A/N: Back again! Yes, it was pretty quick, although I have to warn you... the chapter is pretty short (compared to all the others)
There are actually two reason why this update is there so fast:
1) I have been waiting to type this particular part ever since chapter 10!
2) I didn't have the patience to wait for my beta to send me the chapter -.-'
Which basically means, that this chapter is not betaed and I apologize for that but I already have this done since sunday and I actually wanted to update right then and there, but the dearet fish insisted on betaing it despite the fact that she was busy, which eventually resulted in me not getting to update.
And since I have been a pretty crappy updater these last few months, I decided not to wait for her since I'm not a patient person at all and I am already typing the next one ( which is almost done)
Alright, before you guys go on and read the chapter I'm gonna make a quick answering round:
lishthefish- Love you loads and really appreaciate your work :D I'm pretty sure that everyone else does too, otherwise they would have to deal with my sometimes, quite crappy English skills
McAliceBonesPotter 'red head (wasn't your penname once shorter? ;P)- I really, really admire your enthusiasm. You once said that 'you know that your reviews are meaningless' or something along those lines and I'm just gonna tell you right now that they're not. I really love reading them and I appreciate it very much that you take the time to review. I think I will be quite upset if you ever stop reviewing
deathfearsnone- Ah yes. I'm sorry if my incapability to update regularly has been giving you the impression that I stoped typing :O I do not intend to do such a thing- especially not since I have all of you guys who are faithfully reading my story and making me update again.
kels-Alice-Cullen- Once again a very, very nice review that made me grin like the idiot I sometimes am :) I'm quite honoured (or is it honored? I don't even know) that you think so highly of me. I'm trying to be the best writer I can be and it's definitely worth it when I see that people are enjoying the outcome of my maniac typing.
And last but not least: Starfishseason- I think I mentioned it before to you that I loe your penname, but I ahve to say it again: I love it! Of course, I do with me being 'Star' and my faithful beta/partner in crime being the 'Fish'. Both of us feel oddly proud, despite the fact that we are probably not even the reason of that name (Sometimes you just have to go with wishful thinking) Anyway, thank you for recommending my story to your friend- a friend who never read Fanfiction at that. I feel midly guilty though that she is apparently now reading so much that she doesn't get anything done -.-' hehehe sorry about that... still I am happy to have gained another reader and as you can see your very subtle hint has led me to update before Christmas.
Alright, now you can go on and read :D
Bella POV
"Mother? Why is father taking Amarantha with him?" I asked the tall woman next to me.
She gave me a sad smile.
"He wants her to learn some new magic with him," she explained softly.
"And what about me? Doesn't he want me to learn with me?"
"Oh, he wants to but I wanted to learn with someone as well, so I asked your father if it was okay if he only took Amarantha with him and I would keep you."
She now knelt down, looked at me and smiled brightly.
I knew that she was lying but I smiled back at her anyway.
"Amarantha!" I called, when I saw the carriage coming to a halt in front of our house.
I dashed down the stairs as fast as I could and ran out on the street.
The young woman that descended the carriage, smiled when she saw me and I couldn't help but grin back.
She had changed a lot since we had last seen each other, which of course had to be expected since we hadn't seen each other in the last 10 years.
As soon as her feet hit the ground she ran toward me and hugged me tightly.
"I missed you so much, Mel. I can't even begin to tell you how much I missed you," she whispered to me and let out a happy giggle.
I smiled at her words and felt how tears started to run down my cheeks.
"I missed you too," I replied and continued crying happy tears.
"You can not get married to a mortal!"
"I can and I will," I snapped back at my father.
"No, you will not. I forbid you to see this man ever again," he roared.
"I don't care what you say. I am going to marry him and there is nothing you can do about it."
"Melantha, why can't you be more like your sister? Do you see her running off with some human?"
I scoffed at that. "Actually, I think I recall how Amarantha and the other prince had gotten along quite well. If I'm not mistaking, they are both at the port together right now."
Now, he really did let out a roar that caused the earth to shake the tiniest bit.
"What did I ever do to deserve this punishment?" he mumbled.
"Other fathers would be happy to know that their daughter is getting married to a prince. At least I will be taken good care of."
