There was a hurriedly whispered consultation, made slightly more complicated by the presence of two separate coven leaders trying to give one another the proper deference.

"Who is it?" asked Kate. At that distance, even we could not make out details.

"Surely," Tanya replied, "it must be the one surviving from the three who were here. You said, Carlisle, that two of them were destroyed by the werewolves, and one escaped, yes?"

"That's right."

"This is not one of the three who were here earlier," I pointed out. "We'd recognize the scent."

"No," Carlisle agreed. "It is a complete stranger."

"Another one? What is it about this place?" Kate muttered. "It's like a convention."

"Shall we chase him out of town?" Tanya asked.

Carlisle hesitated. "If you don't mind, I would rather try to reason with him first. After his encounter with the wolves, I'm sure he would be more than ready to avoid the area."

Tanya shrugged. "I have no objection, but I will defend myself if he attacks."

"Understood." Carlisle raised a hand and called softly, "Hello!"

The figure stood still for several seconds, then hesitantly raised a hand as well, and gave a little wave.

"We mean no harm. May we speak with you?"

Again, a long pause, while the figure seemed to look from one of us to another. Then I heard a quiet, "Yes." We looked at each other in surprise. It was a female voice. I heard Carlisle mentally recall the exact wording of our conversation with the Quileutes, and we both realized we may have overlooked the possibility of a fourth vampire.

Carlisle called out, "I'm going to come closer, if that is all right." The figure seemed to crouch slightly, as though preparing to flee - or to attack. "Please, stay there. I will come by myself if you prefer."

The stranger paused, nodded, and began to cautiously move in our direction. "Stay behind for now, please," Carlisle told us. "I don't want to frighten her any further. She seems terrified of us. Come forward once she is more at ease." We agreed, and Carlisle walked toward the distant figure. He stopped about twenty feet from her, and we could hear him address her soothingly. "My name is Carlisle. With me are some of my family."

"Family?" the stranger repeated in surprise.

"Yes. I would be happy to introduce them to you - when you feel so inclined. For now, I wanted to warn you that the nearby area, from just north-west of here, along the ocean north to the Quillayute River, and projecting a little over a thousand meters away from the shoreline, is protected. It may be dangerous to go there."

The stranger looked in the direction of La Push. "I know. There are…something like wolves."

"You know about them?"

"I saw them. I…fought them off." She looked down at her hands, clearly disturbed by the memory.

"I see. We have not seen you before. Have you been in this area long?"

This simple question seemed difficult for her. She shrugged, shook her head, and then said, "Yes. Well, it seems long. I think it must be since January. How long would that be?"

"Six months," Carlisle answered, showing no surprise at her confusion.

At Tanya's silent suggestion, the four of us began to slowly move forward. The stranger noticed this and tensed, but did not attempt to flee. We could now see her clothing, which was ragged even beyond the typically low standards of nomads. Her long hair was a mass of tangles, and she looked as if she'd rolled in mud at some point. We also noticed something else, something surprising, which Carlisle went on to mention at this point.

"If you would not mind another question…I could not help noticing, you do not hunt humans."

The stranger stared at him incredulously. "Hunt humans," she repeated, as if the words made no sense.

"Yes. I could tell from the colour of your eyes." She stared at him still, not seeming to understand. "It is rather unusual among our kind. I know of only two families who practice this kind of restraint. May I ask, were you taught by your creator to leave humans unharmed?"

She frowned in confusion. "I'm sorry but…I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

Carlisle studied her a moment. "Have you been alone the entire six months?"

She seemed to have a great deal to say, but unable to find the words; emotions crossed her face: grief, confusion, fear. At last, she simply nodded.

"This must be incredibly confusing for you." She nodded again, looking at him gratefully.

Carlisle went on in his most reassuring voice, "I would be happy to continue to speak with you here, if you prefer. But if you are willing, I would like to invite you to my home. The rest of my family are there. They would be happy to meet you, and…I think we may be of help to you." As she hesitated, biting her lower lip nervously, he added, "At the very least, it would be a respite from your long period of solitude. And you may, of course, leave again whenever you wish."

