A/N: Ladies and gentleman, TheaJ1 Productions proudly present the next chapter. It's been very difficult for me too write—language-wise—and it would never have turned out this way if it wasn't for KayMarieXW. She'd done a wonderful job with this chapter and given me many very, very useful suggestions that I hope I was able to implement successfully.

Thank you for all the reviews you guys wrote and also thanks to those who alerted to me! It means a lot to me that you like my story/my writing so much.

There will be another part of this chapter, but it's as good as done, so you won't have to wait more than a few days. Hope you'll like it!

Oh, yes, I'm afraid that I confused some of you with the name of the birds. The name has no meaning at all. I was simply looking for birds-of-paradise that had an actual name and weren't just called "something bird-of-paradise".

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

21. GHOSTS, PART 2

BELLA

We left the building the same way we'd entered it, over the fire escape. The policemen on either side of the door were too busy glaring at the media vultures, who seemed to have multiplied while we'd been inside, that they didn't glance our way for even half a second. Even so, we still hurried up, quietly slipping down the stairs. Because the rain provided extra cover, we were able to move very fast, too fast for human eyes to see more than a blur, and they'd only see that if they were looking closely.

Edward didn't speak as we made our way back to the car. Yet again we were the only two people without umbrellas, but this time nobody paid us much attention; the media spectacle was much more interesting. Disgusting, I thought, growling a little at the reporters clustered underneath the plastic roof of a van. Edward's lips curved into the sort of half-smile people gave when they knew they'd heard something amusing and were supposed to smile, but actually had no idea what it was because they'd been thinking of something else entirely.

I frowned as I slipped into the car beside him, trying not to drip too much water onto the leather seat. Edward had been unusually quiet since we left the Alden's apartment. True, he wasn't the sort of person to talk someone's ear off—which Alice more than made up for—but it wasn't like him to not have anything to say. I glanced at him repeatedly as he manoeuvred the car through the maze of one-way streets, but he didn't seem to notice and eventually I gave up.

He'd tell me sooner or later. Hopefully.

I decided to call Jake, who was probably half-crazy with worry. I was very much aware of the fact that he didn't trust Edward to keep me safe. Oh, it wasn't Edward's ability to protect me that he doubted, as he was well aware of his fighting skills. Jake simply had a hard time believing that Edward wouldn't hurt me again. He was worried that I would allow him to hurt me again, which was the reason he felt so uneasy with me and Edward being alone.

I doubted that he'd ever trust Edward, no matter what I decided in the end.

Jake's cell phone went directly to voice mail, so I tried my landline. It rang once, twice, three times. Just as I was about to hang up and leave a message on his cell phone, he answered. "What is it?" he barked, panting as if he'd just run a marathon.

I blinked. "Jake?"

"What? Oh, Bells, it's you," Jake grumbled. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting you. How's it going?"

"Not very well," I replied very slowly, the distinct feeling that Jake was up to something he didn't want me to know creeping up my spine. Jake wasn't a very good liar and he wasn't very good at hiding pack-unrelated things from me. He would get cross at me for no reason whatsoever as if it were my fault that he couldn't or wouldn't to tell me something. He was like a four-year-old who tried to blame you for the fact that you'd just caught him with his hand in the cookie jar. "What's going on?" I demanded.

"Why do you think something's going on?" he asked defensively. "Don't you think I'd tell you if there was? You should really know me better than that."

I rolled my eyes. Yes, there was definitely something going on. I did know him after all. It was just like him to make me feel guilty for being angry when he'd done something wrong.

It wasn't as if he hadn't done it before.

"You didn't trash my living room again, did you?" I asked warily, vaguely remembering catching Jake and Embry rolling around in the remains of my living room furniture.

"Thank you so much for the vote of confidence," he muttered indignantly. "Everything's fine. Peachy. I was just watching TV when you called. That's all. So, how's it going?"

"You just asked me that."

"I didn't," he grunted. "I'd remember if I… Jesus Christ! SHUT IT!" he roared so suddenly I dropped the phone into my lap, startled. Edward shot me a look that clearly questioned Jake's sanity. I just shrugged.

"Bells?" His muffled voice came from the speaker. "You still there? I wasn't yelling at you."

"I really hope you weren't," I retorted frostily, gingerly picking up the phone. "Who the hell are you yelling at in my house?"

"Nobody," he said hastily. "Look, I really have to go. Alice asked me to tell you that if you decide to talk to what's-her-name Eden Walter… Wilbur… whatever her last name is. Don't call her before you drop by for a visit. Bye, Bells."

