-MAISIE-


If I had learned anything from Jasper, it was that feelings were a living thing.

Sadness was so heavy that I felt weighted down, like my bones and joints had been replaced with lead.

Remorse and embarrassment made me flush with a fever-heat even though I wasn't sick.

But anger, that was what kept me going.

Anger spurned me forward, kept me playing the role of a daughter and sister, covering my terrible secret from everyone but Gunner. It burned in my middle, this anger, torching away the sadness and remorse and embarrassment when it flared.

Irina had played a great hand, but she would not win. I would let this fury consume me—body, mind, and soul—before that happened.


Kate was full of apologies. So was Tanya, I guess, though her words felt hollow compared to Kate's lamentations. None of it mattered, though. What had been done had already passed, and words weren't going to fix it.

"At least all our friends can stop researching now," I muttered. Jasper could hear me fine, though he was on speaker phone and I was currently running through the woods surrounding my house. "Take up new hobbies."

"Your cavalier attitude is exhausting." He knew my inner turmoil, as did Edward. They were courteous, though, this empath of mine and his telepath brother. Edward never called me out; Jasper only did so in private.

"Good thing only one of us still needs sleep."

Running in Forks was so much easier than running in Alaska. Here, the air didn't slice through my throat and lungs like icy daggers. I was familiar with the Forks landscape, too, never having to worry if my foot would slip through snow and into some buried crevasse.

"You're giving me a run for my money there, mi amor."

I craved alone time, away from the pitying eyes of everyone who knew the truth. Yet, at the same time, I hated the idea of being truly alone. I was stronger now that I was drinking blood daily, but I still felt like a sitting duck becoming crowded on all sides by hunters.

At least with Maria, I had a face to my fear. The Volturi were a shapeless enigma haunting my mind by day and my dreams by night.

"I'm fine," I argued. "The… new diet helps. I'm not half so tired as I used to be."

Jasper fell silent for a beat on his end. I wondered what he was doing. Strategizing, maybe, even though we already had a plan. He couldn't help it. That's just how his brain worked.

"Maisie," his voice was cautious. He had been brooding, then, not strategizing. "It's okay not to be okay."

A sigh tumbled from my mouth, though I wasn't sure it was distinguishable from my panting breaths. I had been running for miles at that point. Ang yet, my heart still plodded along at its racing pace. My lungs did not burn as they should have, though my waning energy had begun to show in the pants of my breathing. Under me, my legs didn't waver in the slightest.

"Jasper," I reminded him, "we both know we can't afford that right now."

On the other end of the line, Jasper's sigh was much more obvious than mine had been.

Gunner's life was already in potential peril. If I fell apart, there would be questions that warranted answers. I couldn't very well reveal everything to my parents and Ava. Hey, Mom and Dad, remember when our house was broken into? That was a vampire. I helped Jasper's family kill him. Oh, why did they do that? They're vampires, too. Don't worry, though, they're the good kind. Oh, and remember way back when we lived in New Mexico? About that…

I would be committed instantly.

Running had served me a lot the past few days. This was the almost-alone time that I craved; a decent enough stress relief; something to tire me out enough I might sleep for a few hours at night.

It was mostly my time to cry, though. I could feel the hot tears running down my face, drying almost instantly as I continued to run.

"So you keep insisting."

"So I know," I corrected. I turned, altering my path to come back the way I had come. Jasper stayed on the line with me as I ran back to my house, bless him. I thought I had been out for longer than I had. Mom and Dad were still gone with Ava, having taken her to her summer reading circle at the Forks Public Library. This was the first summer since I was sixteen that I hadn't worked at the library.

Gunner was gone, too. With Leah or his friend Derrick, probably. He hadn't been staying home much these last few days, despite his promise to Mom. I didn't blame him. Nor did I mind the quiet of the house as I made my way to my bathroom to shower.

There was hardly any change in my appearance now than before my run. My ponytail was drooping, but there was hardly a sheen of sweat to my skin. My cheeks weren't flushed at all, though my eyes were red from my crying. As I undressed, my heart calmed back into its typical pace.

How the daily blood intake had given me the stamina of an Olympic runner, I had no idea. I just added it to the list of ways I had changed though my reflection showed me the same face I had been looking at my whole life. How could there be such fundamental alterations with no trace on the surface? Another question I had no time to answer.

Maybe the searing hot shower—I had taken to turning it to the hottest temperature—would cleanse my mind while it scalded my skin.


Children were intuitive, I had learned. Though Ava had no inkling of the severity of what was going on, she had honed-in on something being amiss. It amazed me that she could sense it, though my parents seemed oblivious. They were distracted, though, mainly focused on getting Gunner set up to move away for college, the way they had been hyper-focused on me the summer before.

Still, somehow Ava seemed to know that her time with me was limited in a way that had nothing to do with me going back to Alaska in two weeks. Or maybe that was my own guilt projecting a keen awareness on her, who knows. Either way, Ava was stuck to me like glue. She had even taken to sleeping in my bed with me again, like she had when James was making creepy nighttime visits to her window.

