A/N: Finally, the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for all the reviews I got and, of course, thanks to those who added my Story to their Favourite Stories List and me to their Favourite Authors List.

I have a little task for you! Writing "Lifelines" from different POVs, I've been trying to make them sound different, because, clearly, Bella isn't Edward and wouldn't express herself like he does. I think I did a pretty good job, but I might be totally wrong (I'm biased, after all), and that's what I'd like to know from you. Do you think there's a different between those two POVs, in the way they're written I mean?

P.S Any ideas what I should do with the girl? (You'll know what I'm talking about once you've reached the end of the chapter.) I thought about keeping her, but lying in bed last night, I decided that that isn't really an option. At least that's what I think. Any opinions on the matter?

Disclaimer: The Twilight Saga is property of Stephenie Meyer. I'm only borrowing!

17. LEAD

EDWARD

Transporting Jacob back to Bella's house proved to be a problem, not so much because he was too heavy for us to carry him, but because he refused to let anyone but Bella touch him. Being able to read his mind, I couldn't blame him for that much as I wanted to, for his distrust of vampires was ingrained deeply in his DNA, and he was perfectly willing to accept the fact that his leg would have to be re-broken later if it set wrong now, and it was already mending.

In the end it was Emmett's idea that saved the day after Bella had tried talking him into letting Emmett and her carry him—she was afraid she'd hurt him if she tried to lift him without assistance—for over half an hour. I'd briefly considered knocking him out, which would have made things easier for all of us, but I figured that Bella wouldn't have been very happy about that, and as I was trying very hard to avoid doing anything that might upset her, I discarded the idea without ever even suggesting it.

With Emmett gone to fetch the pickup truck we'd acquired only recently, and a plastic sheet in order to carry Jacob to the street without touching him, Bella, the wolf—mutt was what I'd have preferred to call him, but I was fairly certain Bella wouldn't like that either, so I didn't, not even in the privacy of my mind—and I were alone, and I was feeling very uncomfortable, to say the least. I didn't need Jasper to tell me that Jacob hated my guts, although he had pointed it out to me, before he, Alice and Carlisle had taken the female we'd captured back to the house for questioning. I didn't like him much either, though I supposed that was to be expected since he still thought of Bella as his, and I was honest enough to admit that I was jealous even though I knew that Bella loved me.

Emotions, I thought, trying very hard not to listen too closely to what was going on inside Jacob's head, were a curious thing, but as he'd been there for Bella when I hadn't, I sat on my jealousy instead of acting on it. It wouldn't have been very gentlemanly to kill Bella's saviour, and he had saved her, for we never would have gotten to her in time. If we'd been faster, if I'd been faster, we might have been able to stop the vampire I'd torn into very little pieces from ripping her arm off, too. At one time or another every one of us had lost a limb or two—even Esme, though that had been an accident—but I'd have preferred to spare Bella the experience; she kept brushing her fingers over her left shoulder, almost as if to make sure her arm was still where it belonged.

Leaning against a tree with my arms folded in front of me, I listened to Bella quietly speaking to Jacob, telling him what had happened since she saw him in Forks a few days ago, but she never even once asked him what he was doing here, probably because she wasn't sure if he was fine with me knowing. I was fairly certain he wouldn't have been, and so I didn't tell her that I already knew, having picked that piece of information out of his head though he was trying not to think about it very hard indeed.

Emmett returned exactly fifteen minutes after he had left, carrying a dark green plastic sheet Esme had used to winterise the flower beds back in Virginia. I wasn't sure it would carry his weight, but when I voiced my concerns, Emmett just grinned and said, "That's why I brought two."

All of us were glad when we had Jacob settled in the truck's bed an hour later—carrying him through the forest had been difficult because of his size; there were no service roads we could have used, and the trees stood too close together to allow easy passage—with Bella beside him, his head in her lap. I managed to keep my face even as I climbed into the cab with Emmett. "How are things going?" I asked, trying to distract myself. It didn't work particularly well.