The line went dead. I stared at the phone in my hand, dumbfounded. I was confused by Jake's erratic behaviour, not to mention surprised that he'd hung up on me in the middle of a conversation.

"Maybe Alice knows what's going on," Edward suggested. He didn't seem to be able to decide if he should find Jake's behaviour irritating or amusing.

Well, I certainly found it the former.

Alice's phone was out of service, of course.

Frustrated, I tossed the phone back into my bag. No, Liv going missing obviously wasn't enough. Now I also had to worry about what mischief Jake might have gotten himself into back home. Undoubtedly with Alice's assistance, why else would she have switched off her phone?

Edward gave me a sympathetic smile, but was wise enough not to say anything. I only would have snapped at him anyway. I slumped back into my seat and stared outside, watching the rain fall and the drops splatter against the window. The sky was pitch black, the storm I'd sensed approach very close now. Lightning flashed across the sky and gave the clouds an eerie yellow tinge, thunder following closely behind. I'd never liked storms much when I was human, mostly because they meant power outages and uprooted trees, but I loved them now. During a storm I didn't have to hide who I was. I didn't have to measure my strength to avoid making too much inexplicable noise, didn't have to be on the lookout for humans, because when the world was ending most of them stayed inside to sit it out.

Did the Cullens still play baseball during thunderstorms?

I looked at Edward, who'd fallen silent again, his forehead creased pensively, and a slight smile settled on my face. I'd love to join them one day, someday when this nightmare was over, whenVictoria was dead and Liv was back with her family.

My smile disappeared, wiped away in an instant. Would Liv ever see her family again? I could only hope that Victoria would keep her alive for as long as it took for us to find her, but I knew I shouldn't count on that. Victoria was getting impatient, desperate. She'd caused more damage in the past week alone than in the last nine years, which told me that she wanted this to be over, that she wanted to kill me, possibly Edward too, and finally be done with it.

Victoria was pragmatic. Why keep Liv, who needed to be fed and protected from so many different things a vampire wouldn't even think twice about, alive when she'd be just as much use dead? Victoria had probably killed her already, knowing I'd still take the bait, fuelled by the desire for revenge, just as she was.

I didn't allow myself to go there, because if I did, it would mean that I'd have to accept that Liv was already dead and that there was nothing more I could do to change the outcome. I wasn't ready to do that yet. I didn't think I'd ever be. And I didn't want to let her go.

"We're here," Edward said quietly. The engine died, steam hovering over the hood. The storm was almost directly above us now, thunder rumbling and lightning erupting with barely a fraction of a second in between. I looked outside at the house he was pointing at, squinting a little through the rain that made it difficult to see, even for me.

The birds in the windows, their blue wings spread wide, were the first thing I saw.

That's when I remembered. It began as a feeling, that kind of nagging certainty that tells you that you've forgotten something vital, something that you needed to remember, but then memories popped into my mind like a hundred flare guns going off simultaneously, so many human memories. Memories I thought I'd lost forever. Many of them were faded like photographs left lying in the sun for too long, but at least they were still there. Now that I'd pulled them into my mind once more, I wouldn't forget them again, no matter how fuzzy they were.

In the memory that stood out most, I was standing just outside the iron-wrought gate admiring the little birds set in between the bars, the sun hot on my skin. Next to me Liv was leaning against the fence, rolling her eyes every now and then, because she didn't want to be here. To be honest, neither did I, though I found her father's lecture pretty interesting. It was just so hot and we'd planned on going for a swim so I had no idea how he'd managed to talk me into taking a tour of the neighbourhood instead.

Well, most likely he'd just asked. I was incapable of saying no after all.

Liv had warned me that her father was a little obsessed with the history of their family, just like his grandmother Frances had been obsessed with it up until the day she passed away. Their family had almost been eradicated in 1918 like so many others. When Liv had first told me, my mind had dredged up the memory of Edward telling me a similar story, but by then I'd been better and I'd learned to deal with painful snippets of recollections my mind dragged into my consciousness occasionally. As I listened to Liv's father tell us about people neither Liv nor I knew, because they'd lived and died almost a hundred years ago, I barely thought of Edward.