When Mom and Dad took Gunner shopping for appliances for the on-campus apartment he had secured, I took Ava school supply shopping.

"Who let you get big enough to go to first grade?" I asked her, pushing her up and down the aisles of pencils and crayons, paper and scissors, glue and supply boxes. Ava insisted on riding in the basket. "I don't remember giving you permission."

"Mama," she told me matter-of-factly. I was really the one doing the shopping here. Ava was focused on braiding her doll's hair. "Daddy said he's gonna tie a brick to my head."

I held up a pack of pink glittery pencils for her approval before tossing them in the cart. They landed a good three inches shy of Ava's foot, but she still stuck her tongue out at me. "You'll live. It's a long way from your heart. Are you sad me and Gunner will be leaving?"

"Mama said I can play in your rooms while you're both gone."

High commodity in Ava's world. She tossed her doll aside, hair half braided, to lean over the edge of the cart. "I need this. It matches my pencils."

"Since when do they make fun glue?" It was just as pink and sparkly. I wondered if it would even stick.

"Sorry everything was boring when you were in school. Maisie?" Ava leaned over the edge again, this time with her eyes trained on a strawberry printed pencil case.

"Yeah?" I was school shopping, too. Provided I was forced to become a vampire, I intended to finish a degree. What good would an eternal life be if I didn't use it?

"Are you still gonna come back from Alaska?"

Ava asked me in total innocence, but her point-blank question made me sputter in my steps. I made myself push the basket forward, moving us along the aisle. My daily runs had been hopeless in spurring my heartbeat above a slow rhythm, but now I felt it begin to pick up speed.

"Why wouldn't I? I came back for the summer. I'll be back again for Thanksgiving and Christmas."

"Mama said Dr. Cullen and Mrs. Cullen talk about moving." That was true. Carlisle and Esme were, for all intents and purposes, currently empty nesters. Not only that, but they had been in Forks for around five years. All of their children going off to college gave them a perfect cover to move from the area before questions about their perpetual youth began.

"Yeah, they want to give Canada a go," I told Ava. "But that doesn't mean I won't come back just because Carlisle and Esme are moving."

She gave me a look that said, I don't believe you. "Mama said that when girls get married, sometimes they spend more time with their husband's family."

I laughed at that. It had been true in my mother's case, for sure. "I didn't know me and Jasper were getting married. You got some kind of information I don't?"

"Mama says you should, because you live with him already."

"Mom's just full of things to say, isn't she?" I offered Ava a pack of scented erasers. She grabbed them from my hand instantly, temporarily distracted.

"Promise you'll come back?"

"Of course I will, silly."

I hoped I would be able to keep that promise to her.


Alice insisted I had a seventy percent success rate of surviving the meeting with the Volturi. She checked her visions daily, calculating the odds over and over. The only factors that she saw working against us was the moods of the Volturi leaders.

Something that shouldn't have been a concern for Jasper and I, given his ability to alter moods and emotions. Unfortunately for us, the Volturi were…overly familiar with the Cullen family and their abilities.

"I'm not valuable to them," Jasper had told me. "They already have a member that has similar abilities to my own. Alice and Edward, on the other hand… Aro has been extending invitations for positions amongst the Volturi guide for decades."

"Sorry you're a dime a dozen," I told him, running my fingers through his hair. With Ava sleeping with me every night, our alone time for these discussions had greatly reduced. While Ava slept, we were locked in my bathroom, Jasper having snuck over to deliver my cup of blood. He was seated at my vanity bench, and I was sitting in his lap, facing him, while we talked.

Ava slept easily despite all her questions during the day. I couldn't say the same for myself. I was either too mad—thinking about all the things Irina was taking from me—or waking from nightmares about the Volturi.

In my dreams, they were nothing more that solid black smudges with red, glowing eyes. When I used to dream about Maria, she would stalk me, toy with me while I tried and failed to outrun her. But in my Volturi dreams, I couldn't even walk let alone run. I was paralyzed to the spot, watching the black smudges and their red eyes creep closer and closer to me until the opened their black mouths and swallowed me whole.

I shuddered just thinking about it. Jasper frowned at the sudden turn in my mood, caressing his fingertips along my cheek in an attempt to soothe me. I caught his hand, moving it to plant a kiss on his palm before letting it fall from my grasp.

"I'm thankful to be unspectacular in Aro's eyes. It does make it impossible for me to manipulate the moods in the room, though. They'll all be familiar with it and know instantly."

"Truly unfortunate. Carlisle should have never befriended them." Jasper trailed a hand along my thigh, almost absentmindedly. We really had not had much alone time as of late, but even now, I could see the way his eyes clouded over with his thoughts.

"Carlisle has always been a scholar, first and foremost. He was on a mission to discover all that he could about the world of vampires. Perhaps he would have learned more had he spent more time in Europe, but he was rather off put by the Volturi's way of life."