"Jasper and Carlisle've taken her to the Denali's place," Emmett replied as he manoeuvred the truck through the snow as carefully as possible; neither of us would have minded being jostled about, but Jacob was in pain, his broken bones having set wrong, and Emmett was trying to be nice. "Rose threw a fit when Carlisle asked her to look after the kid for a while." He sighed. "Alice shouldn't have brought her to the airport."

"I told her it wasn't a good idea," Bella said before I could answer. Jacob grumbled a question at her, trying, as I had before albeit for different reasons, to distract himself; the pain in his leg and hip was beginning to become unbearable, even for him. "I don't think you've ever met Rosalie," Bella told him. "Let's just say that she doesn't like me much."

Jacob snorted, and so did Emmett, because it was obvious that the feeling was mutual. I love her, Emmett thought, not without resignation, but, boy, she's as stubborn as they come. "Did she say anything, you know, mean?" he asked out loud, knowing that his wife was entirely capable of doing such a thing. Restraint wasn't Rosalie's strong suit. She'd amply proven that in the past.

"No," Bella said quickly, a little bit too quickly maybe, but her voice was even, and since I wasn't able to read her mind I couldn't be sure that she was lying. Rosalie's thoughts had been muddled and consumed by fury when she'd attacked me earlier, so I hadn't been able to find out if, and about what, they'd talked in the car.

Knowing Rosalie, however, it couldn't possibly have been nice.

You think the vampire kid knows anything? I turned my head, surprised. Jacob hadn't addressed me since we'd come to Bella's aid, and I hadn't expected him to. He was grateful we'd saved him—as was he grateful that we were transporting him back to Bella's, because he'd never have made it on his own—but that didn't change the way he felt about us, and particularly about me. Curiously, his reason for behaving was the same as mine: Bella. Jacob knew that she'd jump down his throat if he so much as growled at me. He wasn't entirely sure why, but then he'd never been able to figure her out.

"That's a very good question," I replied. Emmett raised an eyebrow, and I quickly added, for his and Bella's benefit, "Jacob just asked me if we believed the vampire we captured might know anything useful."

"Do we?" Emmett asked. Bella didn't say anything at all. Instead, she proceeded to stroke Jacob's head, not as oblivious to his pain as he hoped. Then again, she was a doctor and would know how much bones that had set wrong would hurt.

"Alice does," I said although that wasn't exactly true. Alice hoped she did, and there was a big difference between Alice knowing and Alice hoping. Personally, I didn't think that any of the vampires who'd attacked Bella tonight knew anything about why they'd been ordered to kill her, but since my ability was limited to only knowing what someone was thinking at a specific moment, I couldn't be certain.

They'd all been very focused on the task at hand.

Emmett grunted. Jasper was our family's strategist, which meant that Emmett didn't care what we were going to do with that female. As long as he was the one who got to kill her, of course—and he was certain it would come to that—Emmett being who he was.

"Was Esme home?"

"Yeah," Emmett replied, frowning. "Carlisle should have called her, though, and told her that they'd bring a, um, guest. You know how stuff like that upsets her. Especially, since Carlisle made it clear that we'd probably have to kill her."

I sighed as I saw Emmett's recollection, Esme even paler than usual, her lips pressed together in a tight line; she clearly didn't agree with out plan, and when Emmett left she'd been trying to persuade Carlisle to keep the girl alive, no matter what we'd learn during our interrogation. While Carlisle was as compassionate as Esme and didn't like to waste a life, he also knew a threat when he saw one, and even though the girl wasn't able to harm any of us physically—not even Bella, who clearly had no idea how to defend herself aside from what her instincts told her, and they hadn't done a very good job tonight—she might still go straight back to Victoria if we set her loose. And we couldn't afford that.

"She'll understand," Emmett said, interpreting my sigh correctly. "She'll have to."

