A/N Yooo look who's back after 2 years. This is the first thing I've written since I got into a car wreck 4 months ago and almost died. So like, it's gonna be bad. I have no idea where I'm going with this so feel free to leave suggestions. I'm also writing this directly in the copy-N-Paste box on fanfic so there's that. and I'm sorry for first person POV. I'll try not to do that for all the characters.

Bpov

Passing the border into town was... interesting. It was like the whole world had been a grainy old black and white silent film and the director discovered HD partway through filming and decided to just go with it and didn't bother telling anyone. To say it made driving at superspeeds difficult would be an understatement. Suddenly getting assaulted with Old magic Majick at unprecedented volumes while driving was what I imagined taking a handful of Valium while eating Shrooms and then being told to play Jeopardy while running a triathlon must feel like. Thank the gods the towns in the Pacific northeast or the sunshine and overabundance of humanity would've caused me to crash. So, 45mph it was. Ugh. Mortals are so ugh. I should just charm the car to drive itself and then just tell people it's a prototype or something. Later Izshabell. No. Isabella. Izzy? gross. Bella? Yeah. Bella. Bella Swan. Perfectly ordinary. Now, it's time to find Charlie's house, unpack, and make a more detailed plan then just 'Go to Forks and stop The Darkness.'

Here it is. Small, run down, two-story house with peeling paint and a lopsided front stoop. Perfect. No one would ever guess that this ordinary, outdated, place was one of the oldest, and biggest, hotspots for the supernatural in North America. New York City and that town in Northern California non-withstanding. What was it? Bacon Hills or something? It doesn't matter, its history was localized to the last two generations and was more formed out of coincidence than anything else. Reinforced by the need to keep the secret rather than to make a community. That one weird town in Ohio doesn't count either, its only been around a couple of years and the fact that the whole thing hasn't collapsed already is outstanding and was probably more rumor than anything else. Besides, if rumor was to be believed, they're a different string of supernatural all together and none of my concern. Bacon Hills may need to be looked into, if just because of its nearness, but Ohio can be someone else's headache. and that would only be if they ever started to make nuisances of themselves and mess with ley lines or something. NYC can frankly take care of itself. There's more mist there just from regular mortals than even in Greece some days. At least that's what the books claim. No, my only real concern is in this town and these people and this set of mythologies.

Focus Bella. You're in Forks. None of the other towns, sans possibly Bacon, are in any way relevant. Just rematerialize your car and park. You have a job to do and it's not sightseeing or dallying. I pulled into the driveway and put the car into park. A quick wave of my hand had my bags piled on the seat next to me and crammed into the back seats a tilt of my head and anything out of the ordinary vanished, leaving just a regular Corvette interior in its wake. Deep breath. A quick prayer to any listening diety and it's go time. Bag over shoulder, keys in hand, and out of the car I went slamming the door behind me and thusly alerting Charlie to my presence.

"I thought I heard a car door slam out here!" Charlie said walking out of the house. "Really Izsha? A Corvette?"

"I have to explain my eccentricities and weird knowledge somehow, and what's a better way than ex-private school rich kid. It gives a bit of mystery to my presence and allows me to be dramatic," I give a bit of a flourish before any attempt at seriousness vanishes and I give Charlie a wide grin. He raised an eyebrow but seemed to decide it was useless to fight cause he just sighed and shook his head.

"Here, at least let me help with your bags," Charlie said as he quickly grabbed the bag that was slipping down my shoulder from me. "I don't think normal 16-year-old rich kids are known for lugging their belongings anywhere." Fair enough. Though having anyone lug any of my things anywhere was a humiliating concept. Witches take care of their own belongings thank you very much. but I suppose bags flying themselves into the house from the car WOULD be quite a shock to the neighbors brought to their windows by the sound and sight of an unfamiliar car in their Chief of Police's driveway. And so it went the two of us unpacking the car and dropping the bags just inside the front door.

"That's the last of it," I said following Charlie into the house one last time and firmly shutting the front door behind me. "Now, just tell me where I'm to sleep and I can take care of the rest."