"I can take care of you and your sister myself," he spat.
"I do not recall you doing such thing for me," I replied and then turned to walk out of the room.
The body of a dead woman lay on the bed in front of me.
"I couldn't save her," I whispered, when I heard how someone entered.
Amarantha put a comforting hand on my shoulder.
"Sometimes things are just not meant to work," she said to me.
"I know, but I didn't only failed to save her life. She is pregnant, even if she hadn't known that."
Amarantha didn't reply to that but I knew that she was shocked by these news.
"Her child died as well?" she then asked quietly.
I placed my hand on the woman's womb and searched for any sign of life. The little spark I'd felt when I discovered her pregnancy was still there.
"No, not yet," I stated,"But it's not only one child."
"Twins?"
"No, triplets."
Amarantha looked at me for a long time. Her thoughts were going wild, but eventually we both came to one and the same solution.
I scrunched up my nose. The familiar smell of hospital entered my nose.
We'd definitely spent too much time in this place.
The pain I felt in my head told me that it was probably for the best.
I carefully opened my eyes and much to my surprise I was not met with blinding light.
It was dark in the room and quiet.
The only thing I could hear was the even breathing that came from my left side.
Thanks to the bond, I knew that it was Chris who was in the room with me.
I sat up slowly in my bed ignoring the throbbing ache in my head.
I didn't even know where that came from.
Resting my aching head on my knees, I tried to remember the events that had taken place before we somehow landed here.
I remembered vaguely a sobbing Jasper and an ashed door. The way to the deserted building in which we had hoped to find the boys was also still more or less fresh in my mind.
But after that things started to blur a little.
Irina had been there, that much was clear and I was pretty sure to have seen the janitor and the secretary as well.
Then the events hit me like a speeding train.
Mr. Volturi entering the room. The curse marks on Edward and Dylan.
All of us going to the astral plane. A spell that Aro Volturi had put on us and made Chris and I see the memories of his mother or mothers. I wasn't sure. There had been some kind of conversation about that and I had a flashback concerning that particular topic, but nothing concrete really to explain the situation with Aro's heritage.
Then there had been this cave...
The cave. Edward.
Was he okay? I didn't remember anything in that area. Who had taken us to the hospital? Probably Laurent and Ms. Carmina. Was Edward in the hospital as well?
I decided that it couldn't harm if I snug out and looked.
I quietly slipped out of the bed, briefly wondering who had put me into yoga pants, and tiptoed over to the door.
I turned around to look over at Chris' bed, but she hadn't heard anything.
She just turned around and let out a sigh.
I slipped out of the room and closed the door behind me, careful not to make any noise.
Glancing around the corridor, I quickly came to notice that there was no one but me there.
At the far left I saw a nurse passing by, but she didn't notice me. She was too busy directing the floating bedsheets in front of her.
Now that I was outside it actually came to my mind that I had no clue where to look for Edward.
I breathed out a sigh and leaned against the door behind me.
Maybe I should think I plans through next time.
I turned and was about to slip back into my room, when I heard a few familiar voices closing in.
I quickly dove into the room but left the door open a bit to enable me to listen in on the conversation.
Yes, eavesdropping was bad, but I was pretty sure that I had heard my name and Chris'.
"How exactly do you expect that to work, Laurent?" I heard a male voice hiss. I didn't know that particular voice, but the person that answered was definitely Laurent.
"Simple. You just let me continue my work and don't get in my way."
"Do you honestly think that you are going to continue to work like this after this major fiasco?"
"It wasn't our f-" I recognized the voice of Ms. Carmina, but she was interrupted.
"It was a hole in the security. We can't afford mistakes like that. Isabella and Christabel have to be safe at all times and what happened tonight was definitely not safe."
The voice were now right beside my door, but they didn't make a move to get inside.
They didn't even notice me peeking out.
"If you people hadn't made us go through an unnecessarily long process before we actually got to-"
"One of you could have stayed behind. Or you could have left them with better protection. This had been a close call, we almost lost everything."
"Well, we stepped in at the right moment and saved everything, so maybe you should just cool down Amun. I don't even know what's going on with you. Last time I checked, you weren't our superior," Ms. Carmina snapped.