I could see that she was afraid, but she was also drawn by the offer of help - and, of course, Carlisle at his most comforting was bound to be attractive to the lost and lonely. She agreed, and followed him back to us; we stood still, trying to look benign. "This is Tanya," Carlisle said, pointing to each of us, "Edward, Kate, and Eleazar." We greeted her in a friendly but unassertive manner. "May I ask your name?"

She looked at him in mild surprise, as if, understandably, nobody had asked her name for at least six months. "It's Bella."

I froze where I stood, as everything fell into place. "Bella? You're Isabella Swan?" I had not, at first, recognized her from the photographs I'd seen at her funeral; the pictures had not captured her appearance perfectly, and naturally, she'd changed a fair amount; but now I could see the resemblance. The photos of Isabella Swan were like a first draft of a work of art, while the vampire standing in front of me was the completed portrait. She was beautiful; but more shockingly, she was real. My minor obsession, the object of my strange, random fanboy fixation, was most unexpectedly standing in front of me. Since January, I had begun to think of her not only as deceased, but almost as mythological. My feelings were, to say the least, mixed.

"Yes, that's me."

I took in the eyes, which were becoming golden brown, but with a tinge of red still running through and around the iris, the vestiges of the newborn stage, which was, apparently, drawing to a close. I had never heard of a vampire successfully choosing not to kill, without guidance, through the newborn phase, apart from Carlisle. My foolish obsession began to evolve into more legitimate admiration.

We led the stranger…no, Isabella Swan…no, she preferred Bella…to the place we'd parked our cars, where she hesitated a long moment before agreeing to get inside. I was a little disappointed that she chose to ride with Carlisle rather than in my Volvo, and was therefore unable to hear any conversation they had on the road. Instead, I tuned in to their thoughts as I drove, and finally made a startling discovery. I could hear Carlisle's thoughts easily from the car directly behind mine; I could also hear the thoughts of the three Denali. Bella's thoughts, however, were a complete blank to me! I'd been so focused on her and Carlisle's audible conversation, I had not realized that I was unable to read her. Apparently Alice was not the only one to have her talents unexpectedly blocked. It had never happened to me before - so I thought; but I recalled how Charlie Swan's mind had been partly opaque, revealing only hints of what he was thinking. This was his natural daughter; perhaps she had inherited the quality, and it had become more pronounced after her transformation. Special gifts from the human life often became enhanced. I concentrated on the other car, assuring myself that no thoughts could be heard from Bella, not a trace.

We arrived at the house to find Emmett and Jasper standing on either side of the front door, looking like palace guards, and Alice watching eagerly through the window, grinning from ear to ear, and her mind, for some reason, reciting the roster and statistics from the 1945 White Sox. "Of course, Alice saw us coming," I murmured. Bella was clearly uneasy, but she followed close behind Carlisle as he walked toward the house. "Bella, this is Emmett, and Jasper," Carlisle said, giving them both a subtle 'stand down' gesture. Jasper seemed to have concluded that the newcomer's emotions were not aggressive, and he bowed, greeted her politely, and held the door as she and Carlisle entered. The remaining family members were assembled in the living room

I tried listening in to Alice's forecast through her thoughts, but all I got was more …Floyd Baker, third base; bats left, throws right… I tried to catch her eye, but she was focused on Bella like everyone else. Esme moved forward, smiling and holding her hand out to the newcomer. "Welcome, my dear. You're among friends here." Bella took her hand, smiling for the first time since we'd seen her - it was faint and tentative, but a smile all the same, and I found myself elated at the sight. She'd looked so unbearably sad before, it pained me to see it. Jasper gave me an appraising glance, but immediately focused his attention back on Bella; I could read through his thoughts the relief she felt, the sense of cautious hope, along with a hint of fear and distrust. I could understand that; the past months must have been a nightmare to the poor girl.

Carlisle looked around the room. "How much has Alice told you?"

