Thanks to all those who have reviewed. Thanks you joreyna again. Your complements boost my slow confidence and I appreciate it.

The night passed slowly for me as I contemplated the reasons why I would leave. I was not yet lonely, as Edward was sitting in the room with me and listening to my thoughts. If I was completely lonely, he would not even speak to me. I wouldn't have Alice or Emmet to mess around with, or even Esme who loved me. So why should I leave? It was almost impossible to have such a repulsive thought.

I wouldn't leave and that was for certain.

Yet I felt something, deep within the pit of my stomach, within the ocean of reason. I was meant for something else bigger than this family life. I was supposed to be doing something, go somewhere, defeating something. But what was it? Aro held the answer, of that I was certain. I was meant for his plan but…what was his plan?

Too many questions again. I stood up and went to my easel, dabbing a few colors on a tin plate and swirling them until I received a pale color, the color of my skin. My brush inhaled the particles of color and stroked down on the canvas. Edward watched me with fascination as I painted a woman I had often seen in my catatonia dreams. She was much like me, dark hair and petite frame. Yet her eyes were gloriously purple, reaching far into the soul with a small glimmer of light around the pupil. She was dressed in a black gown, her skin glowing, her hair flowing.

"Who is she?" Edward asked.

"I don't know. But I see her often in small glimpses."

He smirked deviously. "Don't tell me you're becoming like Alice."

I returned the smirk. "Though she is something to look up to, I wouldn't dream of it."

I thought for a moment and then decided to ask Edward the question I somewhat dreaded. "Have you known about Heath's relations to immortals?"

"Yes."

"And that is why no one is against him liking me and wishing for a relationship."

He leaned against my bedpost with a sharp exhale of his breath. "He is part of a powerful family in Italy who work very closely with Marcus, Caius and Aro. He is to be one of Aro's close affiliates…though he doesn't know it."

"Is all his family like this?"

"No, only a few. But he has shown promising diligence to his family which is rare to find within this century."

"So I am what he knows and he plans to milk it for what it's worth."

"Precisely."

"And you don't have a problem with this."

He grumbled unintelligible slanders for a minute before answering. "Of course I have a problem with this! We all do…its just that Esme fears you shall not find someone and she is pushing for you to experience love within our realms."

"But, I don't want a relationship."

"Yet you despise being alone."

"Yes." I had to agree to that because I felt it when no one was with me. "Yet I find I am more content with a family and not creating one of my own."

He snickered. "You won't be able to create a family."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"I know." He paused by my painting, shifting his focus back and forth from me to the woman before coming to a conclusion. "This woman that you see is yourself. A morbid creature, she haunts the night but, there is some passion in her eyes. That passion in yours as well."

He brushed a strand from my cheek and left the room to ready himself for school.

We made our way to school, the crisp air biting at our heels though we didn't feel it. Instead, we sensed something else. A present danger.

The wheels screeched, Edward's voice yelled and then the crunching of metal. We all stared at Edward who protectively held Bella in his arms. The sirens squealed, the people were crying, but all I could think of was what he had just done. He had saved her and most likely destroyed our cover.

I turned to Alice.

"Get in the car."

We filed into the car and back home we went. Esme took one look at our faces to understand.

"How could he do this?" Rosalie yelled at the top of her lungs. Emmet tried to comfort her but she shrugged out of his grip. "She will be the ruin of us!"

Esme put up her hand to keep Rosalie's words from tormenting the rest of us. "I'm quite positive that Edward wouldn't do anything to jeopardize our lives."

"Really? Have you seen his dubious fascination with her?"

"He wouldn't turn her if things became serious."

"Oh open up your eyes Esme! You too Alice! She is on the verge of figuring us out! I give it three months as she'll be playing baseball with us!"

She slammed the back door making a crack along the wall. Emmet went after her barely marking the wall with his stumbling anger. Alice and Jasper left up the stairs, leaving me and Esme to stare after them. In a long silence we watched the room grow dim with sunset.

Edward and Carlisle came in to see us staring off into space. Esme informed them of what happened, but I couldn't move. It was the truth. The whole truth lay out in front of us.

"I won't be speaking to her. I'm going to try and ignore her." It would be painful for him to do it but, he would. His hand brushed against my shoulder and he was gone.

I stood staring out the windows, ignoring the soft lull of the TV and the whispers of Carlisle and Esme talking. We all knew he would do his best to keep from talking to her, but there was no way around this one. The scary part for me was that in this entire process, I was losing my best friend and brother.

Bella was alright, as we found out the next day. She was just ticked off at Edward.

"Why is that?"

"Because she is suspicious as to how I reached her so quickly."

"I would be too." I swallowed. "Did you tell her?"

He shot me the most perturbed look. "No."

And for a while, my wonder of Bella was put to rest. He didn't speak to her, held off really is what he did. Edward and I picked up where we left off, bantering and taking odd adventures. However, it wasn't the same. He didn't listen to my thoughts, or read my face the way he used to. His nights with me were increasingly shorter as he left to watch her sleep.

"Stalker." I had muttered when he left me.

