read my other story, witch, to find out what esme means when she says only the wolves and the witches knew!!!!

Chapter Two: Research

When we reached the cafeteria, Emmett and Rosalie were already there, at a table big enough to fit eight. I lead Bella over to them and sat down at the opposite end. Emmett seemed worried about something, and I knew what that was.

Alice and Jasper came in a few seconds later with Renesmee and Jacob at their heels. Alice sat right next to me, and Renesmee next to Bella.

"Edward, do you have any idea why everybody has been staring at us and pointing all day? It's so odd! Almost as if we're well known…" Alice trailed off, drifting into a trance. Jasper held her upright so that she didn't fall down backwards. I watched her vision with her.

There were people clustered around us, and the girl named Celli was there. Her hand was raised, and she was pointing at us. "Them! They're the legendary Cullens! Forks' own immortals have come back. Tell, us how do you stay so young?" Her voice was accusing, filled with hatred. A young boy then came up and told us to leave, or else be destroyed. Somebody laughed when he said that. "Like you could ever destroy one of us! In your dreams. It'll take a lot more than that to get rid of us." The voice belonged to…Bella? Then the vision faded away, replaced by a view of the cafeteria. I left Alice's head.

"What did you see? Alice, you need to tell us!" Jacob was in her face, and then his eyes flickered to me. "Do you know what she saw?" His voice was angry, and Renesmee was trying to comfort him. He relaxed at her touch, and leaned back.

I nodded, answering his question. "It was us, surrounded by people. One of them knew we are immortal. She told the group. Then a boy came up and told us to either leave or be destroyed. One of us, I think it was Bella, told him that he could never destroy us."

"Do you know how they know?" Rosalie asked, her tone confused.

Bella answered her question."Yeah. During biology, I did a tiny bit of research on our name. A picture came up, one of me, Edward and Renesmee in 2007; a picture I didn't even remember taking. But what disturbed us was the caption under it. It said, Edward, Bella, and Renesmee, some of the resident Forks immortals." Bella shuddered, and leaned against me. I hugged her close.

Renesmee sighed, and leaned forward onto the table. "Well, what are we going to do, Edward?" She hesitated when she said my name, making sure she said Edward instead of Daddy. "It's not like we can just tell them! That would mean a guaranteed visit from the Volturi. Do you have any ideas, Bella?" She hesitated once again because she wanted to make sure she said Bella instead of Momma.

"Yeah, I was going to skip out the rest of the day and go home to do some mega research; try to figure out who it is that took that pictures and see if there are anymore. I really hope I find enough to figure out how to end this, so that we can stay here. And so that Alice's vision doesn't come true." Bella muttered, standing up with her keys in hand. "I'll see you guy later." Bella walked out, seeming not at all surprised that I followed her.

"Do you think we'll find more?" Bella asked as she climbed into the passenger seat, handing me the keys.

"Bella, love, I hate to admit it, but I think we'll find lots more. I mean, just one picture of three of us wouldn't set off this many people. I can almost guarantee you there will be more." I pressed my foot down harder; bringing the car up to 140 mph. Bella's face fell as she realized that fact. I hoped it hadn't hit too deep; I couldn't bear to see her sad. We pulled into the garage in 2 minutes, and she leapt out of the car and bolted to the house. Esme was inside, waiting for us.

"I heard you coming from down the street. Why aren't you two at school? Is something wrong?" She asked as Bella immediately plopped down onto the couch and pulled out her laptop again.

I nodded. "The kids at school, Esme? They know. They know we are immortal, somehow. Bella looked online when we were in biology, and found a picture of us, with a caption that said we were Forks resident immortals." I sat down next to Bella, placing my hand on her shoulder. She moved her hands swiftly over the keyboard and pulled up picture after picture of our family, each being different. We found a total of 43, and Esme gasped when I announced the number out loud.

"How? So many…who would know about our secrets except for the werewolves and the witches. We've never told anybody, not even Charlie or Renée! This is just so amazing. I'm calling Carlisle." She turned towards her room and walked away.