"Most of the houses are still original," George Alden told us, gesturing at the magnificent buildings around us, "but the people living here aren't. Frances, my grandmother lived here with her older brother George junior and their parents Abigail and George Alden senior. When I was a kid, she used to tell me stories about the trouble her brothers and his friends got into." He shook his head, grinning. "She loved him, because he doted on her and never told her to buzz off when he was with his friends, which he was most of the time. He took care of her, too, as George Alden senior didn't have much time for his children. He was a fairly successful attorney and had a law firm together with a friend, so he wasn't at home most of the time. In the fall of 1918 he was out of town, which is probably what saved his life.

"George was the first of his friends to get sick. They didn't know what it was, of course, because it started out innocent enough. They thought he just had a cold. There's a picture somewhere, with the five of them sitting in front of the fireplace, drinking hot chocolate. They all died within days of each other. There was John Montgomery, the boy Frances had a crush on. They lived over there." He pointed at one of the smaller houses down the street.

I had to put my hand over my eyes to make it out through the glaring sunlight. Liv just rolled her eyes again; she'd already heard this story and been forced to stare at these houses a hundred times.

"His mother," her father continued, "was the only one who survived and she sold the house and moved away shortly after her family had been put to rest. Then there's Peter Rutherford. That over there was their place." Another house, with a weathercock on the roof, the metal green with age. "His family was lucky, I suppose. He died, but his parents and his two little sisters lived. They moved away as well and never came back. Arthur Cartwright and his brother died, but their parents and their baby sister, who was just a few weeks old at the time miraculously survived." He sighed. "The last of the lot was Edward Masen junior, the son of George Alden senior's partner. That was theirs."

Liv's father was still speaking, but the words got lost somewhere on the way and didn't make it into my brain. I was staring at the beautiful manor, my body going numb. I was gasping for air like a fish out of water, unable to press oxygen into my lungs. That's where Edward had been born and raised. That's where he'd lived seventeen years of his life until he'd been killed by a disease that had torn so many families apart. "Bella?" Liv asked, concerned.

There the memory ended. I was sucked into the present again, away from the glaring sun and back into the roaring storm. I stared up at the house, the birds in the windows almost coming alive with the lightning flashing across the black sky.

I blinked. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten it. What else had I lost?

I didn't know what to say.

Edward smiled faintly. "I knew them, you know. Your friend's descendants. I don't remember very well," an apologetic smile, "even though we were very close, best friends even. I don't know how much you know… According to what I saw in Caroline Alden's mind today, you must know at least something, but the question is how much you remember." His expression turned inquisitive.

"I remember a little," I replied quietly, my voice shaky. "Liv's father told me about you and your friends… John, Peter and Arthur. I know that you all died within days of each other, but that yours was the only family that was completely wiped out. I think he may have told me something about those windows as well, but it's gone."

"My father had them made for my mother for their fifteenth wedding anniversary," Edward told me, gazing at the house as well. I wondered if the memories he still had of this place were happy memories, memories from before he and his parents had been killed by a disease that had destroyed so many lives. "You could say she was a hobby ornithologist. She used to sit in the garden for hours, watching and drawing the birds that lived in the trees. I still have her sketch books. I couldn't bring myself to part with them."

We were silent for a very long time. The sky turned lighter as the storm moved on. It was still raining furiously, the water drumming steadily on the roof of the car. In the greyish light the birds in the windows looked almost sad, lost.

"George was my best friend," Edward said eventually. "He never let me down. No matter how many idiotic ideas I came up with—and I came up with more idiotic ideas than you'd think me capable of—I could always count on his help. I won't let his family down now."

xxx

"Are you sure we shouldn't call first?" I asked, my hand already poised to knock. I knew that Alice was usually right, but as she seemed to have allied with Jake to help him hide whatever it was he was hiding from me, I was a lot less inclined to believe her. Eden didn't like me much anyway and I failed to see how not calling before I descended on her would change that.

"I'd do as Alice says," Edward replied not very helpfully, chuckling quietly when I tilted my head backwards to glare at him. He was leaning casually against the wooden railing of the stairs leading up to the front door, gazing thoughtfully at the house.

How many hours, I wondered, did he spend inside these walls with his friends? How many times did he jump up these very stairs? I didn't think that I could fully comprehend what the fact that Liv was his best friend's great-grandniece meant to him. I wasn't as old as he was, hadn't lived as long and lost as many people as he had. Everyone I'd ever known as a human was still alive, aside from my grandparents; they had passed away a very long time ago when I was still very little. A part of his past, of a past he'd probably put behind him, had suddenly come alive again.

At least, I thought, smiling a little, a smile that Edward tentatively returned when he caught it, he finally seems to believe that it was Victoria, who took her. Or maybe he thinks that it's better to be safe than sorry, which isn't a bad thing either.

