12. Mystery

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"He took him while Carlisle was gone, most likely," Rosalie told Emmett a little impatiently. "Am I right, Carlisle?"

"Yes, you are," he told her, and she smiled in satisfaction.

"Pfft. That's not very exciting," Emmett groused.

"It seemed rather exciting to me at the time, Emmett," Carlisle objected mildly. "Although exciting isn't really the right word. Horrifying would be more accurate."

He turned his attention back to me. "Even though I knew there was nothing I could do to make you comfortable, I hadn't wanted to leave you alone longer than I had to. I finished up as quickly as I could, but by the time I started back I had been gone close to five hours. When I was almost home I smelled another vampire. I had smelled him or her several times before over the previous week, in various places around the city, and had assumed he was there because of epidemic. There are always those of our kind who take advantage of the confusion brought about by mass deaths, whether during epidemics, natural disasters, or war." Poor souls, he thought. He sounded inexplicably sad. Did he prefer to prey only upon the strong? I did as well, but why was he so sorry that others didn't?

He gave himself a mental shake, recalling both our minds to the subject at hand. "In any event, the scent was recent, perhaps a couple of hours old. It worried me, but it wasn't until I realized the scent was inside the house that I panicked. I ran from room to room, but you were gone. I knew there was no way you could have left on your own; it had barely been a day since I bit you, and while I wasn't sure how long the change should take I knew it would be longer than that. I tried to follow the scent, but it was confused; purposefully, no doubt. It zigzagged for several miles around the house, crossing itself in numerous places, and then to make matters worse it began raining. I kept looking, even after I lost the scent entirely, but after four days I admitted defeat. I was certain you had already been taken far from the city and I hadn't the first idea where to start looking for you. I had laid the groundwork for my disappearance when I pretended illness at the hospital, and as I had already been in Chicago for six years I decided to go ahead and move on."

His mind was far into the past, immersed in all he had felt then: the panic and disbelief that he had lost me, his determination fading into defeat as the days passed with no trace of me, his sadness and worsened loneliness, his hope to someday find me.

"I never stopped looking for you. If I'd known who took you, perhaps I would have had more luck, but I didn't even know if it was a male or female, much less what he looked like. After Alice and Jasper joined our family in 1950, she told me that she saw an Edward finding us, but I tried not to believe it would be you. Alice had said that he—you—could read minds, and I didn't want to hurt or offend him with my disappointment if it wasn't you." He smiled at me, his mind returning to the present, brimming with relief and happiness. "I couldn't stop myself from hoping though."

I struggled to replace what I thought I knew of my beginnings with this starkly different history. "I don't even know what to say. It's so different from what I always thought had happened. I'm very happy to know that you're the one who changed me— I've always hated thinking that Tredan's venom was in me."

His brow furrowed. "I can imagine, given what I've heard of him."

"What did you hear? I gather you had never met him, since you didn't recognize his scent."

"No, we never met. Almost a year after you disappeared, one of my old friends, Garrett, found me. He had been looking for me for some time, to warn me that an old vampire named Tredan was looking for me. Almost two years previously Tredan had approached him trying to gather information about me. Garrett was suspicious and didn't tell him anything, but he asked around and discovered that Tredan had been asking others about me as well. More than one person said or implied that I should be warned what he was up to, telling him things about the other vampire that were… disturbing, to say the least."

"Like what, exactly?" Jasper asked, his tone serious. His mind was so interesting: shrewd and strategic, continually evaluating and re-evaluating everything he heard, saw, and felt.

"Mainly that he was sadistic, liked torture and mind games, was over a thousand years old, and a proven fighter. So Garrett came to warn me, and help protect me, if necessary. He stayed with me for some months, patrolling the area in hopes of coming across his scent. As time passed he began making circuits farther and farther afield, but never turned up anything." Bella shifted against me and he smiled encouragingly at her. "Do you have a question, Bella?"

"Um, yes," she said timidly. "Did you suspect that Tredan was the one who took Edward?"

"I knew it was possible, but after what I had learned about Tredan's nature I prayed it wasn't him. I hoped instead that a passing vampire heard Edward changing and was curious enough to investigate. That perhaps he or she thought he had been abandoned by his creator, or at worst that it was a female struck by his appearance, and that was why he was taken. I couldn't bear to think he was with that vicious creature with no one to help him."

Carlisle paused for a moment as he and I both fought not to think of myself helplessly trapped with that monster. His imaginings weren't far off, but then he reminded himself that I was safe now, and I clung to that truth also. Strange as these golden-eyed vampires were, I was beginning to trust them with my safety, and more importantly, with Bella's. "Do either of you have any other questions?"

I looked at Bella, but though she moved a little restlessly she shook her head in the negative. "I have one more," I said. "Your coven is so large… Alice said that she and Jasper found you, but did you change everyone else? How did you all end up together?"

