Um. Thank you, Alice?" I blinked at her a few times, and then shot a confused glance at the smug smile on Edyth's face. "But I stopped aging three days ago."
"Trifling details," Alice said, dismissing my words with a quick shrug. "We're celebrating anyway, so suck it up."
I laughed, shaking my head. There was rarely a point to arguing with Alice.
Her grin got impossibly wider as she read the acquiescence in my expression.
"Are you ready to open your present?" Alice sang.
"Presents," Edyth corrected, and she pulled another key—this one longer and silver with a smaller blue bow—from her pocket.
I struggled to keep from rolling my eyes in amusement. I knew immediately what this key was for—the "after car." I wondered if actually seeing the thing would suddenly spark a post-transformation interest in sports cars.
"Mine first," Alice said, and then she stuck her tongue out foreseeing her answer.
"Mine is closer."
"But look at how she's dressed." Alice's words were almost a moan. "It's been killing me all day. That is clearly the priority."
My eyebrows pulled together as I wondered how a key could get me into new clothes. Had she gotten me a whole trunkful?
"I know—I'll play you for it," Alice suggested. "Rock, paper, scissors."
Jasper chuckled and Edyth sighed.
"Why don't you just tell me who wins?" Edyth said wryly.
Alice beamed. "I do. Excellent."
"It's probably better that I wait for morning, anyway." Edyth smiled crookedly at me and then nodded toward Julie and Seth, who looked like they were crashed for the night; I wonder how long they'd stayed up this time. "I think it might be more fun if Julie was awake for the big reveal, don't you agree? So that someone there is able to express the right level of enthusiasm?"
I grinned back. She knew me well.
"Yay," Alice sang. Bella, follow me."
"There's no point in resisting, Bella. Best get it over with." Royal grinned at me.
I was glad to see that the new comradeship between us was still there in his smile. I hadn't been entirely sure it would last after I was changed. But maybe we had fought together on the same side long enough that we would always be friends now. I'd fought for my humanity the same he would have if given the chance. That seemed to have washed away his resentment for all my other choices.
Alice shoved the beribboned key in my hand, then grabbed my elbow and steered me toward the back door. "Let's go, let's go," she trilled.
"Is it outside?"
"Sort of," Alice said, pushing me forward.
"Enjoy your gift," Royal said. "It's from all of us. Esme especially."
"Aren't you coming, too?" I realized that no one had moved.
"We'll give you a chance to appreciate it alone," Royal said. "You can tell us about it… later."
Emmett guffawed. Something about his laugh made me feel like blushing, though I wasn't sure why.
I realized that lots of things about me—such as disliking surprises and being embarrassed by gifts in general—had not changed one bit. It was a relief to discover how much of my core traits had come with me into this new body.
I hadn't expected to be myself. I smiled widely.
Alice tugged on my elbow, and I couldn't stop smiling as I followed her into the purple night. Only Edyth came with us.
"There's the enthusiasm I'm looking for," Alice murmured approvingly. Then she dropped my arm, made two lithe bounds, and leaped over the river.
"C'mon, Bella," she called from the other side.
Edyth jumped at the same time I did; it was every bit as fun as it had been this afternoon. Maybe a little bit more fun because the night changed everything into new, rich colors.
Alice took off with us on her heels, heading due north. It was easier to follow the sound of her feet whispering against the ground and the fresh path of her scent than it was to keep my eyes on her through the thick vegetation.
At no sign I could see, she whirled and dashed back to where I paused. "Don't attack me," she warned, and sprang at me.
"What are you doing?" I demanded, squirming as she scrambled onto my back and wrapped her hands around my face. I felt the slightest urge to throw her off, but I controlled it.
"Making sure you can't see."
"I could take care of that without the theatrics," Edyth offered. "You might let her cheat. Take her hand and lead her forward."
"Alice, I—"
"Don't bother, Bella. We're doing this my way."
I felt Edyth's fingers weave through mine. "Just a few seconds more, Bella. Then she'll go annoy someone else." She pulled me forward. I kept up easily. I wasn't afraid of hitting a tree; the tree would be the only one getting hurt in that scenario.
"You might be a little more appreciative," Alice chided her. "This is as much for you as it is for her."
"True. Thank you again, Alice."
