I stared at Alice. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. It was just…just…impossible! No! They'd told me I had no family, all my family was dead! They'd told me I'd had one great aunt but that she'd died a long time ago! I started to think of what the wardens—or so I called the owners of the orphanage—had told be about my family.
My mother had no siblings and neither had my father. My grandmother on my father's side, Cynthia, had had a sister—Mary something—but she'd died before she had! Where did Alice come in my family tree? I was waiting for Alice to scream "GOTCHA!" in my face but, looking at her expression, I knew she was a thousand percent serious.
"Alice, you're my…aunt?" I had to force the word out.
"Great aunt, technically," she said matter-of-factly.
"Great aunt!?!" I screamed jumping up from the bed. Even more impossible!
"How? How, Alice!?! How can you be my great aunt!?! My great grandmother is long dead as are my parents and you're telling me that you're my great aunt!?!" This was insane. I wasn't coherent. I didn't know what to think.
"You can't be more than twenty years old, Alice! And—and—and…" Those were the last words I said. The excitement was too much for me. The next thing I saw was darkness.
"Is she coming around, Carlisle?" I heard a familiar voice ask in the darkness.
"She'll open her eyes soon, Jasper," another familiar voice answered. "No doubt she can probably hear us now."
"Jasmine?" I felt a cold hand press to my forehead. "Are you awake?"
I wanted to answer these voices to tell them I was fine, but I couldn't find the muscles to open my mouth or my eyes.
"Wait a go, Alice," a beautiful voice said. The sentence was full of spite; the words were colder than ice. "I bet the Volturi will just be dying to burn us all now."
Now I wanted to find the muscles in my arms to be able to punch the face that this spite came from, I didn't like people insulting Alice.
"You think I was planning to have this happen, Rose?" Alice didn't sound like her usual perky, happy self. The voice was full of venom; it might not have even be Alice at all! "I don't want her damned to this soulless, eternal life! I just wanted to get to know her! She's my niece, Rosalie! I simply had to meet her!" Alice started crying tearlessly again, from the sound of it. I tried to find my muscle to be able to sit up and comfort her but my body was still frozen from shock.
"Well, I suppose there's no way to keep this from her now," Rosalie was snickering. "This will be the second time our family has been the source of a human knowing the truth! I doubt the Volturi will stick around to listen this time, Alice! Who cares if Aro treasures you like a gem, he'll destroy you the second they find out!"
"Stop it, Rosalie!" someone screamed. I remembered how to open my eyes in time to see that it had been me.
"What did you say?" Rosalie seemed stunned. Not angry just…stunned.
"I told you to stop it!" I screamed again. "It was not Alice's fault! I was the one who suspected. I was the one who asked. I was the one that figured out your big secret! Don't blame it on Alice. So what if Alice is part of my family? What is the big deal? No one's gonna kill you for being my aunt, Alice!"
"Jasmine…sweetie…" Bella was trying to tell me something but she, firstly, couldn't find the right words and secondly, Edward put his hand gently over her mouth and Renesmee tugged at her skirt as if to hold her back.
"No," Jasper shook his head. "We promised to be the ones to tell her if or when the time came. Carlisle?" Jasper turned to his adoptive father. "Has the time come?"
Carlisle Cullen sighed.
"I think it has, Jasper." He walked over to his son and placed one hand on his shoulder and one on Alice's. Carlisle and Esme pecked Jazz and Alice's foreheads for encouragement and motioned the rest of the family to go out of the house. They stepped outside one by one and were entering the forest—past the large river and past the large meadow they called a backyard—in less than a blink of an eye.
"Woah!" I screamed. "Alice! How did they do that?"
But Alice stayed frozen in place with her head looking down, her expression ashamed.
"Jasper, did you see that? That was amazing! That was astonishing! That was—that was—" I couldn't think of anything. Again, I needed better words.
Jasper picked me up by the waist and sat me down next to him and Alice on the Cullens' sofa.
"Jasmine, I'm so sorry!" Alice started to sob tearless sobs again. She put her head in her hands and her body shook with the tears she should have been shedding. When she finally looked up, her face was dry but it felt like venom had been injected straight into my heart when Alice looked like that. It was so painful seeing her this way, I couldn't believe it. The look wasn't human anymore.
"For what, Alice, for what?" I asked her. I put my hands around her neck and looked to Jasper for support. He had Alice's same look on his face. I extended my other arm and put it around his neck sealing both of them in a large, awkward hug.
"Jasmine…do you remember the dream you had the other day?" Jasper asked me.
"Why, yes," I said. "The one where you and your family were er—um—"
"Vampires," he said, finishing the sentence for me.
"Right," I mumbled. "But what does that have to do with anything? It's not like you, Alice, Carlisle, Esme, Bella, Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, and—" I forced myself to say the last name "—Renesmee are…are…"
"Jasmine," Alice said more calmly. I could still see the pain it was going to cause her to say what she wanted to say.
More likely she doesn't want to say it, I thought
"Jasmine," Alice continued, "we ARE vampires."