I have a few questions from people about Edward's actions. Try to reread the end of chapter 4, especially what Carlisle says. Sorry about any confusion. Keep reviewing!

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Carlisle switched off the TV.

I continued to stare at the black screen. I couldn't believe it! What in the world was Edward doing? I wanted, so bad, to stay on his side, but after this latest development, that seemed impossible.

Carlisle nodded shortly. "Hard to handle, isn't it? We didn't believe it at first. But that is Edward, and I highly doubt anyone is making him undergo those tests. I don't know why he is doing that, and it's highly out of character for him, don't you agree?"

I nodded, my eyes still fixed on that screen.

"I have a feeling that it has something to do with Alice's vision, but we have no way of knowing the next time she'll contact us. We don't know where to look for her, either; she could be anywhere in the world, by now."

A deadening, sickly feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. I guess it had just sunk in the absolute enormity of the whole thing. I didn't think it was so, well, important before.

But then again, I didn't know a lot of things before.

Carlisle shook his head. "I don't think we're going to leave you alone anymore."

I tilted my head. What?

"We can't really gauge Edward's and Alice's situations right now," he elaborated, though I still wasn't making very much sense of it. "They might try to visit you again, or even…well…we're not really sure. But it's all very dangerous, do you understand?" He looked at me meaningfully. "We're fairly certain something's drastically changed in them, or else they really aren't controlling themselves. In other words, we have no way of knowing what they'll do. We don't know if you're safe with either of them anymore. After all, Edward has, basically, just broadcasted his immortality to the entire nation. Or world, for that matter."

"I have a question," I said, letting Carlisle's words basically slip out my other ear. I wasn't in the mood for him to tell me that being with Edward wasn't safe. So what else was new? Right, the sky's still blue. "What was that research you wanted to show me?" It wasn't what I had been planning on asking, but it came out, anyways.

Carlisle nodded. "I was hoping you would ask." He headed up the stairs, and I figured I should follow.

I instantly felt better when I entered Carlisle's study, though I really had no idea why. I didn't expect to feel any comfort when I entered the Cullen's without Edward being there, but to my surprise, it still felt like home. Those paintings, the illustrations of Carlisle's history; the books, the desk. Everything. I actually felt that maybe, somehow, I somewhere fit into this.

I wasn't surprised when Carlisle handed me a writing tablet, yellow and lined; although he was a doctor and had to use lots of high-tech equipment, I had figured out he liked using old-fashioned things better. Such as a pen and paper.

Then he glanced at his barely decipherable handwriting, and grinned as he took it back. "Okay. So. Edward. He has disappeared for days on end, and suddenly did something extremely surprising and unusual for him. He also, I noticed, has short bursts of his own personality; for instance, he visited you. If he is being held in any way, he's fighting very hard to get past it." He frowned as he looked down at his paper. "I'm not certain, but this points pretty closely to what I feared the most." Here he laid down his pad and looked directly at me. His gaze was so intense that I had to look away. "It took me a long time, but I finally found something. It can only be performed by a company of more than six vampires, and it is done to force another vampire to do their bidding, without that vampire knowing what they are doing. It's a very old, very complicated kind of magic, and I'm afraid it's very scarce and very hard to break. It took me almost the full four days to finally come to some kind of conclusion, but that's as far as I got. There's no way for me to tell who's doing this, or why." He shook his head. "I'm completely baffled."

This was hard. I had never seen Carlisle so vulnerable—so unsure. He usually had all the answers, all the wisdom. I felt pretty scared and weak without his firm support. "What about Alice?" I managed to ask in a small voice.

Carlisle shook his head. "Many of the same symptoms," He gave a weak smile. "I'd like to call them something else, but I don't know what. Disappearing for days at a time, and we have idea where; she hasn't done anything surprising, but she is acting much different from her normal self. I haven't seen any bouts of her own personality, though, although I couldn't be sure. I was thinking along the lines of if she became herself, she would contact us; and then there was the whole issue with her eyes." Carlisle shook his head hopelessly. "I'm pretty sure I've figured out Edward's predicament, but I couldn't find anything about Alice. It might be a variation of the same spell, or it might be something entirely different. Either way…." He shook his head. "All we can do is wait."

I had been listening in silence that whole time. But that's when I lost it. Understand, here; I hadn't been away from Edward for more than, say, a day at a time, ever since we, you know. But suddenly he was ripped from my side for practically four days straight, and then I was being told that he was the bad guy and I was to stay away from him.

I swear, we had some sort of magnetism going on. I wanted to race out the door—Carlisle's office wasn't comforting anymore. It was just locking me in. I wanted to burst out their front door and keep running, running, until I ran into my sweet Edward. Or a tree. But at least I could make an effort. I was being such a useless girlfriend.

"No!" I finally cried out. "We can't just wait! We have to go look for them!"

