Disclaimer: I own nothing. I owe the Authors before me more.

A/N: Thank you very much for the overwhelming response to this story. Your comments and PM's are very encouraging.

Chapter Two:

Stroller in hand, Lija made her way quickly through the twists and turns of Seattle International Airport, following the professional looking gentleman who was supposed to be her guide. She tried not to loose him amidst all the hustle and bustle of travellers and visitors, all the while attempting to avoid running over idle feet.

As she hurried past a screaming tot in the midst of her tantrum, she made eye contact with her clearly exhausted mother and gave a sympathetic and encouraging smile before continuing on her way. She could empathize with the poor frazzled woman as her own kid had not made the trip easy.

Teddy had fallen asleep as soon as they had reached Heathrow. He'd slept through check-in, thankfully while waiting in the long line at Customs and then through boarding. The problem with her son started when he was startled awake during turbulence. He woke up in a strange and unfamiliar environment to find that his hearing was funny and he and his mama were surrounded by complete strangers. So he let his displeasure at the entire situation be known the only way he could, by screeching at the top of his young healthy lungs. It took an hour of pacing up and down the aisle - with what may have been 10 or so of Fortune 500 executives looking on in annoyance - a bottle of warm milk, a change of diapers and a lullaby sung over the roar of the engines to even put him back to sleep. Unhappily, Teddy never slept long and the ritual was to be repeated at least twice more during the flight. By the time she and Teddy had landed in New York she was about ready to cut her own head off, her eyes were watering and the Neurofen tablets that she had taken for her headache didn't seem to be working.

Waiting impatiently at the baggage claim, she was absolutely mortified when she was told by a Molly Weasley-esque grandmother, that she had the words wrong in the lullaby she had been singing for Teddy. In her endeavour to be heard over the engines she had inadvertently sung loud enough to be heard in the next cabin. To compound her embarrassment she was singled out by the drug sniffing dog, and then once released, discovered she had missed her connecting flight to Seattle. Four hours later with Teddy becoming more and more irritable, her own headache almost too much to manage, and the next available flight still two hours away, Lija finally had enough and decided to put her considerable inheritance, and the annual retainer she paid towards her Lawyer, to some use. Forty-five minutes later and after one frantic transatlantic phone call, she was now walking quickly towards the private car which was meant to take her to a private Hanger, housing a private Lear jet that would get her to her destination.

Five minutes into the flight with Teddy comfortably asleep and a glass of brandy and two Neurofen tablets in her hand, Lija vowed to herself and the Mother that she would never ever ever fly on Public planes again.

" – sign here, and here, and again here. And if you could just initial here... Thank you."

Quickly signing her name in the indicated places, Lija straightened from her bent position to receive the large manila envelope. She knew without opening it what was inside, she eased open the fold and tipped the contents out onto the large Coffee table. Yep, she was right. Going through a mental checklist in her head, she ticked off everything that Alan had said she would need, and had thus organised to be delivered to her hotel room.

Washington Drivers License – check, Social Security Number – check, Insurance cards – check, Mobile phone – check, chequebook – check, Bank Account Numbers – check, ATM cards – check, Amex Card – huh?!

"What's these for?" she asked, confused. She had all the credit cards she neededhaving already started using them while in England. She also noticed a few other cards there also, she wasn't aware that there was anything else that she needed to buy.

The female associate looked up from where she was writing hurriedly in the margins of some official looking document and glanced at the card in her hand before answering.

"Mr Shore thought it prudent that you have extra credit cards with you just in case," she said with a smile, "most places have kept up with the changing times and now accept all cards and banks, but there will be some places that won't." Like Forks was left out of her explanation, but she could hear it just as if it had been spoken out loud.

Signing the last page of the document that she was working on with a flourish, the Lawyer handed it to her and asked her to sign once more in the indicated spaces. This time when Lija had finished, the lawyer slid a rectangular blue box across the glass table and started packing her paperwork away before getting to her feet.

"Your car is already waiting for you in the underground parking of the Hotel, just call the concierge to have valet bring it around when you're ready to go, don't forget that you're driving on the opposite side of the road now," she reminded her, while shrugging into her coat.

Pointing to the box, she reached over and flicked it open. In the soft light blue lining was what seemed to be an electronic key card and two keys, one silver and the other bronze. Etched into the bottom of the lid in bold red were two rows of numbers and letters, and a phone number.