"You're sure?" I asked, lifting an eyebrow. Edward sighed in fake exasperation, leaned past me and rapped his knuckles smartly against the door. "We could at least have waited for her to wake up," I muttered.

Edward rolled his eyes.

The house remained silent. Eden was fast asleep; the rhythm of her beating heart didn't change for even half a second.

Edward frowned, knocking again. "I don't think she's feeling very well," he said. "Her mind's a little fuzzy, fuzzier than is normal for a sleeping human."

"She may have taken a sedative," I suggested, peering through the round stained-glass window set into the door. The long hallway was dark. I caught a glimpse of movement on the stairs, which turned out to be a tortoiseshell cat with so much fur it looked like a miniature lion. It stared at us with unblinking green eyes. I hissed, unable to resist the temptation. The cat didn't seem very impressed; it simply bared its teeth in a sibilant hiss of its own and didn't so much as twitch its bushy tail.

"I don't think that's it," Edward said without commenting on my display of childish behaviour and knocked a third time. Finally, Eden stirred. The cat's ears twitched into the direction of the living-room. Eden slowly padded into view, a woollen blanket wrapped loosely around her shoulders. "Maybe we should have called after all," Edward said, his eyebrows raised.

I shot him a glare.

Eden opened the door, took one look at us and looked as if her day, which couldn't have been so great to begin with, had just turned infinitely worse. Up close, she looked horrible. Eden wasn't what you'd call pretty, even though there was a certain severe beauty about her. Today, however, her square face with its prominent cheekbones was ashen, her green eyes dull. She'd pulled her blond hair into a sloppy bun, but a few strands had come loose and were plastered across her forehead, which was sticky with sweat. The unmistakably sour odour of vomit clung to her clothes.

"I'm so sorry, Eden," I said, cursing Alice. "I had no idea you were sick."

"I'm not sick," she rasped. "I just have a migraine." She pressed her knuckled against her left temple, rubbing slowly up and down. "Well, the mother of all migraines actually."

"Did you take something?" Edward asked, concerned.

"Do you think I'm masochistic?" Eden snapped, then suddenly spun around and hurried away, hands pressed firmly in front of her mouth. She slammed the bathroom door shut behind her, but that didn't keep us from hearing her throw up noisily into the toilet.

Edward and I exchanged a look. I sighed and walked inside. I couldn't leave Eden alone like this. Maybe Liv, who suffered from migraines as well, had painkillers somewhere that were stronger than the ones Eden had taken. And then, of course, normal painkillers were powerless against a full-blown migraine anyway, as Liv had told me.

I was beyond glad that I'd never had to experience what a migraine was like first-hand, because it didn't sound pleasant at all.

Edward followed me inside, closing the door behind us. The cat hissed and darted up the stairs, disappearing around the corner, all feline bravery gone. Eden was sitting beside the toilet, holding her head and whimpering quietly. Edward waited outside, but he kept shooting sympathetic glances at the door of one who knew exactly what it felt like to be in that kind of pain.

"Do you know where Liv keeps her meds?" I asked softly, crouching down beside Eden and gently touching her forehead. She surprised me by leaning into my touch.

"Your hand's so cold," she muttered almost relieved, then, realising I'd asked her a question, added, "In her bathroom upstairs. I just didn't know…After the police were here… And I don't know how to use a syringe…" Tears welled up in her eyes.

"You should lie down again," I suggested quietly. Eden gave a jerky nod and pulled herself up. I picked up the blanket she'd dropped. It smelled horribly of sweat and vomit. Eden slowly walked back into the living room, almost absentmindedly rubbing her temple again. Edward appeared on the stairs, a small bottle and a syringe in his hand.

The look on his face stopped me from following Eden into the living room.

"What did you find?" I whispered, suddenly tense. Edward closed the distance between us, holding out a frayed piece of dark green fabric with a bit of red and white yarn attached to it. I didn't have to press it against my face to smell it. The vampire scent that clung to it was so strong that I wondered why I hadn't noticed it sooner. My eyes met Edward's. "Eden just told me the police were here. They searched the room and never would have missed this."

"No, they wouldn't," Edward agreed softly, his eyes flashing. "Whoever planted this after they were gone knew or was at least very certain you'd come. Which makes this a trap."

"We knew that before."

"We suspected it was trap," Edward corrected, slipping the piece of fabric into the pocket of his jeans. "Now we know for sure. Victoria knows that we don't have much to go on, so she instructed her local operative to leave this for us, hoping we'd be desperate enough to act on it."