"Don't think that you are better than me now only because you have been working together with Laurent."
"Oh, I am better than you," Ms. Carmina replied bitterly.
"Is that so? I don't supposed that you are referring to the fact that you, Alicia, are an abandoned demon princess, right? As far as I remember, you lost that title, the second you chose to betray your family-"
"That's enough," Laurent barked and I flinched back slightly in my little hiding place.
"Amun, when are the others going to arrive?"
"I believe they should be here within the next hour."
"Then please go and welcome them. Alicia, you go and get Carlisle and I'll take care of a few eavesdropping girls."
His gaze immediately came to rest on me, causing me to flinch back and bump into another body.
"Should we run back to our beds and act as if we're fast asleep?" Chris asked quietly, while all three adults now turned their gazes to us.
They all heard Chris' question and while Ms. Carmina looked amused, Amun wore a slight frown on his face.
Amun was a rather tall and statuesque man with very dark hair and matching eyes. His skin had a slightly sandy complexion leading me to think that he must be Arabic or something.
"We could try and hope that he'll buy it," I answered, looking at Laurent while saying that.
He quirked an eyebrow at me and wore a slightly amused expression as well.
"Let's go then," Chris instructed and yanked on my arm.
Both of us quickly hopped into our beds and and threw the covers over our heads.
When Laurent entered the room he must have decided to humor us.
He crossed the room and took a seat between both our beds.
He didn't say anything and neither did Chris or I. After a few minutes it started to get ridiculous.
"How did you know where to find us and how did you even get there?" I finally asked, when the silence became too much for me.
"It wasn't really that hard," Laurent answered. "I came home and none of you were there, but judging by the chaos that you have left you must have been there. I tried to track you down, but your gifts are not easy to sense and your friends had been all over the place. The only one that seemed to be unmoving was Mr. Hale and when I found him, I also found the note that Irina had left for you.
When I got to the conference building I met Ms. Carmina and the gate was still open so we simply followed."
"Ms. Carmina? How did she get there first?" Chris asked in wonder. Both of us sat up in our beds.
"She went to talk to Carlisle and there she must have met your friends."
"Where are Edward and Dylan?" Chris and I asked at the same time.
Laurent looked first at me and then at Chris. "They are both in the room to your left. Mr. Hale is in an isolated room at the top floor."
"What is wrong with Jasper?" I asked worriedly, remembering his outburst all to well.
"He is fine. From what I could gather the two of you wore him out with your constantly changing emotions. Or maybe you were feeling too much so that he couldn't handle it. I'm not exactly sure, but it seems like something must have been opened that had been closed tightly before. It's an expansion of his gift, but unfortunately he is not ready to deal with it yet."
"What does that mean?" Chris asked.
Laurent tilted his head to the side and seemed to be in deep concentration.
"His empathic ability has taken on a new dimension. I've never really seen anything like it. I've only met one other empath so far and she had to make physical contact to be truly sensing other people's emotions although she couldn't influence them as much as he can.
"His range has widened- almost the whole campus is within his range now. Also there seems to be a new aspect of his gift. He doesn't know it yet, but it seems like it's not only human emotions that are making their way through his mind."
"What else is there? Trees?" Chris sounded disbelieving.
"That's part of it."
"Is it our fault?" I mumbled, feeling bad as soon as I thought about Jasper's expression when we had last seen him.
"No, it was bound to happen sooner or later. You just exhilarated the process and caught him off guard."
That did not make me feel better in the slightest but I nodded anyway, not replying to that.
All of us stayed silent for a moment.
I leaned back into the pillows of my bed, feeling exhausted.
So much had happened and now I felt like I could sleep for days.
"Are you ever gonna tell us what all of this is about?" Chris wondered after a little while.
"What are you talking about?"Laurent asked back.
"First, we get an acceptance letter with a mind controlling spell on it. Then we find dead animals and giant spiders in our rooms. After that one of the people on campus was killed right after talking to us about mysterious stuff that no one understood. Then we find something that suspiciously sounds like a prophecy.