"Yeah, yeah. Okay." Alice's voice suddenly shot up with excitement. "Stop there. Turn her just a little to the right. Yes, like that. Okay. Are you ready?" she squeaked.
"I'm ready." There were new scents here, piquing my interest, increasing my curiosity. Scents that didn't belong in the deep woods. Honeysuckle. Smoke. Roses. Sawdust? Something metallic, too. The richness of deep earth, dug up and exposed. I leaned toward the mystery.
Alice hopped down from my back, releasing her grip on my eyes.
I stared into the violet dark. There, nestled into a small clearing in the forest, was a tiny stone cottage, lavender gray in the light of the stars.
It belonged here so absolutely that it seemed as if it must have grown from the rock, a natural formation. Honeysuckle climbed up one wall like a lattice, winding all the way up and over the thick wooden shingles. Late summer roses bloomed in a handkerchief- sized garden under the dark, deep-set windows. There was a little path of flat stones, amethyst in the night, that led up to the quaint arched wooden door.
I curled my hand around the key I held, shocked.
"What do you think?" Alice's voice was soft now; it fit with the perfect quiet of the storybook scene.
I opened my mouth but said nothing.
"Esme thought we might like a place of our own for a while, but she didn't want us too far away," Edyth murmured. "And she loves any excuse to renovate. This little place has been crumbling away out here for at least a hundred years."
I continued staring, mouth gaping like a fish.
"Don't you like it?" Alice's face fell. "I mean, I'm sure we could fix it up differently, if you want. Emmett was all for adding a few thousand square feet, a second story, columns, and a tower, but Esme thought you would like it best the way it was meant to look." Her voice started to climb, to go faster. "If she was wrong, we can get back to work. It won't take long to—"
"Shh!" I managed.
She pressed her lips together and waited. It took me a few seconds to recover.
"You're giving me a house for my birthday?" I whispered.
"Us," Edyth corrected. "And it's no more than a cottage. I think the word house implies more legroom."
"No knocking my house," I whispered to her.
Alice beamed. "You like it."
I shook my head.
"Love it?"
I nodded.
"I can't wait to tell Esme!"
"Why didn't she come?"
Alice's smile faded a little, twisted just off what it had been, like my question was hard to answer. "Oh, you know... they all remember how you are about presents. They didn't want to put you under too much pressure to like it."
"But of course I love it. How could I not?"
"They'll like that." She patted my arm. "Anyhoo, your closet is stocked. Use it wisely. And... I guess that's everything."
"Aren't you going to come inside?"
She strolled casually a few feet back. "Edyth knows her way around. I'll stop by... later. Call me if you can't match your clothes right." She threw me a doubtful look and then smiled. "Jazz wants to hunt. See you."
She shot off into the trees like the most graceful bullet.
"That was weird," I said when the sound of her flight had vanished completely. "Am I really that bad? They didn't have to stay away. Now I feel guilty. I didn't even thank her right. We should go back, tell Esme—"
"Bella, don't be silly. No one thinks you're that unreasonable."
"Then what—"
"Alone time is their other gift. Alice was trying to be subtle about it."
"Oh."
That was all it took to make the house disappear. We could have been anywhere. I didn't see the trees or the stones or the stars. It was just Edyth.
"Let me show you what they've done," she said, pulling my hand. Was she oblivious to the fact that an electric current was pulsing through my body like adrenaline-spiked blood?
Once again I felt oddly off balance, waiting for reactions I wasn't sure my body was capable of anymore. My heart should have been thundering like a steam engine about to hit us. Deafening. My cheeks should have been brilliant red.
For that matter, I ought to have been exhausted. This had been the longest day of my life.
I laughed out loud—just one quiet little laugh of shock—when I realized that this day would never end.
"Do I get to hear the joke?"
"It's not a very good one," I told her as she led the way to the little rounded door. "I was just thinking—today is the first and last day of forever. It's kind of hard to wrap my head around it. Even with all this extra room for wrapping." I laughed again.
She chuckled with me. She held her hand out toward the doorknob, waiting for me to do the honors. I stuck the key in the lock and turned it.
"You're such a natural at this, Bella; I forget how very strange this all must be for you. I wish I could hear it." She ducked down and yanked me up into her arms so fast that I didn't see it coming—and that was really something.
"Hey!"
"Thresholds are part of my job description," she reminded me. "But I'm curious. Tell me what you're thinking about right now."