"How-" he said looking at me blankly for a second before realizing what I meant and had an 'Oh yeah' moment.

"You were married to mom for HOW long again exactly?" I quipped walking past him to the stairs.

"Izshabell!"

"Just kidding! Gosh, Charlie. Ya gots to chill. I know it's been a while since you could use the magical solution," I teased. He just shook his head and walked up the steps pausing briefly to give me a look. I shook my head and followed him up.

"Here it is. I know it's not much but I figured you could ya know," he waggled his fingers at the room as he shifted awkwardly at the room's entrance, "it was your nursery, for a while anyway, never really had a reason to redecorate it and the one time I tried to pack things up I was vomiting for a week. Figured it was best to leave it be," he finished awkwardly as I peered into the room. The first thing I noticed was that it was pink. Not you run-of-the-mill nursery pink. No, this was Dolores Umbridge pink. Even the crib was a 90's plastic nightmare. Breathe Bella. A quick readjusting of my eyes and I could See it. All the spells the clan had layed upon the room mixing with the natural aura of the place. My eyes started to water and I promptly sneezed, effectively ending my Sight and returning the room to its ghastly pink color.

"Sorry," I muttered to Charlie before sneezing again. "It's no wonder you were vomiting for a week. I'm frankly surprised you could get into the room at all, let alone live to tell me about it. Mom must've removed some of the protections or something. Ugh, this is going to be a nightmare to cleanse. The magic is stale and the underlying magical currents are going to make it difficult to do any of my projects here for a while. Or move in most of my things. I should have the materials needed to cleanse the place..." I trailed off quirking my hand as a bag flew up the stairs, stopping in front of me. I started rifling through the bag pulling things out as I found what I needed. "So, first I have to make sure mom didn't booby-trap the place. Then I 'll have to take down all the spells on the house, perform the cleanse, then reapply the spells on the house. As the owner of the property do I have your permission to commit the aforementioned actions?"

"Just a couple of questions, first, what spells on the house? Second how long should this take? and third, where should I be during all this?"

"Protection spells mainly I think," I answer while looking through a monocle and attaching various contraptions to the walls and floors of the hallway. "I won't know for sure until I finish the diagnostic. A couple of hours at the most. For regular mortals we typically recommend them staying at a hotel for a day or two, but you're not a regular mortal so you can be wherever. I do suggest not turning on things that require electricity. It shouldn't be a problem but I'm not sure how the underlying current will affect things and I don't want to find out right now. It would probably either do nothing or just cause something to short circuit but I like to err on the side of caution and not take the chance at something major happening." Charlie looked over the mess and simply shook his head fondly before going back downstairs to hide, memories of the early days with Renne causing him to get as far away from the commotion as possible. It was going to be a long night.

Charlie Pov

"A few hours. Ha. Renee used to say that too. And then three days would pass and I would walk into the kitchen at 4 am to see her muttering in Sumerian or something, eyes bloodshot, and hair a mess," Charlie smiled softly to himself chuckling when a loud bang followed by an 'I'm okay' reached his ears. Even magic has limits. Charlie remembered his ex-wife explaining to him once. It was a few weeks after he had learned her secret, a story for another day, and they were curled up on his parents' sofa. His mom had finally cried herself to sleep, only the occasional sounds of her coughing letting him know she was still alive. The two of them were still dressed for his father's funeral, which had ended hours earlier but neither of them could bring themselves to move. He had asked why she couldn't bring his father back, cure his mother's illness, or even just let her forget her grief long enough to get some rest.