"I'm sorry," Bella said very quietly from the bed of the truck. Jacob lifted his head to look at her, the only movement that didn't cause him—much—pain, and through his eyes I saw Bella's distraught expression. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

"It's not your fault," Emmett and I said almost simultaneously, and Jacob agreed as well; we all knew whose fault it was. If someone was to blame for this, then it was me. If I hadn't allowed Bella to enter my world, then none of this would have happened. She would never have had to be rescued from James. She would never have become a vampire seven years later. And Victoria wouldn't be holding a grudge against her if I hadn't killed James, and that was why we were in this mess in the first place.

"Still, everything she's done so far she's done because of me." Her voice was barely audible. Jacob nudged her with his muzzle, wishing he could phase back, but that was out of the question until his bones had been set correctly. He'd give her a piece of his mind, however, once he was back in his human form, and I agreed wholeheartedly with everything he planned to say to her, which I couldn't say, because it wasn't my place. "She killed those women and children and she changed at least five people, four of which are now dead. And that girl's going to die, too."

Emmett open his mouth to tell her the same thing that Carlisle had told Esme, that she was a threat, but Bella cut him off before he'd even formed the first word.

"I know she's a threat, but the girl she used to be doesn't deserve to be put down like an animal." She sighed, frustrated. "I never should have let it get this far."

"And what would you have done?" I asked softly. "Would you have let her kill you?" I turned my head to meet her eyes. She looked back at me, lips pressed together so tight they were almost white. She knew I was right, knew that this was the only thing that would have stopped Victoria.

"I could have told you sooner," she said half-heartedly. "If I had…"

"It wouldn't have mattered," Emmett said, turning back as well. Luckily, he didn't have to pay as much attention as a human driver would have. "If I had to guess, I'd say that the vampires who attacked you were a least a few months old. Not past their year-mark, maybe, but they've clearly received some training. We might be quick learners, but nobody gets that good in a few days, especially not a newborn vampire who hasn't learned how to control his instincts because he's still so new to this life that virtually everything's a distraction. She's been planning this for some time."

"Emmett is right," I said. I wished I could reach out to her, comfort her, tell her that none of this was her fault, but I couldn't. Instead I turned back, looking outside into the night. The landscape was flashing past at an incredible speed, Emmett paying no attention to the speed-limit whatsoever. He never did, and since it was almost two in the morning by now and the road empty, it didn't matter. It had begun snowing again a while ago as well, thick flakes that would have made it impossible to see for a human, and even Emmett squinted a little, though that was more out of habit, not because it actually helped him see better.

Jacob grunted his assent, and Bella sighed again. "Alright," she said bitterly, "you're right. It's not my fault. Victoria's just plain evil, and nothing I did or didn't do could have changed what she's done."

"That about sums it up," Emmett said, smiling sympathetically.

"We have to stop her," Bella whispered after a while. We'd almost reached her house by then; just one more block and we were there, and then we'd have to figure out how to get Jacob out of the truck and through the door.

"We will," I promised her. Emmett nodded grimly, and Jacob pressed his muzzle against her shoulder to show his support and his love.

For once, vampires and werewolf were in complete agreement.

—

In the end Jacob had to walk a few steps because there was no possible way we would get him through the door, and while I didn't particularly like him, it was hard and almost painful to watch him limp up the stairs, his hip twisted, his left hind-leg dragging behind. Bella's face was expressionless as she watched Jacob's progress, but at least I thought—hoped—that worrying about her friend had driven Victoria from her mind, if only temporarily. Jacob collapsed just behind the door, lying splayed out on the wooden floor, unable to move. Bella was instantly by his side as he drew deep, ragged breaths, and even that was painful for him.

Emmett looked at me, uncertain. He wanted to help, but Jacob's warning against touching him was fresh on his mind, and the memory of him tearing at that vampire still vivid. He didn't want to lose a hand in the process, his willingness to help mistaken for hostility.

"Alright," Bella said eventually in a no-nonsense voice I'd never heard from her before, "I can't get you into the living-room myself. Emmett has to help me."