"These are the keys to your house, if you get stuck or if you have any questions, call the number here. Your gate is electronic so you will need to swipe the key card for you to enter. The silver key is for the dead bolt on the front door, you need that key and the first set of codes to get inside your house. This one," she stated while holding up the Gold Key, "is for your study. The second set of codes will turn off the motion sensors on your property, if the sensors are disturbed the silent alarm will go off and a call will go out to the security outfit in charge who will send someone over to deal with the... unwanted visitor. "

Green eyes widened in surprise before lips turned up in gratitude. She'd been in Seattle only 2 days but she'd heard about the disappearances in and around the city, one couldn't be too careful and she now had a two year old life to also worry about. Getting to her feet she showed the associate sent by Alan kindly out the door and went about getting everything prepared for her two hour drive to Forks.

Waking up Teddy and getting him dressed and fed was easy work; she was also surprised at how simple and relaxing the drive was. The best part of her drive was discovering that the closer she got to Forks, the more manageable the pain in her head became. In fact, she knew she crossed the last Lei Line and into the neutral zone when the constant pain ceased altogether. She was so overcome with relief at finally being able to hear her thoughts again that she had to pull over as she couldn't see through her tears. Teddy of course slept through her adoptive mother's emotional release and only awakened when she stopped to allow a flock of geese to cross from one side of the road to the other. She thought of Ron while watching them slowly waddle their way across, he would have most likely found some corny joke just for this, something of the "Why did the Geese cross the road?" variety. Of course thinking of Ron also made her think of her bushy haired friend and it quickly sobered her of the joy that she had felt just a little while before.

As Lija H Potter was to cease to exist, she had over the course of a few months removed all her money from Gringotts. She knew that she couldn't do it by transfer to a muggle bank account because the 'erase' would reverse the transfer. So she went into the bank everyday and physically removed her inheritance, had it converted into Pounds and then stored it in her apartment as she was unsure how to go abfout opening a new bank account without any of the requisite Identifications.

So when she met Alan Shore-Crane it was probably the best day of her life, it solved so many problems that she didn't even know she had. She was in line at the information teller of the bank when someone grabbed her bottom. Spinning around ready to punch the person's lights out, she was startled to discover a suited elderly man standing there, eyes glazed, staring at his hands. Mr Shore quickly came rushing over to apologise, explaining the elder man was his friend Denny who unfortunately suffered from 'mad cow'. Then he asked, in his charming American accent, if she could hold off on suing them this week as their schedules were already busy with lawsuits, they'd only moved to England six months previous and apparently Denny had already offended a great many people. Mr Shore then handed her his card; glancing at it she realised that he was a Lawyer, but most importantly he was a god send for her and told him so. She then jokingly told him that she would drop any lawsuits as long as he could act as her attorney. He agreed and it all went up hill from there.

Alan never said a word about the amount of money that she had stashed in her apartment, he just gave her forms to sign, and that was that. Over the next few weeks she had bank accounts, credit cards and a birth certificate and passports for her and Teddy. Alan took the money and deposited it into the bank, and the following day she signed a contract with Crane, Poole & Schmidt on the condition that Alan was her Lawyer. They tried to talk her out of it by saying that Alan was a litigator, but she wouldn't have it, and they had to give in as the money that she bought with her was nothing to pout about.

Months later, while on her way to Heathrow, she had dropped off a document to Alan authorising a transfer of One Million Pounds to Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley should they ever marry. Her only stipulation to the amount was that it be anonymous, with no way to ever tracking it back to her. Alan had said that he would have someone check periodically to ensure that they knew when Hermione Granger ever wed. She'd cried buckets all the way to the Airport at the thought that they would never know it came from her.

Now here she was, getting all sentimental on a flock of geese, on the way to a tiny town named after a utensil. Sheesh.

It was just after one in the afternoon when she and Teddy finally reached the small town. Teddy was still thankfully fast asleep and the written directions to her house was bringing back her headache, this time from frustration rather then anything magical. She knew that she was going to get wrinkles from all the squinting that she was doing in trying to read the road signs. She suffered that for the better part of 45 minutes before opting to pull into the High school that she had passed at least twice to ask for directions.

Parking her Land Rover LR2 in an empty space right next to a silver Volvo, Lija spent five minutes staring horrified over her sunglasses at the ugly looking building in front of her. She wasn't conceited or a snob and Mother knew that she did not believe that she was superior to everyone else, but as Lija closed her eyes and leaned her head against the steering wheel she couldn't help but agree with the voice in her head as it voiced its derisive opinion of the school.

Turning to look at her sleeping son, she realised that she didn't know how she was going to ask for directions. There was no way in hell she was leaving her Teddy in the car by himself, even if the people she was going to ask were standing barely 7 metres from her car. Lija looked back out the window to find that there was now a large group of students focused almost entirely on trying to see through her tinted windows. She absolutely loathed gossip, the minute that her window went down it was damn obvious that the gossip was going to be about her.

"You can do this, Lija," she muttered, giving herself a Pep talk, "Just emulate Malfoy and then you can go home and bleach your brain out."