"To make everything worse, we are being watched by a bunch of weirdos and one of our classmates tried to kill us. And last but not least, said classmate kidnaps our friends and it turns out that she did it on behalf of the school's principal, who seems to be more than just a little crazy and put some kind of spell on us that now enables us to see every little thing that had happened in the life of his mother or mothers- who the hell knows."
Laurent stared at her, looking mildly panicked while she was talking.
"He put a spell on you? What exactly does that spell do?"he demanded right away, ignoring Chris' statement completely.
"It seems like I can see the memories of Melantha," I told him.
"And I see Amarantha's," Chris added.
"What have you seen so far?"
"A few things, but nothing too much worth mentioning really. Well, it is but still..."
"Hey, I thought Melantha and Amarantha were supposed to be Heaven and Hell," I stated, getting to think this through for the first time.
"Umm... yes?" Chris answered, trying to catch on on my thoughts.
"Then how is it possible that they are Aro's mothers or whatever it is now?"
Chris hummed thoughtfully.
"Well, if they are indeed the the creatures of witches and demons, shouldn't they be everybody's mothers? But then again, it doesn't make sense, because I saw Aro as a child in one of the flashbacks..." Chris let her voice trail off.
"The story about Heaven and Hell that you were being taught in school is wrong," Laurent commented and got up from his chair, starting to pace around.
Both Chris and I looked at each other in question and then turned our gazes to Laurent's pacing figure.
"I'm not supposed to tell you the story. He insisted on doing it himself," he mumbled.
"Tell us what?" I asked carefully.
Laurent stopped for a moment to look at me with a blank expression.
"What this is all about," he said flatly.
I stared at him in confusion just when the door suddenly opened.
"Does anyone mind explaining to me why you are all sitting here in the dark?" I heard Ms. Carmina ask, but I couldn't look at her because the light that came form the hallway blinded me.
I had barely noticed that the light had been off in the room, since I had been able to see enough in the dark and apparently neither Chris nor Laurent had had a problem with the darkness either.
"I brought you some visitors," she added when nobody answered her.
I blinked a few times until I could actually see Ms. Carmina standing in the doorway. But she was alone.
I looked at her with raised eyebrows.
"Well, I kinda lost them when we passed the room of the two Cullen boys. If I just heard Carlisle correctly, then you are allowed to get out of your beds and join them."
She didn't need to tell me that twice.
Without a second look at anyone I was out of my bed and bursting into the next room.
The group of people in there looked up-startled by my abrupt appearance.
Both Edward and Dylan were sitting in a bed, looking a bit pale but other than that quite alright.
I ignored the others sitting on chairs around them and dashed toward Edward.
"I was so worried about you," I instantly started to sob when I tripped into his arms.
He started to stroke my hair soothingly.
"Calm down, Bella. Everything's alright," he murmured.
I only whimpered in response.
"Bella, you sound like a baby," Chris yawned from somewhere behind me.
I turned and wanted to glare at her, but when I caught sight of her I noticed that I had been missing something when we were sitting in the dark.
"When did you do that?" I asked her in shock.
She looked at me with raised eyebrows, obviously confused what I was talking about.
Everyone in the room turned their attention to Chris.
"What the hell happened?" Dylan demanded immediately and attempted to get out of his bed.
"Dylan!" Carlisle warned him calmly from his place next to his bed.
"But-"
"No."
"Chris, what did you do?" Alice asked in shock.
Meanwhile Chris looked at all of us with a confused expression.
Then I suddenly remembered when this had happened and I calmed down.
I turned to look at Edward, who seemed to be the only one who hadn't be surprised. In fact he looked like he felt guilty.
Chris looked at him as well and her expression changed to one of understanding and her hands went up to her hair.
Her now short, badly cut hair.
She looked sad for moment but then sighed and shrugged.
"If that is the only mark on me, I guess I can live with it," she said and looked at Carlisle meaningfully.
Carlisle looked at her and then at me with a half smile. He looked tired which I could understand only all too well.
"No, you don't. Bella on the other hand..." he let his voice trail off.
I frowned at him, not knowing what he was talking about.
I thought back and tried to remember if there had been anything to cause any kind of marks on my body.