"Are we?" I asked, although I knew that the decision was really up to me, was my call. If I decided to run into Victoria's trap, well, then Edward would just have to live with it. I wouldn't let him stop me. Not if there was even a remote chance I might learn something that would me help rescue Liv.

"Let's talk to Eden first," he said eventually, forcing his lips into a strained smile.

Eden lay curled up on an old-fashioned sofa that stood across from a fireplace, with dying embers behind the grate, all that was left of a warming fire. Two equally old-fashioned armchairs were on either side of it. Edward's eyes were unreadable as he gazed around the spacious room.

"I'm really sorry to barge in on you like that," I said, pulling up the syringe after I'd read the instructions on the back of the bottle. I wasn't exactly a migraine specialist, so I didn't know how high a dosage I needed to give her. "That's Edward, by the way."

Edward smiled absently, but Eden didn't look his way anyway. Her eyes were closed, her hand pressed against her forehead. She was sweating. "I hate you," Eden muttered indistinctly. "Do you know what Liv went through after you disappeared?"

"I'm sorry," I whispered. Eden barely flinched when the needle pierced her skin. The syringe empty, I slowly pulled it out. I held my breath as a tiny, perfectly circular drop of blood appeared on her pale skin and quickly put a Band-Aid over the wound. "I left because it was better for everyone."

"That's what Liv thought," Eden replied, forcing her eyes open. She pulled herself in a sitting position, her lips pressed tightly together to make sure she didn't accidentally throw up on me. "Not at first, though. At first she was worried, then furious and then she'd worry again. It was like that for over four months. Then she finally seemed to accept the fact that you'd gone and would probably never return." She snorted. "I was so jealous. She's never been that concerned about me. Eventually I realised that she was grieving. I have to explain the stages of grief to people who come to my practice almost every day, but it took me forever to figure it out with Liv. In the end she decided to return to Chicago. We've lived here for a little over a year now." She sighed. "Liv broke up with me last week. I only still live here, because I haven't had the time to go apartment hunting yet. Besides, she'll probably change her mind again."

The way Eden talked about Liv made it very clear that she had convinced herself that Liv would come back again. I smiled sadly. I wish I could have said the same for me.

"You don't seem very surprised that I'm here," I said after a moment.

Eden shrugged. "Oh, I am surprised. My head just hurts too much to show it. You want to ask me about the day she disappeared, don't you?"

"I do," I admitted, "but I can wait until you feel better."

Eden snorted, then grimaced and pressed her hand against her temple again. "Blasted migraine," she muttered under her breath. Edward slipped into the armchair beside me, smiling faintly. "At least today they have medication that actually works," he said with feeling, too low for Eden to pick up. "Imagine you only had aspirin." He made a face. "I can honestly say that the pain of the transformation was worse, but not much."

Yes, I was definitely glad that I'd missed out on that experience.

"What do you want to know?" Eden asked harshly. She reached for the cup of cold peppermint tea that sat on the coffee table and wet her lips.

"Everything."

"That really narrows it down," Eden said ironically, wedging the cup between her knees. "Well, she left for work around seven like she did every day. The hospital's just on the side of the park and it doesn't take more than twenty minutes to get there, fifteen if you hurry. It was my day off, so I was home when a nurse called at nine to ask if Liv was ill, because she hadn't shown up for her shift and Liv had never been late before. You know how diligent she is. I told her that she'd left over two hours ago, then called her parents to find out if they were okay. Her Dad has a weak heart and that was the only reason I could think of why Liv hadn't shown up at work without calling. Caroline told me that George was fine and that they hadn't spoken to Liv since the night before. They called the police." Eden paused, pulling the damp blanket tighter around her for comfort. "I didn't expect too much to come out of it, what with having to wait forty-eight hours and all, but an hour later I had two dozen policemen crawling all over the house and a K-9 unit in the backyard. I was told that the dogs had followed Liv's trail almost to the centre of the park, then lost it. I wasn't there, but I could hear them barking like crazy." She slowly shook her head. "I have no idea why they flipped out like that."

I felt Edward's gaze on me, but I didn't turn. We both knew why they had reacted like that. Most animals, including other predators, would avoid crossing a vampire's path at all cost, even if they didn't really know what to make of the scent. If only it hadn't been raining like that, I thought unhappily, glancing outside. It was still sheeting.