Jacob growled, his chest rumbling; he even curled his lips back, exposing razor-sharp teeth.

"I think that's a no," I said unnecessarily.

Emmett snorted, and Bella glared at both of us before she focused on Jacob's predicament once more. "Fine," she snapped, "we'll wait until you're passed out then." She sat back, folding her arms in front of her chest as she leaned against the wall. The look on Jacob's face was priceless. He hadn't anticipated Bella to turn against him. He whined softly and put his big paw against Bella's thigh like a puppy that didn't know what his owner was suddenly angry with him. It was almost comical to watch, and Emmett had to duck outside to keep Bella from seeing his broad grin. As she wasn't stupid, however, she knew exactly why he'd gone outside, at least judging by her expression.

Jacob whined again, dropping his head on his paws, as he finally gave his consent. He felt that Bella had betrayed him, but his thoughts weren't coherent anymore, clouded by pain; he was, indeed, on the verge of passing out and he did barely a minute after Bella and Emmett had carried him into the living-room and put him down on the blanket I'd fetched from her spare bedroom.

Bella sighed, clearly relieved. "Thanks," she said, smiling at Emmett, a smile that disappeared when her eyes settled on my face. "Thanks," she said again, more quietly. "For saving my life. If you hadn't gotten there in time, Jake and I'd both be dead."

"You're very welcome," Emmett said, pulling her into an embrace that swept her of her feet, which missed Jacob's head by an inch and surely would have broken it if they'd made contact. Emmett quickly put her down again, abashed. "Sorry," he muttered, a word not even Esme got out of him more than once a year, and Bella laughed.

"Will you manage?" I asked, jerking my chin at the unconscious wolf. He was out for good, didn't even stir when Bella bent down and touched his hip.

"I think so," she said slowly as her fingers slid over the bone, assessing its new position. "I sat in on a few vet classes," she added almost sheepishly. "Jake's not exactly careful. I had to set his bones before."

"Good," Emmett said. "Then we'd better leave."

"Yes," I said, not happy about having to leave her, even though I knew that I couldn't stay. When she clung to me in the forest, I'd almost forgotten that there was no longer an 'us', that maybe there'd never be an 'us' again. Seeing her crouched above Jacob, however, it became only too clear again. I could have helped her; I had two medical degrees after all. But she hadn't asked for my help, and so I didn't offer it, afraid she'd turn me down. That, I wouldn't have been able to bear.

"Will you call me when you've questioned the girl?" she asked, looking at me for just a moment.

"Yes, of course."

She smiled, and then Jacob was in the centre of her attention again. Emmett and I left quietly, and we didn't speak until we were in the car and on our way home. Bella's neighbour was still sound asleep, just as she'd been when we arrived. If she had been awake, it would have made the task of getting Jacob inside unseen indefinitely more difficult.

"You think he'll be alright?" Emmett asked. He liked Jacob, much to my surprise and his own, but then Emmett simply couldn't not admire someone whose fighting skills matched his own, so I should probably have expected that. Maybe he'd even manage to convince Jacob that not all vampires were evil and had to be killed—although he didn't want to rip my head off because I was a vampire, but because I'd hurt the woman he loved—which would certainly make things easier since Jacob planned to stay. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. He couldn't go back. I briefly wondered what Bella would say to that, then what I'd kept locked up tight in a tiny corner of my mind suddenly broke to the surface, and my body tensed. I couldn't breathe, my lungs no longer responding to my brain's commands. Emmett looked at me, startled, asking me what was wrong.

I didn't answer him. I didn't care.

I could have lost her. I'd lost her once and I knew I wouldn't be able to bear losing her again. Even if she didn't take me back, I would at least know that she was alive and well and as happy as she possibly could be. But tonight she'd almost died.