Then I remembered the moment, when Chris had distracted Victoria and I had attempted to somehow rescue Dylan, who was more or less unconscious on the floor.
Despite the fact that Chris had burned James' wand to ashes, he still managed to defeat himself.
He'd had this strange knife attached to his leg- just like Victoria- which seemed to have some kind of magical power on it's own. I wasn't sure about that.
I was fairly sure though that I dodged his tries to injure me and wrapped the water bubble around his head before he could have done any serious damage. But then again it had been a pretty intense situation and my physical pain had been the last thing that I had been worried about.
Just then the door opened and Esme stepped in with Rose trailing behind her.
Only now I truly noticed that they hadn't been in the room with us.
"Their parents are currently talking to the nurse upstairs. Rose wanted to see-"
Esme was cut short when Rose shot forward and pulled me into a tight hug. Then she quickly hugged Edward, Dylan and Chris as well.
All I could do was stare at her in surprise, especially when I noticed her red- rimmed eyes and the occasional sniff.
She didn't look as confident as she usually did.
"I don't care what Alice says, next time you will just all stay locked in a room," she chocked out before she went over to Emmett and let him pull her unto his lap.
I looked at Alice, who wore the same exhausted expression as everyone did and also seemed to be worried. When she caught my gaze, she attempted to smile but the usual brightness of her smile was missing.
"I'm not really expecting there to be a next time," Chris mumbled, "How many times do you think that Aro can pull that one?"
"Aro?" Esme asked in wonder, probably voicing the thoughts of everyone apart from Ms. Carmina and Laurent. "Aro, as in Aro Volturi?"
Chris bit her lip and her eyes darted over to where our two rescuers stood. She didn't know whether or not she had been supposed to share this information.
I understood her confusion. With all the secrecy and half-truths there was just no way to know what was supposed to be said and what not.
"Yes, Mom. Our beloved principal is a psychopathic weirdo," Dylan sighed , wincing when Esme hugged him closely to her chest.
"Aro," Carlisle whispered thoughtfully. "I never... Where is he?"
He looked at Laurent when he asked this and got of his chair swiftly.
"He's gone," Laurent stated calmly, but I noticed his fist balling up.
"What?" Carlisle exclaimed abruptly, causing everyone to jump, "What do you mean he's gone? Alicia said she would be taking care of this, so why is the IDM just letting him go? Is it not considered a crime what he's done to my sons? Have you seen the deep cut on Bella's waist? The scar is going to be permanent, thanks to some kind of curse."
My hands slowly inspected the right side of my waist. I hadn't noticed that it was patched up, mainly cause I couldn't see it.
It didn't hurt, thankfully.
"I already informed my superiors about the situation. Of course, we are not letting Aro get away just like that... he does have some explaining to do after all. But he fled and we don't know where he is. Until we know for sure, there is nothing the IDM can do except look for him," Ms. Carmina told Carlisle in a calm voice.
Carlisle didn't seem to be listening to her. Instead he was pacing around the room muttering something under his breath that sounded like he was pondering on something.
I I leaned back on Edward's bed and slowly let my eyes drift closed.
If this was already this exhausting to me, I didn't want to know what I felt like once I knew what this whole thing was about.
I drifted off hearing the voices of the others every now and then until I fell into a complete dreamless slumber.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX
"You're an idiot, Laurent," I heard a voice say.
My eyes popped open and I sat up in my bed. At the end of my bed sat someone that I didn't know and had my foot in his lap.
I abruptly pulled my leg away from him and looked around the room, confused and startled.
Laurent was sitting in the corner on a chair with his arms and his legs crossed and a not-so-happy expression on his face.
He turned his head into my direction and his scowl somewhat disappeared from his face.
"Good morning, Isabella," he greeted me calmly.
My eyes flitted back and forth between him and the young man on my bed.
He seemed to be something around twenty, I couldn't really tell.
His skin had a beautiful russet tone and he had long silky black hair that he wore in a ponytail.
"I'm sure that this is a little confusing to you," Laurent spoke. "The weird-looking guy on your bed, invading your personal space like that is Jacob Black."
"Umm... hello?" I said to the guy on my bed, who was scowling now at Laurent.