Our one point of certainty was the date the summons from the Volturi would reach us. September 30th. Jasper and I would be back in Alaska by then. I wasn't sure if the lag between Irina's report on us and the summons had more to do with unconcern on the Volturi's part or if they just didn't view us as a viable threat. I was fine with either of those things.

"Aro's like Edward, right? A telepath?"

"Yes, but he needs a physical connection. Once that is established, he can view all thoughts and memories a person has ever had in their lifetime."

"All of them?" Then Aro would see our experiences in South America, surely. As well as Maria, the night she marked me. Maybe my life would not be such a waste, if there was still the chance of helping Joham's poor daughters and—possibly—proving the Cullens' innocence in my knowledge of vampires.

"All," Jasper reiterated. "It will be up to Aro's interpretation of memories that will seal our fates. He's already seen a majority of mine, save for the last twenty some odd years' worth. He knows I took part in the Southern armies and the wars."

Jasper saw that as a strike against him personally, I knew. "He'll also see how you were the one to put a stop to Maria."

My reminder did little to ease the thoughts worrying their way through his head. I could tell from the tiny crease between his eyebrows. He lifted his hand from my thigh, bringing it up between us, before resting it flush against my chest just over my heart. "Perhaps it will win me a pardon."

He felt my heart under his palm for beats. Jasper's hand moved upward, skimming over my collarbone and continuing its climb up my neck. Into my hair, curving around the back of my head to draw me closer to him. When he kissed me, it was not entirely gentle. I could taste the desperation on his mouth.

I'm sure he could taste the same on mine.


I was not yet banned from La Push. That would change, of course, if the Volturi let me leave Voltaire with my life. For now, though, there was nothing stopping me from eating dinner at Leah's house. Sue, Leah's mom, had insisted on having a fish fry for Gunner before he left for college.

Fish fries were an important tradition in the Clearwater family, apparently. With Leah's dad passed away, Charlie Swan took the place as fish fry aficionado. Gunner kindly shared the menu of the evening with me beforehand, allowing me plenty of time to make pasta salad—otherwise known as something I would eat.

"I love eating noodles and desert for dinner." I shook the Tupperware around, making Gunner roll his eyes.

"You're in an annoying mood. Who invited you again?"

I shook the container again, simply because I knew it was bugging him. He took it from me then, settling it in his lap before starting to pulling out of our driveway. Unfortunately for Gunner, it was easiest to push aside everything going on when I was with him.

"Some girl named Leah. Seemed pretty jazzed about the whole thing, obviously didn't know seafood makes me gag."

We had already survived Maria together. He knew the truth of my life, all the secrets. As Leah's imprint, he was explicitly under the protection of the Quileute wolf pack. As my brother, and a keeper of the secret of vampires, he had the same protection from the Cullens.

"I don't think freshwater fish classifies as seafood."

"All fish is gross. I'm not into discrimination."

Call it intuition, but for whatever reason, my fears over Gunner had were calming. Or maybe I was just stupid and desperate. This was a subject that haunted my sleepless nights. My certainty might have nothing at all to do with a gut feeling and everything to do with my desperation as I tried to rationalize how this might not be so terrible. Wishful thinking, maybe.

"You would never make it in the wild," he continued. "What if you washed up on an island with no animals or plants?"

"I would starve and be fine with it. Drink some seawater and hallucinate myself into the other side."

Gunner fell quiet, hazel eyes focused on the road before us. "Couldn't one of the Cullens' friends do it?" He asked, voice quiet and thick. "They don't have to follow the treaty."

I wanted to take his hand, but Gunner had both gripped tightly around the wheel. His knuckles shone white, his grip was so hard.

"Alice says that'll most likely anger the Volturi," I told him. "Like an admission of guilt, basically. Cowardice. They don't take kindly to it, according to Carlisle."

A shiver ran through me, the seriousness of Carlisle's expression swimming in my mind. I didn't typically think of any of the Cullens as particularly vampire-like, but watching the still graveness settle over Carlisle's usually warm and kind features had reminded me of his nature. Of the nature of all of this.

"And besides," I admitted, selfishly, "if it has to happen, I only want Jasper to do it."

I already had some of Maria's venom running in my veins, a tether that united myself to Jasper. If I could have my choice, I would only choose Jasper to deliver the dose that would set me over the precarious edge I walked between human and vampire.

"Would he be able to?" Gunner did not bring up the fact that Jasper doing the deed would effectively break the treaty between the Cullen family and the Quileute tribe. I appreciated that.

"Yes." At least, I was fairly certain he would be able to. "My blood isn't appealing to vampires. Not even Jasmine, when she was still a newborn. I smell too much like them already."

"Sam won't make the exception."

Deep in my heart, I knew this. Gunner didn't have to tell me. In the back of my head, I knew that would be the outcome. My brother still wasn't looking at me, eyes trained on the road to La Push.

"Neither will the Volturi."