"I could only tell what I'd seen," Alice said, "so just that she was there, alone; was a vegetarian; and was coming here with the rest of you."

"Vegetarian?" Bella repeated quietly.

"Those who don't hunt humans," Emmett explained. "Carlisle calls us vegetarians."

"You said that before, right?" Bella turned to Carlisle. "So there are people who do hunt humans?"

"Yes, the vast majority of our kind."

"And…exactly what is our kind?"

"Wow," Kate remarked. "She really has been left out of the loop."

"You have no idea?" Tanya asked her.

"Not really. I mean, when I saw that I had been buried in the graveyard over there," she nodded in the direction of town, "I thought I must be a ghost. But it didn't quite fit. I mean, I was solid. And I also…got hungry." Her expression became bleak.

"No, not a ghost," Carlisle assured her, thinking Go slowly; one matter at a time. "And your grave is empty. No body was ever recovered."

"Then…what am I?"

It was such a plaintive question; I ached for her isolation, her confusion, her months of walking the earth thinking she was her own disembodied spirit.

"I don't want to alarm you, my dear, but you are a vampire. We all are."

In her expression, and through Jasper's gift, I could see her quick range of emotions: suspicion and doubt, followed by horror, then by comprehension. "So…hunting humans would mean drinking their blood?"

"Exactly."

"And none of you do that?"

"No. We feed only on animals. As do you, I take it."

"Right." She confirmed this casually, as if it had not been a tremendously difficult achievement. She was so…impressive! "But those others, they attack humans. They…" She cringed at little at whatever memory it brought back. I was frustrated at not being able to see it directly from her mind.

Tanya intervened. "Maybe we could begin at the beginning, and get an account of just what happened to you? It might be easier to make sense of it all."

"Of course, Tanya; very sensible," Carlisle said, "if you don't mind, Bella? Perhaps you could tell us for yourself what has happened since your arrival. You were meant to begin school here in January, I believe?"

"That's right. I was coming to stay with my dad." Sadness at the mention of Charlie Swan. "The weekend before I would've started school, I was visiting some friends with him."

"Was this at La Push?" Carlisle asked.

"Yes, that's right. They were watching sports on TV, and I got bored, so I said I was going to take a walk. The woods are really pretty there." She frowned, struggling to bring back the faint human memories. "I walked to a place where the woods end at a kind of low cliff, and it slopes down to the water. Three people seemed to appear out of nowhere. They were…I don't know, taunting me, trying to get me to run. When I did, they chased me. One of them started hurting me on purpose, like it was fun." Her shoulders hunched at the memory. I felt an overpowering desire to destroy the sadistic stranger, to attack and destroy anyone who would cause pain to this remarkable person; then, the rage abruptly dying down into something more like indignation. I realized Jasper had modified my emotions, and I glanced at him sheepishly.

Bella went on, "I tried to fight with him, but it was like fighting a stone statue. When I pushed at his face, he…it seems to me he bit off two of my fingers." She looked down at her perfectly intact hands. "That's one reason I thought I must be a ghost. The fingers are still there. Why?" She looked at Carlisle.

"During the process of transformation, from human to vampire, any injuries or imperfections are automatically healed."

"So they grew back!"

"Yes."

"Then…those three actually were vampires?"

"That's right. But how is it that you survived the attack?"

"Well, I'm not completely sure. The one…vampire, he bit off my fingers, and it started to burn." She touched the area on her hand. "Then he bit me again, right here." She indicated the left shoulder. "Then that spot began to burn as well. But just then, something knocked him away from me. It seemed like some kind of monster, leaping through the air right at him. More than one, but I'm not sure how many. I'm sorry, a lot of this is kind of blurry; I don't remember the details."

"It's all right, Bella. I'm sure we can follow you very well," Carlisle said with a reassuring smile.

She nodded, giving a tiny smile in return; I felt warmed at the sight. She carried on with more confidence. "I fell on the ground, screaming because of the burning. There was a fight, but I couldn't really follow who was fighting, who was winning, because they were all moving too fast to see." I could feel her terror swell, then subside as Jasper used his gift on her. I gave him a quick look of gratitude.