He then turned toward me and smiled so brightly at me that I had to blink a few times. Was it normal for someone to have teeth that white?
"I'm very pleased to meet you, Isabella. I can't believe that I actually got this lucky so early," he said quickly and grabbed my foot again, placing it in his lap.
"Er.. Mr. Black-" I started.
"Call me Jacob, I'm not that much older than you," he interrupted.
"Okay then, Jacob. What are you doing with my foot?"
He furrowed his brows, probably confused as to why my voice slightly rose and then locked back at my foot in his lap.
Then he suddenly seemed to understand something and quickly pushed my leg away and got off my bed, mumbling millions of apologies.
"I'm really sorry, I wasn't thinking. I just wanted to do my job and got kinda carried away. Oh god, I'm so sorry..." he kept on rambling until a sudden growl cut him off.
I looked over to Chris' bed and saw her scrunching up her face in anger.
"Who does this senseless rambling belong to?" she hissed and slowly sat up in her bed, looking pissed.
"Umm.. that would be me. Jacob," Jacob replied a little timidly.
Chris stared at him than briefly looked at Laurent before she continued staring at Jacob.
"And what the hell are you doing in here, disturbing my much needed sleep with idiotic mumbling?"
"I'm sorry, I just..."
Laurent had gotten up and put a hand on Jacob's shoulder to silence him.
"Chris, maybe you shouldn't be so rude to your savior," he stated.
"My what?" she asked sceptically.
"If I remember correctly, it was you and Ms. Carmina who had saved us," I interfered.
"Yes, but that was not what I meant. Jacob here has remarkable skills when it comes to animal spirits."
"So?" Chris asked, waving her hand impatiently.
"So he is able to do remarkable things, like projecting his animal spirit into the astral plane to save two damsels in distress," Laurent told her and sent Chris a stern look.
"I'm afraid, I'm not following you," Chris admitted, knitting her eyebrows together.
"I'm the wolf," Jacob explained bluntly.
The wolf?
Ah, the wolf.
"The animal spirit that you had encountered on the astral plane," I said to Chris.
"You mean the wolf that had been about to eat me and Alice?"
"I wasn't about to eat you," Jacob argued.
"Right, you were just trying to take a bite."
"I had been looking for you, because Laurent was worried that you were stuck."
"Yeah, yeah," Chris waved him off. "That doesn't explain why you are here now, disturbing my peaceful state of sleeping."
Jacob turned to Laurent with an exasperated expression on his face but only got a shake of the head as an answer.
It was definitely pointless to argue with Chris in that moment.
Jacob sighed and then got back on my bed to grab my foot once more. I really started to wonder what exactly it was that always made him grab my foot.
"I hope you are not trying to live out your foot fetish with my little sister," Chris grumbled and sunk back into her pillows.
Jacob chuckled. "No, I'm not a fan of feet actually. I'm just trying to get my work done.
"And what does my foot have to do with that?" I asked him.
"Nothing really, it's your ankle that I am interested in," he replied and ran his fingers gently over my ankle. It tickled a bit and caused me to shiver.
"Ticklish?"
I nodded.
"Sorry." He grinned and drew out a wand.
I quickly moved into a cross-legged position and stared at Jacob with wide eyes.
"What exactly do you intend to do? My ankle is fine just in case you wanted to heal it."
"Actually, I'm trying to break the seal that is located on your ankle. Now give me back your foot."
Chris snorted in the background, while I did as he asked.
"How can there be a seal on my ankle? Laurent placed it on my back," I asked curiously and my eyes darted quickly over to where Laurent sat with crossed arms once more.
Jacob let out a husky laugh.
"Laurent, always thinks he's an expert on seals but in reality he's pretty wacky when it comes to that."
Laurent scowled at Jacob now.
"What makes you say that?"
Jacob looked at me with a grin on his face.
"Apart from the fact that I am indeed an expert when it comes to seals?" he turned his attention back to my foot and traced patterns with his wands on my ankle.
"Laurent told me how he had noticed a difference in the magical working of you and your sister. Your sister's magic is moving faster in her system then yours. He just discarded it, saying that her body was probably working on breaking the seal she already had on her, but of course if you think about it... it's more likely that you have a seal placed on you as well."