"The police asked me if Liv had noticed anyone following her," Eden continued. "I told them she hadn't, but we haven't talked much since we broke up, so maybe she did notice something after all and just didn't tell me." Her shoulders slumped. "That's what I keep going back to. What if she didn't tell me, because I was so angry at her for breaking up with me?"

"It's not your fault," I said softly, reaching out to pat her shoulder. "The police will find her, I'm sure." I didn't want to lie to Eden, but I could hardly tell her the truth. It was best to let her think that there was still hope.

"I think I'd like to get some sleep now," Eden said, a dismissal. "The pain's getting a little better and a migraine always knocks me out."

"Yes, of course." I smiled, rising to my feet. "If it's okay with you, I'd like to check up on you later in case you need another shot."

"Whatever," Eden muttered as she pulled the blanket up to her chin, stuffing a pillow under her head. "Just close the door on your way out."

xxx

The piece of green fabric, which Edward had found in Liv's room, lay between us on the mahogany table in the drawing room. The light filtering in though the colourful windows painted random patterns on the shiny surface. We hadn't spoken since we left Liv's house, because there was nothing to discuss. We could either try and track down the vampire that piece of clothing belonged to and rush into a trap or we could leave Chicago and every chance we had of finding Liv.

I'd already made up my mind. Edward didn't know yet and I was trying to find the right words to tell him, because I knew he'd never agree to it. But I couldn't leave Liv to her fate. I just couldn't.

"We have no choice," Edward said eventually, breaking into my thoughts. He was looking outside into the front yard. He sounded as drained and exhausted as I felt, his voice flat as if he didn't like very much what he was about to say next, but would say it anyway.

I steeled myself.

"At least we know we'll be running into a trap."

I blinked. "What?"

Edward's lips curved into that crooked smile of his, but there was something flickering in his eyes that I couldn't quite identify. "I can hardly blame you for thinking that I'd suggest we go home. I've spent a lot of time trying to keep you out of trouble after all."

"I didn't," I began, but of course that was exactly what I'd assumed he would say. "I did," I amended, "but I shouldn't have, all things considered. I'm sorry."

It was hard not to feel guilty for believing that he'd simply let Liv die, because he didn't want to put me in danger. He'd reacted so violently to Jasper's suggestion they use me as bait. Running straight into a trap wasn't any different and even more dangerous.

"Please don't apologise," Edward said softly. "I don't blame you. Frankly, I still find it a little difficult to adjust my thinking. Part of me still sees you as the fragile human you used to be, not the strong and almost indestructible vampire you are now."

"I still should have had more faith in you," I replied, unable to ignore the guilt hovering in the back of my mind. "Especially after you'd told me about your friend."

Edward smiled sadly. "There are things you can't force, Bella."

Silence fell except for the rain drumming quietly against the windows.

How do you forgive someone for lying? I wondered. How do you forgive a lie that's caused so much pain for so many different people? Is that even possible?

"We should wait until after it's dark." Edward's voice was brisk when he spoke. "I wish Jasper were here, but we can't change the fact that he isn't, so we'll just have to deal with it ourselves. I'll call him, though, Alice as well. Maybe that way we'll be able to even out the odds a little"

"I'll go check up on Eden then," I replied, once more grateful that Edward had decided to support me unconditionally, very much aware of the fact that alone I wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in hell.

Eden was still asleep when I knocked at the front door. A couple underneath an umbrella with old-fashioned floral printed shuffled by just as I was knocking again, their little dog pulling at its leash and barking its lungs out at me. The man yanked the dog back to shut it up, but shot me a strange look.

I sighed. If I'd known how many people would stare at me just because I didn't have an umbrella, I'd have brought one along.

I raised my hand to knock a third time and that's when I finally realised that the house was completely silent except for the thrumming heartbeat of the cat somewhere upstairs. I frowned. Eden could have gone for a walk, I supposed, but we would have heard her leave and the way she'd looked only two hours ago she couldn't have gone very far even if she'd wanted to.

I'm sure there is a completely logical explanation, I told myself firmly, wrenching open the door. It creaked quietly as it swung open, then a gust of cold air almost slammed it back into my face. I stepped aside and caught it, closing it gently once I was inside. Inside the house it was just as cold as outside.

"Eden?" I called, although I already knew that she couldn't be here. I walked into the living room, deliberating whether or not I should ask Edward to come over even though he was busy planning—whatever good it would do us—and froze.

"I was wondering how long it would take you to come back," the vampire sitting on the sofa said, smiling. "I've been waiting forever."

—

Please don't hate me for the cliffhanger! How did you like it?