Carlisle stared at me, and his face melted into a sort of exasperated, defeated expression. It was confusing me, that Carlisle could act like that. He had all the answers, all the time! "It's not that simple, Bella. If I knew where they were, if any of us did, we would go and try to get them out, in a heartbeat. But we have no way of knowing."

I was sick of not knowing, frankly. "Fine." I told him. I knew I was being harsh, but I had to take harsh steps if I ever wanted to see Edward again. I nodded curtly. "I understand if you don't want to come along, but I'm taking my pickup, which I noticed is somehow parked in your garage, and I'm going to find them."

What a foolish, hard-headed idiot I was. In that moment, I guess I actually believed I could single-handedly save them from a bunch of vampires who had probably been around longer than I could count and knew a bunch of crazy spells that I didn't even know existed. But I guess I really thought my less-than-perfect pickup and me could save the day.

I was almost out the front door when Carlisle appeared in front of me. His perfection seemed to jump out at me, taunt me, push me backwards. I angrily tried to get past him, but he, of course, didn't let me. "Listen, Bella! Listen to me! This is extremely silly. You could get seriously hurt."

I don't know why he tried to reason with me. He could have just hooked an arm around my waist and carried me to a chair and tied me up and gagged me. I mentioned this to him, and he just fixed his stare on me.

Guess who was the one to look away, again? Yeah, that's right. Me.

Esme appeared at the top of the stairs. It hadn't even occurred to me that someone else might be in the house. Her rolling beauty just added another brick to the wall that was knocking me down. Looking at her womanly air, I felt childish and insolent. I really had no business mouthing off to Carlisle; all he had ever done was protect me. And who was I, to think that I could do anything on my own? I could, after all, be blown to bits by just a squeeze too tight from them or a hit too hard.

"If you're going anywhere," Carlisle finally said, grimly, "We're coming with you." He nodded to Esme.

I nodded once, not allowing myself to speak, incase more stupid words came spilling out. I led the way to my truck, and luckily they didn't object. I didn't really care if they wanted a sleeker, shinier car. My truck was my safety zone.

Esme and Carlisle were in before me. I wasn't unnerved. I got into the driver's side, and listened satisfactorily as the engine literally roared to life. I grinned. Music to my ears.

I had no idea where I was going. I let myself ride on instincts. I was pretty scared; what if we ended up somewhere totally different, like the North Pole? I had nowhere to aim for. I chose roads randomly. I was supposed to be 'following my heart' but my heart was, apparently, forgetting to let me in on some things.

"Aren't you supposed to have some sort of radar for each other?" I asked as I took a random left turn. We had been driving fruitlessly for a half hour, and I was pretty sure I was just wasting gas. That field over on the right looked suspiciously like one we had passed a few minutes ago; then again, all the fields surrounding us at the moment looked more or less the same.

Carlisle and Esme exchanged glances, and I forgot to suppress my groan as I realized they were hiding more stuff from me. They both glanced briefly at me, and then Carlisle looked away while Esme talked. I was, frankly, glad for the change of voice, not that Carlisle's wasn't great or anything; it was just that I had been listening to him talk for a really, really long time. "We are supposed to," Esme told me. "Well, it's not fixed; we just sometimes know. We don't try to explain it. But now all I get are images. And they're wavering at the edges sometimes, and they keep changing. And somehow I know they're not real. I'm being blocked, misled by something."

So many emotions were welling up inside me, I half-wished Jasper was in the car so he could calm me down. I felt like everything was overflowing, bursting forth. It was so much, in so little time; it was just so hard to take in. I still sometimes had trouble believing that I actually associated with vampires, that I was actually in love with a vampire, one who loved me back, one who actually glittered in the sun. And now—great—he was gone.

When I turned back into the Cullen's driveway, neither Carlisle nor Esme looked disappointed in me, like I had expected they would. We had gotten nowhere; my stupid heart wasn't leading me to my love.

Was it defected?

Probably, yes.

I silently opened my door and walked towards the house. Nobody said anything. I kept walking, opened the front door. Everything looked so much the same, so normal! I marveled at that, and then headed for the stairs. I didn't even really need to ask where I would be sleeping.

As I reached the upstairs hallway, I saw Rosalie. I hadn't seen her for a while; she was slinking by, coming out of her room, probably on her way downstairs. She saw me, gave me the worst death glare I had ever received, and then disappeared back into her room.

Feeling more deflated than ever, I stretched myself out on my—Edward's—couch, and tried to fall asleep. There was nothing more that I could do; at least sleeping saved me from the irony, the horribleness of it all.

Or not. I awoke, sweating, my hair sticking to my scalp and my clothes sticking to my body. I realized that I was breathing hard, and took deep breaths to try and calm my racing heart down. What the--?

I tried hard to remember my dream. Drifts of things floated back to me; I had seen Edward and Alice, and they had seemed so real. There was a room that looked a lot like a jail cell, with a single cot and stone walls. There was also a pathway of flowers; well, there was the pathway, surrounded on all sides and forever by…flowers?

Convinced that I was going crazy, I snuggled further into the couch and tried to fall asleep.