Jacob whispered a few words that I couldn't comprehend before he continued talking to me.
"If someone managed to place a seal on your sister in the past, the possibility that you have one on you as well is pretty high.
"Seeing the seal, I can tell you that it's pretty old and must have been made when you were little, which actually makes me wonder what exactly you did back then to get those seals..." Jacob's voice trailed off and he continued whatever he did on my ankle with a thoughtful expression
I frowned and turned to look at Chris who had sat up in her bed again.
"Mom and Dad are not magical," Chris stated, but there was doubt in her voice which was pretty clear to hear.
I bit my lip, deep in thought.
"All done," Jacob suddenly exclaimed happily and got up.
"Now turn around and lift your shirt, so I can free you from Laurent's bad work."
"What? No!", I exclaimed.
Jacob looked at me in confusion.
"There was a reason Laurent sealed my animal spirit. If Chris or I loose control it'll break through," I explained hastily.
An agreeing hum came from Laurent.
"I don't think that you should do anything else. We shouldn't let them carry the full load of their abilities without any training," he said to Jacob.
"But then HE will do it and I won't get a chance to impress with my skills again," Jacob protested.
I only lifted an eyebrow at him as well as Laurent and Chris.
"What? Do you know how rarely there is a seal for me to break?" he defended himself.
Chris decided to ignore that and asked something else instead,"Who exactly is 'he'?"
Laurent somewhat smiled at her.
"'He' is the one that will introduce himself to you and explain everything to you. He should be here already so it'll only be a matter of time."
"Is there anything that you actually can tell us?" Chris asked in annoyance.
I understood her feelings all too well.
I didn't know where to start and where to stop asking question and yet all we got were mysterious responses that didn't get us anywhere.
"Actually, there is," Laurent said in a pleasant voice," We can't grow your hair back because the knife that was used to cut it was cursed. Just like Bella's injury has to heal on it's own, your hair will have to grow back the traditional way."
I wondered if Laurent valued his life or if he was just so confident in his own abilities that he thought that he would get away with provoking Chris?
Chris glared at our teacher, who looked mildly amused .
I decided to interrupt their little moment.
"Okay, maybe you can answer this question: How did you manage to just disappear in front of our eyes last week? You know, when we all stumbled into your house and you just took off without even stepping out the door."
Jacob rolled his eyes as if he already knew the answer and didn't like it much.
Laurent just smiled at me.
"The same way, I am able to tell you that Mrs. Carmina will stumble in a few seconds and will deliver us some rather unfortunate news."
And as if on cue, the door opened and Ms. Carmina nearly fell into the room.
She steadied herself and set her eyes on Laurent, breathing heavily.
"He's not here anymore. He took Amun, Zafrina and Eleazar with him and is now attempting to track Aro down," she informed him.
"I know," Laurent replied with a sigh," I also know that he will not return for quite some time. I'm afraid we'll have to send the twins into their vacations without any explanations."
"Vacation? What vacation?" Chris asked immediately.
"Oh, I was just referring to the summer vacation. It's going to start soon and I'm afraid that there will be no answers for you until after this break."
"What? But that is not fair?" I protested," Why are you not just telling us what's going on?"
"Because it is not my place to do so and certain information is was not even given to me-2
"What, I thought you were a D-level guardian? Shouldn't you know just about everything then?" Jacob barged in.
"Shut up, wolfie," Ms. Carmina hissed and yanked him out of the room.
"So you do know exactly what is going on?" I asked Laurent and narrowed my eyes at him.
"I know a few things, but I promised to let him do it himself. It means a to to him," Laurent replied quietly.
"You won't tell us who 'he' is, will you?"
"No, but you will know when you meet him. I sure of that."
I let out a frustrated groan and let myself fall into my pillows.
I heard Chris muttering something that didn't sound too nice and for once, I wished I could hear her only so that I could agree with every word she said.
"Don't be upset. It's probably for the best. That way you'll have a clear head for your finals. You should just concentrate on getting better for now and doing your school work. Everything else will be taken care of later, alright?"
Neither of us answered so Laurent spoke up once more.