That was supposed to be a slander, but he took it with a smirk that reached his eyes.

He had disconnected himself with me completely. I forced a façade for him even though he could have seen around it if he really looked.

And then, one day, he sat down at a different table and motioned to her to come to him. Jealousy, rage, confusion, hurt…all of it swelled up into my heart. I looked to Alice, praying she would do something.

"He tried," was all she offered to me.

I blinked back in their direction and watched them; my eyebrows pulled together, my mouth open in shock. I was about to have an immortal heart attack when he asked her what her theories were as to what he was. Was he serious? Was he really asking her to guess what he was?

"What if I'm not a superhero? What if I'm the bad guy?"

Why, Edward, why? I was screaming at him, begging him to stop. He heard me, I knew he had. But…he was so focused on her that I was suddenly insignificant.

The bell rang and he watched her leave. We lingered back, waiting for the room to be cleared until approaching. Rosalie flipped her hair, hitting Edward in the face and walked out with Emmet by her side. Alice beamed up at him as if nothing had just passed while Jasper stared at the floor.

"Are you on Rosalie's side?" He challenged me.

I was appalled that he would even ask me. And yet, he had reason to ask. If I was with Rosalie, then I was with selfishness…but if I was with Alice then I was backing down.

"You're undecided?"

I knelt my head. "I want you to be happy, Edward. As happy as you can be. If she makes you this way, then I won't stop you. But if there is any way you can stop this, do it."

He rumpled my hair and laughed. "But you know I can't and you're still with me. Amazing." I glanced up at him with my eyes and his eyebrows crumpled. "Your eyes. The purple is becoming your prominent feature."

Off to class he went leaving me alone.

Friday I decided to not go to school. Instead, I stayed home and painted on a wall in an unused room. I was clumsy as a human, spilling paint on my clothes and smudging it on my face but I was content. Edward knocked on the door, his face in aw as he peered up at my mural of a mixture of people from an ancient time I had never been in. I painted them exactly as if I had seen them, each one unique, different, and expressed in such a way to captivate the soul. It was a market of some ancient city, the people buying and selling but the strange thing was, I had painted a vampire in it. I couldn't even recall doing it, but there he was, watching us as we watched him. His head was the only one turned in our direction and all the others were busy with their own business.

"Where did this come from?"

"When Esme sings to me, I picture this as if I was there."

Edward pointed to the vampire. "Who is he?"

I laughed to myself. "Corpus Bareacelli." I had meant it to be a joke and yet it came out as if that was his real name.

"That's oddly specific." Edward was watching my face once more like he used to, but then his attention snapped forward into the present. "Do you want to join me on a little trip to Port Angeles?"

"Stalking again?"

"I just want to make sure she is alright."

I smiled at him. Another façade. "No thanks. I've decided I'm going to paint our family next."

"And where will this be?"

"Downstairs, of course. Esme said I can have the wall behind the piano. It will look quite nice, don't you agree?"

He nodded. "Please don't make me look goofy."

"Don't worry, I will."

He mussed my hair and left. I stared after him with a particular feeling of loneliness. Turning back to my painting, I added a few touches to eyes and hair of random figures. As I watched them on the wall, they came to life, the sounds buzzing into my hair and then…

Come to me, Lillith.
Where did that voice come from? Had I imagined it? No, the man had said it. The vampire.

But that voice…it was so familiar. It was home to me, it was the flutter of my human heart that had once existed. It was…the sensation of a thousand angels singing to me and only me, lifting me up and thrusting me into a time of never ending light, my skin shimmering.

I opened my eyes and found myself in the village, staring up at the vampire of curly dark hair that reached his shoulders, the eyes that twinkled in red. I leaned my head back, inviting him to take me into a hold and kiss me. His cold, dead, stony lips briefly brushed against mine, his fingers tracing my lips with such softness as I had never known.

"Lillith…"

"Corpus."

"Come back to me."

"But how? I no not where to find thee."

"Listen to it…can thou hearest the sound?"

"Sound?"

"Thin own heart…thy heart, Lills. It beats for thee. Listen and thou shalt find it."

I pressed my cheek firmly against his chest, straining to hear the chords of his heart. The people bumped past us but we were as statues in the middle of the road. Nothing could move us from where we were.

"Lilly?"

I flew off the wall, paint dripping from my face and my hair clumped into disarray. Esme stood glaring at me with her arms stiffly at her sides. "Who were you talking to and why were you speaking in that language?"

"What language?"

"Elizabethan language."

"I was speaking?"

She sensed something odd but decided to drop it. "Are you going to paint downstairs?"

"Yes, I was just finishing up here."

She nodded and left me be. But I wasn't alone. Again, I turned my attention to the painting. Surely I had not spoken to that man.

But.

He was so real! I felt him, I was leaning against him! I could feel his love and devotion to me, begging me to come back to him. "Where?" I pleaded with him. His eyes didn't move. "Say where…please?"

Nothing.

"Stupid!" I hissed to myself, shutting the door and stomping off down the two flights of stairs, realizing then that it was midnight and Edward had not come home.