Bella seemed as if she would cry. "There's so many, Edward! This has to mean we have to leave. Doesn't it? I just wish there were someway to change this." She groaned and fell backwards onto the couch.

"That doesn't mean we have to leave. We can fix this; Carlisle has dealt with problems like this before. But I think we should go up to Alberta to see the Denali's. They might be able to help us with a solution." I moved my arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. She wrapped her arms around me and sighed.

"There really is a way to fix this? I was thinking we should go see the Denali's, too. I figured they would have experience with this." Her eyes turned up towards mine and I noticed that they were almost black.

"We can hunt along the way. We'll leave tonight, and bring Alice and Jasper with us if they want. But you're right about the experience thing. When they were living in the UK, they had an issue where two entire towns actually figured out they were vampires! What they had to do was difficult, but easier than the other option, which was killing the innocent people. They-" I was cut off by the front door banging open. Carlisle walked through and came towards us.

"Let me see your research so far. I'm going to need to do extensive research on this. Do you have any research ideas?" Carlisle went into business mode the second he was done looking at the pictures.

"Yes, we were going to go see the Denali's tonight with Alice and Jasper, and try to figure out if they had any ideas of what to do about it." Bella's voice was matter-of-fact and direct.

"Good. Tomorrow's a sunny day, so you won't end up missing anything except just sitting here being bored." Carlisle picked up Bella's laptop and walked towards his study. "I'm going to borrow this for now, since you've already done so much research on it. I'll talk to you two later." He disappeared.

When Alice and Jasper walked through the front door later that day, Jasper instantly picked up on our moods, and hissed through clenched teeth.

"Oh, so we're going to Canada tonight? Great! I haven't seen the Denali's in a long, long time." Alice sat down on the couch and grasped Bella's hand. "What did you guys find? Nothing too bad, right? Just 2 or 3 more pictures?"

"Oh, Alice, I wish. We found 43 pictures, and all of them were different. This is so terrible! Carlilse is in his office right now, looking on my laptop, conducting more research." Bella said, speaking as clearly as she could without crumbling.

"When do we leave? And why are we going?" Jasper asked, still standing by the door, holding his jacket. He was worried, which didn't really help Bella.

"Soon, after the rest of the family comes home. They just need to know where we're going. And that means we'll be leaving in a minute because they just pulled in." I laughed. Right on time.

"You're going somewhere aren't you?" Renesmee said in an accusing tone when she walked in the door. I nodded and she came over to hug Bella. "I'll see you soon then, Momma." Jacob came in and they walked upstairs to do homework.

"Are you going to see the Denali's? If you are, tell them we say hi." Emmett seemed to be in a rush. I wondered why. Hey, Edward, have fun! We'll see you when you come back. As for me, I'm going off-roading tonight! Emmett chuckled, and walked away upstairs.

Everyone seemed to be very busy tonight. I found it baffling. We left right after Rosalie had come in and figured out what we were doing. We reached the Denali's house within 4 hours and they were waiting for us.

"Edward, Carlisle called and told us you were coming. What's wrong?" Tanya asked, holding open the door so that we could come in from the wilderness.

"Tanya! We're in danger of being discovered. Somehow, everyone at school recognizes us! And the worst part is…we found pictures. So many pictures, of us; ones that we had never taken. People have seen them and read the captions. One of the captions called us Forks' resident immortals. It's terrifying. Edward said you guys had had experience with something like this before. Can you help us? Please?" Bella said, throwing her arms around Tanya in a huge hug.

"So people know about you? That's just amazing! We haven't had that happen to us since 1543. Do you want me to tell you the story?" Bella nodded and sat down on the couch.