"I tried to run away," Bella continued. "It was hard, because of the burning, and because I'm not very steady on my feet at the best of times." She grinned self-consciously.

"I'm sure that's not the case any more," Tanya told her, smiling.

"No," Bella answered, seeming to be struck by the fact, "I suppose it's not. Well, anyway, I ended up falling off the cliff into the sand below, on the beach. They were still fighting; I could hear them up on the cliff. I started to run, but I stumbled into the water. I think I got very disoriented, and went in the wrong direction, because next thing I knew I was up to my neck in water. I grabbed a log that was floating near me - I must have dislodged it from the stack of lumber on the shore - and at that point, the pain really started spreading. The burning, you know?" She looked around at us, and several nodded. We knew very well - all except Alice, that is.

"So I hung onto the log, and tried not to scream, because I thought they could find me if I made noise. I just hung on, and let the log float me away on the current. I'm not even sure for how long, but eventually I found myself being washed to shore. I checked later; it was at the wildlife refuge, near Goodman Creek?" She looked up again, and Carlisle and I nodded that we knew the area. "I had some idea that I should get help, or get to a hospital, but I couldn't really travel. I just kind of burrowed under some brush and waited out the pain. There was nobody around; it was mid-January, you know? So I lay there, and eventually the burning stopped, and I stood up."

She stopped again, looking pensively down at the floor. In spite of Jasper's help, the feelings associated with this memory were bleak, and my heart went out to her.

"Everything was different," she said at last. "Confusing. I could see and hear - and smell - absolutely everything, so clearly; but I felt scattered. I couldn't make a decision. I didn't understand what was going on. And then I felt this burning thirst."

She got looks of sympathy all around.

"I thought later on, thank goodness I was in the woods in January, and there were no people for miles around. I started to run around, kind of aimlessly. Eventually I smelled something wonderful in the distance, and started to run toward it. But when I got there, it was a man, a forest ranger." We braced ourselves; surely, here was her one, previously unmentioned slip-up. "I wanted to…to do what that other one had done to me; to bite him, drink…"

She looked up at this point, as if expecting disapproval. "That is part of our nature, Bella," Carlisle told her. "What did you do?" he asked, in a carefully neutral tone.

"As soon as I realized what I wanted, I ran away as fast as I could." She paused, seeing us all react to that simple statement. "What?"

"We are just impressed, little newborn!" Tanya said with a bright smile.

"Well, what else could I have done? I couldn't just kill a man. And what do you mean, newborn?"

"A newly made vampire is referred to as a newborn," Carlisle explained.

"Yes, and they typically lack self-control," Eleazar added. "It is almost unheard of for a newborn, without outside guidance, to be able to voluntarily turn away from human blood. Perhaps," he mused, "it is part of her gift."

Our attention was turned toward Eleazar. "Gift?" Carmen repeated. "What kind?"

"She is a shield. A mental shield, very powerful it appears. It may have protected her, to some extent, from her own impulses - although this is speculation, as such effects are unknown territory to me. It clearly does protect her from the mental weapons of others, very effectively I should think. Edward, for instance, will have no access to her mind."

All eyes went to me. "That's true," I agreed. "I can't hear her thoughts at all."

"Interesting!" Carlisle exclaimed. "Has this ever happened to you before?"

"No, never."

"But," Bella protested, "why should he be able to hear my thoughts?"

"Ah!" Tanya replied. "Well, Bella, some of us enter this new life with gifts - special abilities. Edward's gift is the ability to read minds." Bella looked sidewise at me, her distrustful expression making Emmett snort with laughter. "Several of us have talents of this kind. Eleazar's is the ability to discern the gifts of others."

"I see." She looked rather taken aback. These talents weren't a standard part of vampire legends.

"And Alice has a spectacular one: she can tell the future." Alice curtseyed gracefully, and Bella actually chuckled, just a little. It was like the sun coming through the clouds.