She opened the door—it fell back with a barely audible creak—and stepped through into the little stone living room.
"Everything," I told her. "All at the same time, you know. Good things and things to worry about and things that are new. How I keep using too many superlatives in my head. Right now, I'm thinking that Esme is an artist. It's so perfect!"
The cottage room was something from a fairy tale. The floor was a perfect quilt of smooth, flat stones. The low ceiling had long exposed beams that someone as tall as Julie would surely knock her head on. The walls were warm wood in some places, stone mosaics in others. The beehive fireplace in the corner held the remains of a slow flickering fire. It was driftwood burning there—the low flames were blue and green from the salt.
It was furnished in eclectic pieces, not one of them matching another, but harmonious just the same. One chair seemed vaguely medieval, while a low ottoman by the fire was more contemporary and the stocked bookshelf against the far window reminded me of movies set in Italy. Somehow each piece fit together with the others like a big three-dimensional puzzle. There were a few paintings on the walls that I recognized—some of my very favorites from the big house. Priceless originals, no doubt, but they seemed to belong here, too, like all the rest.
It was a place where anyone could believe magic existed. A place where you just expected Snow White to walk right in with her apple in hand, or a unicorn to stop and nibble at the rosebushes.
Edyth had always thought that she belonged to the world of horror stories. Of course, I'd known she was dead wrong. It was obvious that she belonged here. In a fairy tale.
And now I was in the story with her.
I was about to take advantage of the fact that she hadn't gotten around to setting me back on my feet and that her beautiful face was only inches away when she said, "I'm sure you're dying to see the closet. Or, at least I'lltell Alice that you were, to make her feel good."
"Should I be afraid?"
"Terrified."
She carried me down a narrow stone hallway with tiny arches in the ceiling, like it was our own miniature castle.
"That room is extra," she said, nodding to an empty room with a pale stone floor and large, airy windows. "Esme wasn't sure what to do with it." She smiled crookedly, "Given your hobbies and interests, perhaps we can make it into a kitchen for you."
I grinned widely, "I'd like that," then I laughed, "someone will have to feed the pack, after all."
She laughed as she continued down the hall. "Here's our room. Esme tried to bring some of her island back here for us. She guessed that we would get attached."
The bed was huge and white, with clouds of gossamer floating down from the canopy to the floor. The pale wood floor matched the other room, and now I grasped that it was precisely the color of a pristine beach The walls were that almost-white-blue of a brilliant sunny day, and the back wall had big glass doors that opened into a little hidden garden. Climbing roses and a small round pound, smooth as a mirror and edged with shiny stones. A tiny, calm ocean for us.
"Oh" was all I could say.
"I know," she whispered.
We stood there for a minute, remembering. Though the memories were human and clouded, they took over my mind completely.
She smiled a wide, gleaming smile and then laughed. "The closet is through those double doors. I should warn you—it's bigger than this room."
I couldn't bring myself to even glance at the doors. There was nothing else in the world but her again—her arms curled under me, her sweet breath on my face, her lips just inches from mine—and there was nothing that could distract me now, newborn whatever I was or not.
"We're going to tell Alice that I ran right into the clothes," I whispered, twisting my fingers into her hair and pulling my face closer to hers. "We're going to tell her I spent hours in there playing dress-up. We are going to lie."
She caught up to my mood in an instant, or maybe she'd already been there, and she was just trying to let me fully appreciate my birthday present, like a wife would. She pulled my face to her with a sudden fierceness, a low moan in her throat. The sound sent the electric current running through my body into a near-frenzy, like I couldn't get close enough to her fast enough.
I heard the fabric tearing under our hands, and I was glad my clothes, at least, were already destroyed. It was too late for hers. It felt almost rude to ignore the gorgeous white bed, but we just weren't going to make it that far.
This second honeymoon wasn't like our first.
Our time on the island had been the epitome of my human life. The very best of it. I'd been ready to prolong my human time, just to hold on to what I had with her for a little while longer. Because the physical part wasn't going to be the same ever again.
I should have guessed, after a day like today, that it would be better.
I could really appreciate her now—could properly see every beautiful line of her perfect face, of her long, flawless body with my strong new eyes, every angle and every plane of her. I could taste her pure, vivid scent on my tongue and feel the unbelievable silkiness of her marble skin under my sensitive fingertips.