Tanya continued as Alice, Jasper, and I sat down. "It was right after we had moved back to a town in the northern UK, and Sasha had died, Carmen and Eleazar hadn't joined us yet, and they wouldn't for many years. Two young families somehow figured out we were vampires, and they spread the knowledge around the town and the nearby village. Soon we were being mobbed everyday, with people trying to kill us, and threatening us with garlic and crosses! Kate thought the only way to clear ourselves was to kill them, but Irina didn't want it to be that way. So we went to the Romanians. They are human blood drinkers, but even they didn't want us to massacre two whole villages. So Stefan sat and thought for a fortnight. What he came up with was one if the most amazing decisions. It was to-" Tanya got abruptly cut short by Kate's hand.

"Why are you telling them that story? You promised you would never speak of that again! Why do see the need to tell everyone everything?" Her tone was fierce, and like nothing I'd ever heard come from her before.

"They need to know this, Kate! They are experiencing the same problems as we did, all those years ago. They need to know how to free themselves of the burden of being discovered. They don't want to kill everyone in Forks! They're not murders!" Tanya stood and hissed the words at Kate.

"Kate, why don't you want us to hear this? What makes you trust us so little?" My voice was pleading, and suspicious, all at the same time.

"Because of what happens! You won't experience the same way we did; understand it same way, because you weren't there! It makes me sound so terrible, it just pains me to hear it…" Kate trailed off and looked towards Tanya. " I am sorry I stopped you, sister. I suppose I do understand now that they need to hear it. Continue." Kate's face was suddenly apologetic, and filled with sadness. But she seemed willing enough to hear it.

"As I was saying, Stefan's idea came to him in the middle of the night, when Vladimir was gone off hunting in the city. He told us it in rushed whispers. He wanted us to change their views of vampires by showing them what we really were. It is an idea only usable by vegetarians like us. We showed them how we really hunted, how we really lived among them in peace. We showed them our eyes and taught them how bad vampires had red eyes. I am sorry, sister, but I must tell them how you proved that fact. The villagers wanted us to prove our tale of human blood drinkers having red eyes, so they chose one villager to sacrifice." Bella gasped and tightened her grip on my hand.

"The villager was a young boy, a boy barely 16. The villages chose Kate to feed, much to her displeasure. I tried to discourage them; telling them how she might not be able to stop drinking human blood after she had tasted it. They ignored our pleas and forced her to drink. She did, not wanting to hurt us by refusing. He was drained within minutes, and her eyes shone red. She was not herself anymore; she was terrifying. Her frenzy lasted a month, with her killing 14 people. Irina finally caught her, and we locked her in a room for months, only bringing her animal blood. Her eyes slowly changed back and she became herself again."

Kate was taking deep breaths, trying to calm herself. Jasper helped her out. "Kate was herself again within a year, and the villagers all apologized, despite the people they had lost. Kate was in a depressed state for years after that, and she's never really forgiven herself. She is perfect once again, and has been for many, many years. She has not tasted human blood since 1544." Tanya smiled over at Kate, who was contained and happy once again.

"This method will help us greatly, but what if the people of Forks ask us to kill, like the villagers had asked you to? We would need to have somebody trustworthy and controlled to do it. Carlisle is good, but he could never withstand drinking a human. But somebody with our eyes would have to do it, to show the change. Tanya, I know this is something that is hard to agree to, but if it came to it, would you do the drink for us? You are old, over a thousand years. Could we trust you?" I spoke quickly, and Tanya's eyes widened in disbelief when I asked her.

She took a quick, lithe breath. "Cousin, because I know I would be able to control my thirst thereafter, I will agree. But only if it comes to that. It is because I love my family and friends far to much that I agree to such things as this." She reached out and hugged me with great force. When she released me, she hugged Bella, Alice, and Jasper, too. They seemed to be in great shock by what had just come down.

"You are a great person, Tanya, for agreeing to such a dangerous thing. I hope the people of Forks have enough sense to not go that far by sacrificing a human, but we never know. We shall start teaching them at the start of next month, which should give them enough time to discover what we really are. I feel we should let our charade slide drastically, and be our true selves, acting like vampires. That will speed up their discovery." Bella was hopeful now that we had found a way to end this without leaving Forks.

"Yes, Bella. That we should." Alice agreed.