We'd left in a hurry. Carlisle had called Emmett as we raced through the forest, the fear of losing Bella heavy in all of us. Alice hadn't been sure where she was, the forest looking all the same to her and without any markers she could have used to pinpoint Bella's position. If Bella hadn't yanked that tree out of the ground, the last thing Alice had seen before her future had faded once more, we'd have had to search for her scent first, and then it would have taken us forever to find her. I could barely describe what I'd felt, the unbelievable relief, when we found her alive, if injured.

I could have lost her so easily.

"Bella's fine," Emmett said, unusually perceptive. "We'll protect her. Victoria won't get a chance like that again."

"I hope you're right," I whispered. "I wish Alice could see her."

"Why can't she, anyway?" Emmett asked, frowning.

"I'm not exactly sure how she does it," I replied bitterly, "but I know why she knows how Alice's visions work. Victoria enlisted the help of her 'friend' Laurent, who spent some time with the Denalis. I understand he and Irina were very close. He must have told Victoria everything he learned there."

Emmett cursed silently, imagining all the possible ways he could have killed Laurent if the wolves hadn't gotten to him first. He regretted that; he would have loved to help them.

"Let's hope the girl knows something useful," I said after a while, "because if she doesn't…"

"…then we're back where we started," Emmett grimly finished for me.

—

We drove straight to the Denalis' house where the rest of our family was waiting for us. I could hear the girl in the basement, alternating between sobbing and cursing Alice, Jasper and Eleazar, who were with her and who refused to listen to her pleas to let her go. Esme and Carlisle were sitting outside on the patio, Esme curled against her husband's chest. She'd eventually accepted the necessity of killing the girl after we were done with her, but she wasn't happy about it, and Carlisle was contemplating taking her home even though he wanted to be here for the interrogation.

I don't want to see her suffer, he said unhappily after inquiring about Jacob's condition. I don't want to kill the girl either, but it's entirely possible that it'll come to that.

I didn't go outside, knowing that seeing me would upset Esme even more. Emmett had gone to find Rosalie, who—according to Kate—was still furious that she'd been asked to take the girl here with Alice and Jasper.

"Rose doesn't like her, does she?" she asked as we climbed down the stairs into the basement, Irina nowhere to be seen and Tanya and Carmen gone to comfort her. I gathered she wasn't quite over Laurent yet, despite what he'd done to hurt our family. I was glad our cousins had accepted Bella so easily, especially Irina, who could have hated her for what had happened to Laurent. It hadn't been Bella's fault, but Irina could have chosen to ignore that.

"No." I sighed. "Rose has always felt very strongly about our relationship. At first it was because

she thought of Bella as an intruder. I think she would have gotten used to that eventually, but later when Bella repeatedly asked me to change her… Well, you know Rose's history. And after they left Forks and I left them, she started hating her for breaking our family apart. That wasn't Bella's fault. It was mine. I decided to leave her. Bella didn't want me to go, even tried to talk me out of it. I wish Rose could accept that. They don't have to become friends, but Bella's part of our family now. They're sisters. Neither of them particularly likes that notion, I think, but Bella's got other things on her mind right now than worrying about that. Rose, however, hasn't."

"I see," Kate replied. "Well, I hope for your and Bella's sake that she'll come around eventually. Maybe the two of you just have to talk to her again. After you've sorted out whatever problem you have," she added, recalling my sudden disappearance last night. Had that really been only last night? So much had happened since then. It felt like days, if not weeks.

"I'm working on that," I said curtly because I didn't want to go into that particular problem with Kate. I knew her well enough to know that she'd disapprove of what I'd done, and I was feeling bad enough as it was. I didn't need Kate to rub it in. Besides, I needed to focus on the girl. Being able to read her mind was no guarantee for getting all the information we needed, provided the girl knew anything at all.

