my mind easily finding the memory. It was an old one, from a more innocent time, a time before werewolves and vampires, when our only worries had been how much longer we could play before we had to go home and how many weeks of summer vacation were left. At the end of every day we'd spent on this beach, Josie had asked me to pick a souvenir—a pebble or a flower or a piece of driftwood—some little token to remember the day by.

I stepped back toward her, glancing down at the ground between us. Something caught my eye—an old fragment of seashell, worn smooth by time and the elements. I leaned down to pick it up and offered it to her.

Smiling faintly, she reached out to take it. She turned it over in her hand, running her fingertips over the smooth surface. Then she slipped it into her pocket, and with a nostalgic little smile, she led me up the path toward my car.

I slept very little that night. What little rest I managed was broken by a series of reruns of the dreams I'd been having for the last several months. I knew why my angel was visiting me now. It was the plan I was about to enact, my last-ditch effort to fix everything that was going wrong. The angel in my dreams was not happy about what I was about to do.

As I drove down La Push Road toward Josie's house the next day, I couldn't help but remember the significance of the date—it was all a part of the plan, after all. Today was March sixteenth, one year exactly since James had tricked me, lured me to an abandoned restaurant, and nearly killed me.

I could only hope my plans for today would be less disastrous.

Josie met me at her door. The expression on her face was one of carefully concealed anxiety, and for just a moment, I forgot all about my plans for the day and my concerns about my mother going back to work that morning.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Embry, Jared, and Paul crossed a fresh trail early this morning. Jake and Sam went to help. Sam is hoping . . . she's hedged herself in beside the mountains, and he thinks there's a good chance they can finish this."

Could this be it? Could it really be over? After so many of Victoria's narrow escapes, would this be the time they finally caught her? Maybe, but we'd been here before . . . And what if they did succeed, but at a cost? What if one of them . . . or more than one of them . . . didn't make it back? What if something happened to Jacob?

I could see all of those questions and more burning in Josie's brown eyes. In the end, I just nodded.

As I drove us toward the cliffs, I couldn't help but wonder if the plans I'd been making would even be necessary. If Victoria didn't get away this time, if the nightmare ended this morning, I wouldn't need to do anything. It would all be over. I tried to ignore the sense of disappointment that followed that thought.

"Are you sure you want to do this now?" Josie asked as I parked in a little pull-off along the side of the road that passed closest to the top of the cliffs. "The forecast said there's a storm coming in. We may not be able to see much."

I stepped out of the Volvo and glanced up at the sky. There were ominous clouds in the distance, but the wind was silent. Still, there was a feeling of expectation in the air, like something was coming, like something was about to happen. I didn't know if it was the storm or Victoria's demise . . . or something else entirely.

"It's okay. It's not here yet. We've got time."

I followed Josie down a little dirt path that led off into the trees. At first I thought we were heading downhill, toward the beach, but then the terrain shifted abruptly, climbing uphill once again. I chose my steps carefully, trying not to stumble on my stiff ankle. I could hear the waves crashing in the distance, growing louder as we drew closer to the shore, but they seemed angrier now than they had sounded from the road.

The path ended suddenly, fanning out on top of the cliff just as the wind began to stir. I took a few steps toward the edge, trying to get a better view. And the view was amazing. Or it would have been, if the storm hadn't been coming in so quickly. The clouds were moving in now. I could barely see the closest of the rocky islands that jutted up from the harbor water. Taking another step closer to the edge, I glanced down at the waves crashing below, trying to steel myself for what I was about to do.

"Careful, Edward," Josie chuckled behind me. "I don't think we were planning to go cliff diving this morning."

She really had no idea what I was planning.

But Alice did. Or so I hoped. Bella had told me, all those months ago, that she would have Alice check in on me from time to time, just to make sure everything was okay, but everything wasn't okay. Victoria was back, and she was determined to exact her revenge. Alice hadn't been looking for Victoria, though. She'd been looking for me, and since Victoria's path hadn't yet crossed mine, Alice didn't know the danger we were all in or how many innocent people had already died. She didn't know what the wolves were up against or how badly they needed help, so I had decided that I had to do something else to get Alice's attention. I could only hope jumping off a cliff was crazy enough to do it.

Had I done enough to make this work? That was the question. I knew Alice's visions were dependent upon what decisions were made, and I had already settled on this course of action, but looking down at the icy water below, I was starting to doubt myself. No, I had to do this. If I decided not to carry through, Alice wouldn't see me jump. And I would have to do this soon, before the storm reached us and turned this into the kind of truly reckless decision I hoped Alice would think it was.

Who was I kidding? It was already reckless.

As I stared down the face of the cliff toward the waves below, I heard a small gasp behind me. Turning, I found Josie staring out across the water. Her eyes were distant, unfocused.

"What is it?" I asked, taking a step toward her. "Is it the pack? Did someone get hurt?" But Josie only shook her head, a bewildered expression crossing her features, followed by one of dismay. And then she closed her eyes, as if in disbelief.

Not the pack, then. At least not one of them injured. It could only mean one thing—Victoria had outmaneuvered them again. I turned to look out across the water. There was no choice then. I hated to do this to Josie now, hated to drag her into this, but what else could I do? This was our only chance, the only thing I could do to help.

I sprinted toward the edge, flinging myself over it and out into thin air.

Josie must have heard my footsteps. She must have called my name, but I couldn't hear it. I couldn't hear anything beyond the roar of the wind in my ears as I fell. Under other circumstances, it might have been exhilarating, but even the rush of adrenaline wasn't enough to make me forget why I was doing this. As I cut through the surface of the freezing water below, the only thought I would allow myself was a prayer that Alice had seen what I'd just done, that I'd finally gotten her attention.

And then the current caught me.

I'd been so preoccupied by my plan, by the thought of the fall and the anticipation of the cold water waiting below that I hadn't considered the things I couldn't see, like the power of the currents that hid beneath the surface.

I felt like a seagull in a hurricane, whipped and buffeted in all directions as the waves fought over me. This momentary disorientation wasn't anything I'd never felt before, and I told myself to stay calm, to orient myself so that I could swim parallel to the shoreline instead of fighting my way toward the beach, but I didn't know which way was up, much less which way led to land.

Up, I needed to at least figure out which way was up, to get above the water where I could find the shore, but the frigid waves kept up their beating. There was no light in this dark water, no sunlight to break the inky blackness. There was no sensation of down either, nothing pulling me toward a bottom. Even the cliff face was lost to me.

It was freezing, and I only had so much air left.

I clamped my lips tight against the water, forcing myself to swim, to keep my arms and legs moving against the unforgiving waves. One more stroke, and I would see light, I told myself. One more kick, and I would find the surface.

And miraculously, somehow, I did. My head broke free of the unforgiving water just long enough for me to suck in one desperate breath, and then the current pulled me under again.

Around and around I spun, losing all sense of direction once more. Was that light up ahead? Was that fire in the water? No, it was just a trick of my oxygen-starved brain. But the pull seemed stronger in that direction . . . did that mean the other way was up?

I was just getting ready to kick against that pull, hoping I'd finally separated up from down when something warm closed around me, clamping itself around my chest. My first instinct was to fight, to free myself from whatever was dragging me away, but I didn't have enough air or energy left. It clutched me firmly under the arms, pulling me in the direction I'd wanted to go, so I let it take me away, let it pull me through the unrelenting current, until my head broke the surface at last.