Squaring her shoulders in resolve and arranging her face to 'wealthy pure-blood' she powered down the tinted window.

The students stared in astounded silence as the occupant of the car pushed her shades to the top of her head and one-by-one dismissed them with her beautiful green eyes. They all squirmed and fidgeted under her notice, no-one was able to keep eye-contact, but no-one wanted to look away.

"I need instructions," the accented voice demanded, "How do I get to Merchant road?"

There was a brief moment of silence before almost a dozen voices clamoured over the top of the other trying to be heard, each arguing that the route that the other was giving was not the easiest option.

Lija, jaw clenched, swore on all that was holy that she was never going to attend high school. Normally, she would have had patience for this but as it was her equilibrium was off, Teddy had spent a good part of the day stuck in a car, and she wanted to see the house and run any errands before nightfall.

Raising her hand she crooked a figure at the only quiet person of the bunch.

"You there, come," she ordered. The bespectacled teen approached the Rover with much apprehension, fiddling with the camera around her neck.

"Your name?" she requested, with a much gentler tone. The teen gnawed on her lip before answering hesitantly.

"Angela"

"Alright Angela, I'm Lija" she replied, hand outstretched.

Angela nervously wiped her sweaty palms on the side of her pants. She didn't know why she was so nervous, but this stranger's attitude totally made her want to either curtsy or kiss the back of her hand. She did neither and instead reached out and shook the perfectly manicured hand. The crowd behind her were now completely quiet, not even hiding the fact that they were listening in on the conversation. Angela mentally shook herself out of her nervous daze and smiled at the somewhat intimidating but otherwise beautiful stranger.

"Merchant road is pretty long, so depending on which end of it you're trying to get to there'll be a few options. Do you have a pen?"

Five minutes and one roughly drawn map later, Lija was pretty confident that she would make it to her house without ending up in Africa. She gave the dark haired girl a warm smile.

"Thank you so much Angela."

Shrugging, she replied "Its o.k. this town can be a real maze when you don't know your way around."

Pausing, she took all her courage in hand and plunged into the question that was on everyone's mind.

"I couldn't help but notice that you have an Accent. Are... are you visiting someone in Forks? "

Lija hesitated before answering; her eyes travelled over the small crowd of onlookers. Some of them quickly looked away pretending that they weren't listening in. She knew that whatever she said now would be all over the small town by nightfall. Better now or never and at least the story will come from me.

"No... actually... Teddy and I decided to live here. We bought a house here about a month ago? And we've only just tied up our loose ends and got into the country."

"Oh. Are you enjoying it so far?"

Lija gave a little laugh when she replied, "When I say that we just got into the country, I literarily mean that we just got into the country. I was still in England three days ago so the only thing I've really seen are the Airports, the clouds and the trees on the drive here. Lots and lots of trees."

"Is Teddy your... boyfriend?" Angela asked, tentatively, not seeing another occupant in the car.

The green-eyed beauty just smiled indulgently at her and for the first time Angela saw that the smile actually reached her eyes. She looked behind her to something in the back seat and powered down the rear passenger window. Glancing in Angela was surprised to see a toddler strapped to his car seat, fast asleep.

"Teddy's my son." Responding to the unasked questions she continued, "I'm 18. And no I'm not moving here with anyone else. He's two years old, and yes I'm financially secure, no, he doesn't need for anything."

Smiling sheepishly, Angela reached a hand in to tug gently one of the infants curls.

"You must get asked that a lot huh?"

"You get used to it after a while."

"Will you be attending Forks at all? Or did you complete your schooling in England?"

"No offence, but there is no way I'll be attending an American high school, I've heard stories," she finished with laugh.

"None taken, maybe you can share those stories with my parents; they might let me out of here."

Lija never got to reply, because at that moment three students exited the school building and completely caught her attention. Poetry. Lija thought to herself as she watched the ethereal beauties glide down the stairs. There should be damn poetry and songs written, passed through the ages to warn of possible inferiority complexes when in their vicinity.

"Is your school being used for a photo shoot for Vogue?" she joked. Angela didn't need to turn around to know what Lija meant, she giggled before answering.

"Those are the Cullen's. The pixie-looking girl in the middle, that's Alice, the blonde guy holding her hand, his names Jasper, they're together. And the other guy with all the hair," she said pointing out the bronze-haired boy to the left of 'Alice', "That one is Edward... oh, Bella's not with them... weird. You're unlucky that you only get to see the three of them; for a person to really get the full affect of just how mediocre they are in comparison to them, they need to see the full set. Last year we had five – a collector's edition – and it really really made our day."