"Except when she's concentrating on the past," I murmured for Alice's benefit. She was still systematically running through mid-20th century baseball statistics. I looked at her suspiciously, but she just smiled and mentally moved on to Gil Hodges' batting average.

"But Bella," Tanya concluded, "evidently has the ability to shield herself from gifts such as Edward's."

"But I'm not," Bella protested. "Shielding myself, I mean. I'm not doing anything."

Eleazar smiled at her. "That, my friend, is an indication of a particularly strong form of shield. It is in place by default, with no effort on your part. Your mind is, as it were, permanently shielded."

"It could be very useful, if developed," Jasper noted, thinking, as always, of the defensive capabilities.

"Useful, how?" Bella asked.

"In time, you could learn to expand it, to use it to shield others."

"Shield them from mind-reading?" She glanced at me again.

"Not just that. There are weapons that attack the mind. You would be impervious to many of those; perhaps to all of them." He looked to Eleazar, who gave a nod of confirmation. "You might be able to use your gift to protect others." She nodded thoughtfully, accepting his words, yet clearly still confused.

"But we are getting ahead of ourselves," Carlisle protested, "and overloading Bella with new information. Perhaps, Bella, you could continue with your account. What happened after you fled from the first human you encountered?"

"Well, I kind of wandered in the woods, trying to avoid any places people might go, like roads, in case…you know. But I kept getting thirstier, and at last, I…" She looked at us, as if ensuring what she would say was really acceptable. "I drank blood from an animal. I saw some deer off in the distance. They didn't smell as good, but I thought, at least they have blood; so I chased after them. I caught one, and…" She shrugged. "It helped. I kept doing that. Deer, coyotes, one time a moose; even raccoons and squirrels sometimes, because I remembered that there were too many of them in the area, and anyway…anyway, I figured it might keep me from hurting any people."

"Amazing! Well done, Bella!" Tanya exclaimed, and the others voiced their agreement. "I remind you, it is terribly uncommon for anyone to come to this kind of resolution completely on their own, and at such an early stage!"

Bella shrugged, uncomfortable with the attention; I remembered her eulogies, in which her great shyness and reserve was mentioned by several people who knew her. She looked directly at me, seeming to pause in mild surprise at what she saw, and I realized I was smiling - beaming, in fact, full of joy at her compassion and her accomplishment. I tried to tone down the smile a bit, but with little success. She scrunched up her face as though half amused, half provoked, and looked away, but the emotions filtered through Jasper's mind were friendly, embarrassed rather than genuinely annoyed. Jasper's gift, at the moment, was a lifeline; if I couldn't hear Bella's thoughts, at least I could get a glimpse of her emotions, and know her reactions to what was said.

"And what did you do then?" Alice urged her.

"Not very much, for a while. I wanted to go back to Charlie's house - my dad, that is - but I was afraid of maybe hurting him. I couldn't think of a way to let him know I was okay, and…and I wasn't sure if I really was okay. I didn't really understand what had happened to me. That's when I saw the people from the funeral go to the graveyard. Charlie and my mom were there, and a lot of other people I knew. I saw them from a long way off. That night, I went to the grave where they had been, and the headstone had my name on it. That's when I thought I might be a ghost." She shrugged. "It sounds silly, I know, and ghost doesn't really fit; but I didn't have any other theory to go on."

"Of course," Carlisle replied.

"And then, a while back…" She hunched her shoulders again, as if afraid. "I saw those three again, the ones who…did this. They began coming toward me, and thinking about it afterward, I think they may have just wanted to talk to me; but at the time, I thought it was an attack. I started to run away, but more of those…" She looked up at Carlisle. "What I mentioned before? They looked like wolves; or was I imagining things?"

"No, you're correct; but perhaps we'll save that explanation for later. It's a bit complicated."