"Ah, yes. Well, after you disappeared, I moved to Ashland, Wisconsin. My failure haunted me. I had a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that I'd lost you and might never know what had happened to you. I decided I would never attempt to change anyone else, but one day in 1921 I went down to the morgue to write the death certificate of a woman who had just been brought in. I had been told she was dead, the victim of a fall from a cliff, but I could hear her heart beating, and when I saw her face I recognized her. I had met her years earlier, when she was only sixteen. She had fallen then too, but out of a tree that time, and I was the one who had set her broken leg. I didn't know what motivated me, but as soon as I saw her face, I instinctively scooped her up and ran. It was as though a voice shouted in my head, 'Not her!' I spent much of her change berating myself and wondering if I had gone insane, and it was months before I understood my compulsion to save her." He smiled down at his mate. "And then by some miracle, she loved me too.

"I always loved you," Esme told him softly. "From the first time I met you."

"You knew even then?" Bella asked shyly.

Esme smiled, her mind filled with hazy memories. "I didn't know it was love then, but he made a lasting impression. My leg hurt so horribly and my mother was embarrassing me in front of the nurses by scolding me for being so unladylike as to climb a tree!" Her voice changed as she imitated her long-dead mother. "And then in walked the most handsome man I'd ever seen, and he was so kind to me, so gentle. I had to stay at the hospital for a few days, and he came by to check on me several times, brought me books to read and fresh fruit, and sat and talked to me… I'd never met such a thoughtful man. And as the years went by, I was never able to forget him."

The two of them gazed at each other as though amazed by their good fortune. Emmett suddenly guffawed, breaking the spell they had cast on each other. "Yeah, he made a lasting impression on the hospital, too, up and leaving the way he did, with a supposed corpse in tow!"

Carlisle sighed. "Emmett…"

The large vampire ignored him, leaning towards us confidingly. "We saw a story about him on Unsolved Mysteries back in the early nineties, and that was the first time he told us anything more than, 'Esme was dying, so I changed her.' He never told us that he ran off with her from the morgue and never went back. No one at the hospital had any idea what had happened to him, and after they realized there was a body missing the speculation was completely insane. Alice, Jasper, and I tracked down some local newspapers from the time, and you should read the breathless reports—'Noted Doctor Vanishes From Hospital; Corpse of Local Schoolteacher Also Missing,' 'Search Made for Connection Between Missing Doctor and Teacher,' 'Doctor Abducted?' 'Ties to Satanists?' 'Doctor and Corpse Taken By Cult?' 'Real Doctor Frankenstein?' 'Doctor a Necrophiliac?' 'Police Stumped; Plead for Public's Assistance,' and on and on. Thankfully he was using a different name then and they didn't have any pictures of him, or we would probably still be in hiding somewhere. And after all his decades of telling us how important it is to always cover our tracks… He laughed again, and the entire coven joined in, even Carlisle, though his laugh was a bit rueful.

"We've enjoyed poking fun at Carlisle since then, but it does finally make sense now," Jasper pointed out. "After what happened with Edward, he must have been afraid to leave Esme while she was changing."

"Not just then," Esme clarified with some amusement. "He couldn't leave me at first, of course, because of the bloodlust, but even after I had gained some control over it he refused to leave me unprotected. I was so frustrated, until he told me what had happened to Edward."

Carlisle made a noise very like a snort. "Be honest. Even after you knew you were still frustrated."

"Of course I was—I spent nearly nine months wearing your clothes!"

We all started laughing, except for Alice, but her horrified, "Oh, Esme!" only made us laugh harder. She folded her arms across her chest and tapped her toe impatiently as she waited for us to stop, then insisted, "I'm not just talking about fashion! He's a good eight inches taller than she is—his clothes can't have been at all comfortable for her."

"You're right," Esme said warmly. "It was very awkward. Thank you, Alice."

Carlisle determinedly changed the subject, "Anyway, Rosalie was the next to join our family. Would you like to tell the story, or shall I?"

A/N: First of all, I would just like to say that there ARE NO CLIFFS in Ashland. There is one cliff in Ashland County, but it is not within walking distance of Ashland and is on the far side of a freaking island. It would have made better sense for Esme to step out in front of a trolley or something than to have to travel 20-plus miles and rent a boat! I realize that SM doesn't like to do research, but for crying out loud why didn't someone on the editorial staff do it? There are SO MANY things wrong with the historical detail of these books- things which, on average, take me 45 seconds to research. I'm not talking about obscure, difficult to obtain information here. :( On that note, tune in next time to see what's wrong with Emmett's story. /rant

Sorry this chapter took me so long to get out- I could go into detail about the insane ball of chaos my life has been the past month or two, but this AN is too long already. ;) The next chapter is about 1/3 written, so hopefully there won't be much of a wait. Edward from The World Itself has decided to start speaking to me again, so hopefully that chapter will be up soon also. Thanks for the reviews, favs, follows, etc- I truly appreciate them!