My skin was so sensitive under her hands, too.
She was all new, a different person as our bodies tangled gracefully into one on the sand-pale floor. No caution, no restraint. No fear—especially not that. We could love together—both active participants now. Perfect equals.
Like our kisses before, every touch was more than I was used to. So much of herself she'd been holding back. Necessary at the time, but I couldn't believe how much I'd been missing.
I tried to keep in mind that I was stronger than she was, but it was hard to focus on anything with sensations so intense, pulling my attention to a million different places in my body every second; if I hurt her, she didn't complain.
A very, very small part of my head considered the interesting conundrum presented in this situation. I was never going to get tired, and neither was she. We didn't have to catch our breath or rest or eat or even use the bathroom; we had no more mundane human needs. She had the most beautiful, perfect body in the world and I had her all to myself, and it didn't feel like I was ever going to find a point where I would think,Now I've had enough for one day.I was always going to want more. And the day was never going to end. So, in such a situation, how did we ever stop?
It didn't bother me at all that I had no answer.
I sort of noticed when the sky began to lighten. The tiny ocean outside turned from black to gray, and a lark started to sing somewhere very close by—maybe she had a nest in the roses.
"Do you miss it?" I asked her when her song was done.
It wasn't the first time we'd spoken, but we weren't exactly keeping up a conversation, either.
"Miss what?" she murmured.
"All of it—the warmth, the soft skin, the tasty smell... I'm not losing anything at all, and I just wondered if it was a little bit sad for you that you were."
She laughed, low and gentle. "It would be hard to find someone less sad than I am now. Impossible, I'd venture. Not many people get every single thing they want, plus all the things they didn't think to ask for, in the same day."
"Are you avoiding the question?"
She pressed her hand against my face. "You are warm," she told me.
It was true. My skin still held a measure of warmth, but the difference between our body temperatures wasn't as severe now, it felt closer, more natural.
Then she pulled her fingers very slowly down my face, lightly tracing from my jaw to my throat and then all the way down to my waist. My eyes rolled back into my head a little.
"You are soft."
Her fingers were like satin against my skin, so I could see what she meant.
"And as for the scent, I already told you; your scent is still beautiful and tempting to me." She smiled, "But in an entirely different way."
"Oh?" I laughed. "That's probably for the better, then."
"Exactly. So the answer is no. I am purely full of joy, because I am missing nothing. No one has more than I do now."
I was about to inform her of the one exception to her statement, but my lips were suddenly very busy.
When the little pool turned pearl-colored with the sunrise, I thought of another question for her.
"How long does this go on? I mean, Carlisle and Esme, Em and Roy, Alice and Jasper —they don't spend all day locked in their rooms. They're out in public, fully clothed, all the time. Does this...craving ever let up?" I twisted myself closer into her—quite an accomplishment, actually—to make it clear what I was talking about.
"That's difficult to say. Everyone is different and, well, so far you're the very most different of all. The average young vampire is too obsessed with thirst to notice much else for a while. That obviously doesn't to apply to you. With the average vampire, though, after that first year, other needs make themselves known. Neither thirst nor any other desire really everfades. It's simply a matter of learning to balance them, learning to prioritize and manage…"
"How long?"
She smiled, wrinkling her nose a little. "Royal and Emmett were the worst. It took a solid decade before I could stand to be within a five-mile radius of them. Even Carlisle and Esme had a difficult time stomaching it. They kicked the happy couple out eventually. Esme built them a house, too. It was grander than this one, but then, Esme knows what Roy likes, and she knows what you like."
"So, after ten years, then?" I was pretty sure that Royal and Emmett had nothing on us, but it might sound cocky if I went higher than a decade. "Everybody is normal again? Like they are now?"
Edyth smiled again. "Well, I'm not sure what you mean by normal. You've seen my family going about life in a fairly human way, but you've been sleeping nights." She winked at me. "There's a tremendous amount of time left over when you don't have to sleep. It makes balancing your... interests quite easy. There's a reason why I'm the best musician in the family, why—besides Carlisle—I've read the most books, studied the most sciences, become fluent in the most languages... Emmett would have you believe that I'm such a know-it-all because of the mind reading, but the truth is that I've just had alotof free time."
We laughed together, and the motion of our laughter did interesting things to the way our bodies were connected, effectively ending that conversation.