"Magic is wonderful Charlie. Capable of amazing things. But somethings, like death, even magic can't fix. Sometimes you can petition a god for help, and if they're in a good mood or owe you enough, they will. But the gods of death and of the dead rarely reverse these things, and even then it's at a great cost. Illness can be easier to acquire a cure for, the god of healing can be quite magnanimous, but your mother's old Charlie. And the illness is that of the death gods. And thusly off limits. Magic could be used to help her sleep, but at this juncture, science and medicine can do more than I for her sleeplessness is less caused by illness or anxiety at what comes next, but more from grief at the loss of her husband of 70 years and at the thought of leaving her only son behind. That's part of who she is as a person. And no magic on Earth, or any god, can change a fundamental part of who someone is. It's not like changing someone's eye color, or class schedule. It's changing the very essence of who they are and is not something that can be done. She doesn't need magic, Charlie. She needs you."

"I don't understand Ree."

"She needs you to be there. To tell her that you'll be okay without her."

"I love you so much, Ree."

"I love you too Charlie." They had announced their engagement a week later had been married the week after that and told his mother about their forthcoming child soon after. She had been delighted and relieved. Passing in her sleep within the hour. Somethings are out of the grasp of magic and god alike. and somethings. Well, somethings can only be fixed by humans being human. Clank. Crash. Bang. 'Fuck.' boom. Crash. Bang. 'I'm okay.' And other things are just incredibly clumsy 16-year-old magical prodigies attempting to cleanse his their house of his ex-wife's...forgetfulness. It was going to be a long night. At the sound of more muted cursing and crashing, Charlie sighed and took a swig of beer, why did he think letting the kid he'd seen maybe twice a year for the past 14 years stay with him was a good idea? When the cursing was followed by the lights going out instead of crashing he dropped his head onto the table and sighed and chuckled to himself. He had missed this. Not that he would ever tell anyone. But he missed having magic around the house damn it. And he missed his daughter. His parents had been old when they had him, their little miracle baby his mom used to say, too old to teach him to ride a bike or throw a ball. They should've been buying toys for great grandbabies, not hugging their son at his high school graduation before going to Olive Garden for an early dinner. It had made him rush into getting married and having a child at the first chance he got. He wanted to take his kid to soccer practice, join the PTA, take trips where they would go mountain climbing or just play in the ocean until they all had sunstroke and then eat a late dinner. Altogether, no one on walkers or having to lug an oxygen tank around. Able to go anywhere at the drop of a pin, not have to worry about scheduling heart medication and doctors appointments. Look how well that turned out he thought. 37 years old, the chief of police in a town with fewer people than some community colleges, a single dad to a teenage girl you barely know. And oh yeah, she has magic powers and is supposed to start a revolution or stop a war or something. Where did it all go wrong? Never mind. He knew the answer to that. And he didn't need to keep thinking about it. He'd spent more than a decade thinking about it after all. Fresh start Charlie. This is a fresh start. Maybe he would finally figure out what was up with those weird Cullens. He always assumed they were one of his ex's lot. Maybe now he would finally get confirmation. Not that he really cared. He was just freaking curious how a family could be so nice but off-putting, gorgeous but terrifying, and the look the same but have zero resemblance to each other. And why Billy always changed the subject if someone mentioned them. He got up and found the candle and match that was still in the drawer where he'd kept it since he realized sudden power outages would be a part of his new normal. Over a decade later and he could still light the thing in the pitch black, a trick that had awed more than one new cop over the years. The power grid in town was notorious for blackouts. The realization hit him at the same time the candle finally caught. He could've hit himself. "The ley-lines. Of course. I'm such an idiot. Magic epicenter. Of course, the mortal power grids are going to randomly stop doing their job. He had a strong suspicion, deep in the gut honed by nearly two decades on the force that power outages were about to become a far more frequent occurrence in the sleepy little town. At around 11 pm he took his candle a made his way to the couch to settle in for what was sure to be a long and sleepless night.

A/N

Whoo. Not happy with the ending but whateves. I'm on a roll. I might actually update this again soon. Me? Post regular updates? That be the day. Anyway. It's rumored that comments are a great way to motivate writers. Wanna test that theory? ;) ;) I'm just messing with you. Thanks for reading. Comment if you want. If you get my various references feel free to drop a line. This probably won't become a crossover but if there's a strong reader request for that I can weave a few characters in or something. lemme know.

Till next time.