"Sure. Well, some of them started coming from the other direction. Three of the, er, wolves jumped on the one with the long red hair, and the other wolves sort of guarded the rest of us, to keep us from getting away. One of the three vampires - three other vampires, that is," she added, with a look that expressed the strangeness of placing herself in that category, "started cursing at me, thinking I had somehow brought the wolves to get them. He attacked me, and I fought back. Somehow I was much stronger than he was; it was strange."

"A newborn is very strong at first," Tanya explained. "You might well have defeated an older vampire."

Especially, Jasper noted to himself, with her unusual level of self-control. I met his eye and nodded agreement.

"Oh! Okay, well…I fought back, and before I knew it, I'd taken his head clean off." She glanced around the room once more, checking for signs of disapproval, but found none. "The wolves had killed the red-haired one, torn her to pieces; and I sort of…threw the rest of the headless one at them as hard as I could, to keep them from reaching me, and then I ran away as fast as I could go. I could hear some of them chasing me for a while, but I finally left them behind. I stayed away from that area after that, and avoided anywhere I happened to pick up their scent - you know, that strange musty scent?"

"We know it very well," Rosalie said. "Awful!"

"Yeah, but at least it lets you know where to avoid."

"True."

"But why," Tanya asked, "did you remain in this general region, once you knew about the werewolves?"

Bella hesitated, her emotions becoming sombre. "I still hoped I might be able to contact my father, or maybe do something for him, let him know I was still…around." Our silence expressed to her what we avoided saying: that it was not feasible for her to have further contact with her parents. She seemed to pick up on this. "Maybe that's not really possible?"

"Not really, no," Irina said, not unkindly but firmly. "Maybe this would be the right time to mention day to day rules?"

"Perhaps," Carlisle agreed. "I'm sure you will have further questions about this, Bella; but for now, you should know that our kind are obliged to live under one or two laws, simple but inviolable. The first and most important is that we do nothing that might make humans aware of our existence. The penalty for this is death. Death for the one who gave us away, and for the humans who were informed."

Bella clearly grasped the implications. She would put her father in danger by trying to contact him. "I understand. But who enforces these rules?"

"Again, rather complicated. Perhaps we can set that aside for now, as well."

Jasper turned to her. "Avoiding him might actually be the kindest thing in any case. Your father was devastated at your death, but he has since grieved and begun to recover and move on. That would not be possible if you burdened him with your new existence, even assuming he believed and accepted it - and was not under a death sentence for knowing of it. He will not forget you, of course, but he will be happy again."

"And remarry," Alice added. At Bella's surprised look, she added, "Fortune teller, remember? He's courting the Widow Clearwater. Even with the occasional blind spots - long story, Bella - I can see them married within a year."

"Really? Wow, that's great, but…what widow?" Bella exclaimed.

"Sue Clearwater." Before Bella could contradict her, Alice explained, "Harry Clearwater died a while ago. Your father's been helping her out at home, and doing the mutual bereavement support thing, and," she declaimed dramatically, "from the ashes of their grief will blossom true love." She and Bella shared a grin, enjoying Alice's overblown description. She and I are going to be great friends, Alice thought, catching my eye.

There were more questions, but before the conversation could resume, Alice interjected, "Maybe Bella could take a break? You can see she's been roughing it. She should have a chance to take a shower and change those clothes, don't you think?" Noting Bella's dirty and bedraggled condition, and the clothing, consisting of a filthy shirt with one sleeve torn off, ripped and shredded jeans, and no shoes, we could only agree. Alice promptly took her by the hand. "Come on, Bella. Let's get you looking presentable," she said, dragging Bella up the stairs, calling out behind her, "Esme, I think you're closest to her size. I'm going to grab some of your things from your closet, okay?" Esme agreed, and soon we heard the water running upstairs, and Alice chattering happily to what was, evidently, going to be her very close friend. As the others excitedly talked over this new member of our community, my eyes kept wandering to the staircase. In spite of heartily agreeing with Alice that it was time to give Bella a break from all the questioning, in spite of being pleased that she had taken Bella away for some quiet time, I found myself having to restrain an overpowering urge to follow them.