"Good." Kate smiled as she opened the door, then closed it again once we'd entered the little room. It had no windows because it was underground, and the furniture, if there had ever been any, had been removed. The girl sat huddled together on the floor in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around herself, her black hair falling across her shoulders like a velvet curtain, half obscuring her face. She didn't look up, but she recognised me, and fear began trickling into her mind. Alice, Jasper and Carlisle stood around her, prepared to catch her should she attempt to escape. Apparently, she'd done so repeatedly and had only given up just now. She wasn't an idiot. She knew what we were going to do with her once we were finished and she didn't want to die. I sat on my sympathy, not inclined to allow it to cloud my judgement. Yes, the girl she used to be didn't deserve to be killed, but she wasn't that girl anymore. She was a vampire and she was dangerous. We couldn't let her go.

How's the wolf? Alice asked, distracting me. She still hadn't decided whether she liked him or not. He was a wolf, after all, and she was still a little peeved that his presence caused her visions to blur.

I nodded slightly, and Alice, used to communicating with me that way, understood. Good. Bella would have blamed herself forever if something had happened to that mutt. Alright, what are we going to do with her? She glanced down at the girl. I took a closer look for the very first time. She couldn't be older than fourteen or fifteen. Her clothes were dirty and torn, her hair tangled and knotted. She wasn't a pretty sight, and I felt sympathy stir again. She hadn't been taken very good care of.

"What's your name?" I asked. The girl didn't look up, only pulled her arms tighter around her tiny frame, but nobody seemed to have warned her that she'd have to guard her thoughts. Her name flickered across the surface of her mind, followed by the bitter realisation that she wasn't the girl she'd been, wasn't Freya LeBlanc anymore, a girl who apparently had loved horseback riding and walking her Irish Setter Blueprint—what a name for a dog!—and had three little sisters.

What is she thinking about? Jasper asked as her pain about, and the longing for, all she'd lost registered with him, a pain and longing so deep it reverberated through every cell in his body.

I decided I'd have to go about this differently than I'd originally planned, so I sat down in front of her, much to my family's—and the girl's—surprise. "I'm Edward," I said gently. That didn't ring a bell, so she hadn't been told about us, at least not specifically. "Freya's a beautiful name."

She glanced up, her crimson eyes wide with surprise and fear. "How do you know my name?" she asked in an uncertain voice, the first thing she'd said since she was brought here, at least according to Alice and Jasper.

"I also know that you have an Irish Setter called Blueprint," I continued, watching her eyes widen with every word I said, "and three little sisters. You miss them, don't you?"

She swallowed, all defiance suddenly gone. "Yes," she whispered, her voice rough with tears she couldn't shed, "I miss them. I miss my parents, too. I wish I hadn't run away." Her tiny hands clenched to fists. "I wanted to go back to them, but Adam said I couldn't." Images flashed up in her mind. A vampire with black hair, big and burly, not unlike Emmett. A wooden shack with no roof to speak of and reeking of mould. The vampires we'd killed tonight, all four of them and all older than her, physically at least.

"Who's Adam?" I asked.

"He trained us," she explained, sitting up straighter now that she was convinced we wouldn't hurt her, not now anyway, not as long as she answered my questions. "And he brought us food." At that recollection she swallowed again, dinging her fingers even deeper into the fabric of her ruined shirt as she tried to fight the flames suddenly surging down her throat, and my hands involuntarily rose to my throat as well. It had been so very long since I last had human blood, but I'd never forget the taste that was pure life. "And he punished us when we didn't obey," she added in a whisper, no longer looking at me.

I ground my teeth together to keep the hiss rising in my throat from escaping, and Alice and Jasper shot me a startled look. Hurting a vampire, causing him real pain, wasn't an easy task, and the only thing even remotely painful was losing—and reattaching—a limb, and from what I saw inside Freya's mind, Adam, if that was even his real name, had done so with pleasure, tearing chunks out of vampires he was training for a battle they didn't even want to fight whenever they refused to follow his orders or didn't live up to his expectations. I briefly wondered why they hadn't killed him—Adam, even if he looked like a prize boxer at the height of his career, would have stood a snowball's chance in hell against five newborn vampires—but as more and more images entered Freya's mind, I understood why they hadn't.