Laughing at her sarcasm, Lija leaned back in her chair and put on her seat belt before leaning in to turn on the engine. She said a warm goodbye to Angela, thanking her again for her help. Reversing out of her parking space, she looked up as the Cullen's slowly approached their cars, now with a fourth member. At first glance she was an average looking girl of medium height, with brown hair and brown eyes and she seemed highly infatuated with the boy she was walking beside.

She felt a moment of pity for the girlfriend, she hoped that the poor thing knew what she was getting herself into, otherwise that relationship was going to slowly destroy her until she had nothing left of herself. This was the danger of dating a guy with much more presence then you and Lija had seen many of her own friends go down that path and get hurt.

Glancing at them one last time as she drove past; she met eyes with cool topaz. Edward Cullen.

His stare unnerved her, as if they were staring into her soul, judging her, liking what they found and wanting to know more. Looking nonchalantly away from the intense stare, she had to quickly tap on the breaks as the car in front of her stopped suddenly. As she waited she could feel the stare on the side of her face and refused to give him the satisfaction of looking up again. Debating with herself she finally gave in to the urge and powered up her window, she didn't care if it made her look cowardly, she would feel much better if he couldn't see her.

Finally getting out of the high school parking lot, Lija heaved a sigh of relief. She didn't know what it was about the bronze-haired Cullen but he unnerved her as no-one else had. The further she got away from the school, the more she felt herself relax, the mantra in her read repeated over and over. You don't need to see him again. You won't need to see him again. You don't want to see him again.

Edward stared after the Land Rover as it drove out of the parking lot.

His body felt heavy, his gut clenched, his muscles were stretched taut. Everything around him faded except those emerald eyes.

He had never ever felt a mind like hers. It had glittered so temptingly among the other ordinary minds, a beacon of light among the shadows and he had been so drawn to it. It had pulsed as if it sensed him, and when he reached out a mental hand to touch it, it tingled and sparked and burned and soothed. Finally! It said.

The beast in him raised its head and eyed her, it claimed her, it marked her, it rejoiced and celebrated, it revelled and ran, and then it calmed... hypnotised by that light. It lay at the edge of her mind and yearned, it ached, and it wanted so much to be let in to where it was safe... and warm.

Not yet time! They whispered... His beast whimpered, angry now at having to wait. He pushed mentally and was pushed back; her mind pulsed brightly in warning. Not yet time!

He pushed again, and this time it flashed, and burst and his mind was loaded with a mass of emotions, of pain, and joy, of love and fear, and of lust, he glimpsed of things that he couldn't –

"Edward?"

Snapping his head around, he snarled at the girl who had interrupted him in warning, eyes black; the beast in him angry at being taken from its comfort. The venom burned in his mouth as he smelt the sweet tantalising scent of blood, it was so close -

"Edward!"

A masculine body slammed into him, the weight holding him to the car, he struggled wanting to get to that scent. His beast egged him on, telling him that he would be happy once it was done, it raged at him to finish it. He could feel the unknown intrusion; an emotion was trying to enter his mind, his beast fought it not wanting to be calmed down.

Edward, you need to stop. You're scaring Bella!

His creature growled revolted, impatient, craving... light

Brother, calm down, you have to remember that it's Bella.

Bella?

Edward? Can you hear me? You have to control yourself.

Jasper? The beast was tired now; it didn't want to be here. It wanted the light. He strengthened his mind, and he dragged the beast into the dark and locked it away.

That's it Edward. I'm going to let you go now o.k.? Do you think you'll be alright?

"Yes," he replied out loud. He lightly pushed Jasper away and ran his hands through his hair, he had no idea what happened. Looking around he didn't see Alice or Bella.

Alice took Bella home, we thought it would be safer for her; you almost attacked her... again.

Edward nodded, thinking it was for the best. Until he discovered why he reacted like that he wouldn't be safe to be around.

A/N: What do you think? Should I give up now? Read and Review, tell me if I've spelt anything wrong, used words in the wrong context or (God forbid!) misspelt a characters name. Tell me if my character is irritating, or if you've already heard this plot before. I won't be able to improve unless I know what I'm doing wrong.

This is a shorter chapter then the last one. This is probably the length that most my chapters will be. I can't tell you how difficult it is to write 4000 words. You know what you want to happen, you can visualise it, but then you try to find the words to describe it and fail miserably. I have a plot; I know what everyone's going to be doing and when, I don't know how I'm going to tell you about it, but I have a plot! I also have the third chapter which I'm just proof-reading, spell-checking, and editing. Will post soon.

Lija's car is a Land Rover LR2, I wanted to pick a car that wasn't too ostentatious and that would be practical for someone who was young, had a child, and lived in what was a wood region. I've posted a link to a picture of it in my authors page if you want to see it.