They'd been trained to kill, and whenever they'd appeared to be getting closer as a group, Adam had intervened, punishing them for that, too, and when Freya had run away he'd dragged her back screaming and torn off her legs. She'd done as she was told after that.

"I'm sorry," I said, causing her to glance up, surprised this time.

"For what?"

"For what Adam did to you. You didn't deserve that."

She shrugged. "It wasn't that bad," she said, oblivious to the fact that I knew how bad it had been, how much she and the others had suffered just because Adam, without doubt acting on Victoria's orders, had needed them.

"Do you know why you'd been ordered to kill Bella?" I asked, though I doubted that Adam had told them anything aside from what they needed to know in order to accomplish their goal. Maybe he hadn't even known himself.

"Is that her name?" Freya asked, frowning. "No, he didn't tell us. He just told us that we had to kill her if we wanted to live. He told us that if we failed we'd all die. And I didn't want to die," she added in a small voice, looking at me uncertainly as she suddenly remembered that it was entirely possible that we'd kill her after all. "He brought us out into the forest and told us to wait. I didn't know how he knew she'd be there. It all went according to plan, at least until that gigantic wolf showed up. It tore Michaela to shreds within seconds, and it'd have killed Todd, too, if he hadn't gotten in a lucky swipe and broken a few bones and then… Well, and then you showed up." She shuddered at the memory, at the feeling of helplessness when she realised that she'd failed, that she was going to die.

"Where did he keep you?" Jasper asked.

Freya looked up at him, uncertain, and glanced at me before she answered, very slowly, "In a cabin out in the woods. I could lead you there," she added hopefully, knowing that would prolong her life for at least a little while.

Are we going to kill her? Alice asked as we marched up the stairs, a curious procession with Freya in the middle and the rest of us around her, in case she tried to escape again, unlikely but not impossible.

I shook my head once, and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. I didn't think that Freya was a threat because she didn't feel particular loyal towards Adam, which made it unlikely she'd go back to him once we set her free. I'd tell her when we got back.

Esme will be happy, Alice said, then leapt up the rest of the stairs to call Bella as we'd promised. Freya moved closer to my side. I didn't know why she'd decided to trust me—after all, she would have clawed my eyes out only two hours ago if I'd left her—but she did, maybe because I'd been kind to her when everyone else, especially Adam and two of the other vampires who'd been stronger because they were younger, had treated her like scum. I was glad I'd taken that approach. Freya even put her hand in mine, an action so childlike I suddenly wondered if maybe she was much, much younger than fifteen. I'd have to ask her how old she was before we let her go, and if she was too young to control herself when she was among humans we might have to kill her after all.

"How's the wolf?" Alice asked, temporarily distracting me. We'd reached the top of the stairs, and Freya, Jasper and Eleazar followed me into the living-room where Alice sat on the sofa, her black phone pressed against her ear.

"He's asleep," Bella replied. "I re-set his bones, but he's still in pain. It'll take at least two days for them to heal completely. Any news about Victoria?"

"Maybe." Alice smiled at Freya, whose answering smile was timid. "We have a lead. We'll pick you up in about half an hour."

"I don't want to leave Jake alone," Bella said. "I wish I had pain killers his body doesn't burn off in less than fifteen minutes. I'd like to be there if he wakes up."

"I'll bring a batch of morphine," Carlisle said, entering the living-room with Esme on his heels; she looked considerably happier than she had before I'd questioned Freya, and she looked at the girl with open curiosity, her face friendly and inviting.

Bella sighed, clearly relieved. "Thanks, that'd be great. Still, I'm not sure…"

"I'll stay with him," Kate offered, appearing in the doorway, and Bella fell silent. "I've never seen a werewolf before, and he's injured, right, so he won't be able to jump me, will he?"

"I don't think so," Bella replied, uncertain.

"Well, it's settled then." Kate grinned even though Bella couldn't see her. "I'll see you later."

"Thanks," Bella said, the only thing she could say, though judging by her voice she wasn't entirely happy about that. "I'll see you in thirty minutes."