"Maybe you should also get a proper haircut, Christabel," he noted.
The pillow that flew through the air, didn't hit him, because he suddenly vanished again causing Chris pillow to just fall on the floor.
"He's such a..."
She cussed under her breath for several minutes, while I just let my concentrated on falling back asleep. There wasn't really anything else I could do.
XxXxXxXxXxXxXxX
The door to my bedroom opened abruptly and none other than Chris stormed into the room, interrupting me and Edward in our study session.
"That is what you call studying?" Chris asked in disbelief.
"The book fell down," I answered defensively and pointed at the book that was lying on the floor.
"That totally doesn't explain why you are sitting on Edward's lap and have been licking his face until a few seconds ago."
Edward snickered quietly to himself until I shot a dark look at him
Then I returned my attention to my sister.
"What do you want anyway? Weren't you supposed to get a proper haircut?"
Chris was wearing a sunhat on her head, her hair hidden beneath it.
I didn't even know how she managed to make that look not as ridiculous as it should but I didn't want to know either.
Ever since we had gotten out of the hospital five days ago, she had been wearing either some kind of head or she knotted her hair into a knot to prevent the world from seeing her badly cut hair.
Edward was feeling bad about the whole thing, despite the fact that Chris hadn't even addressed the matter once.
He once attempted to apologize to her, but she just turned and left waving him off and telling him to save his breath.
Since then Edward hadn't tried to apologize again, but I saw his gaze drop every time the matter of Chris' hair was addressed. Which was a lot.
Alice insisted on taking Chris to the hairdresser and was awfully pushy about it more so than usual. Chris was being more stubborn than ever, while Dylan tried to reason with both of them.
At first I was a little confused as to why he would get himself involved into this discussion until Edward reminded me that Dylan had a secret obsession with Chris' hair, so this was hard on him as well.
Meanwhile, Rose had been in the hospital almost every minute of her free time. Jasper was still not any better and the whole family was now more or less living in the hospital.
I wondered if Alice took her frustration about not being allowed to see Jasper or even go up and talk to the doctor out on Chris and her hair issue
It would definitely explain the sometimes vicious edge in her voice.
It was really hard for Alice to be separated from Jasper like that and even though Rose kept her updated through text messages, she was still complaining about the hospital staff. The reason why she wasn't allowed to go with Rose was because she wasn't part of the family and not even Carlisle could get Alice the special treatment that she expected to get.
In fact Carlisle had given the instructions not to let Alice in, no matter what.
Alice was of course royally pissed at her father and actually refused to talk to him.
Esme had explained to the rest of us then in a quiet moment that Carlisle had to make this decision to help Jasper get better. Apparently Carlisle had also tried to keep the Hales away from Jasper, but Ms. Hale was not really cooperating in that particular department.
Since, none of the methods Carlisle had tried to get Jasper accustomed to his new ability, he had decided today to let Laurent try.
What exactly Laurent intended to do was unknown to me, but I hoped that it would be helpful for Jasper.
So while Alice was anxiously waiting to hear from her better-half she decided to take Chris to the hairdresser whether she like to go or not.
So while Alice was anxiously waiting to hear from her better-half she decided to take Chris to the hairdresser whether she like to go or not.
Chris reluctantly agreed after various days of people staring at her and some even asking if something was wrong with her.
It seemed that the loss of her hair had made Chris unable of being as confident as she usually was and resulted in her dressing a bit differently
and apparently people noticed.
Well, that's what you get after being a popular part of a display on the fair. I had it worse than Chris though, because people now greeted me and talked to me and even complimented me.
It seemed like the whole school was suddenly hyper-aware of my presence and there was even a group of girls that glared at me every morning when I got into the school building.
It had only been a few days, but I still found it very discomforting.
Anyway, Chris had been supposed to go the hairdresser and now she was standing in my room.
"Well... I told you not to leave that little monster unsupervised. You could have been nice siblings and just tagged along for the sake of my hair," Chris shrieked.
"And I told you that I have to study, because our exams are next week," I replied calmly.
"You aren't even studying."
I rolled my eyes and moved from Edward's lap.
"Instead of making out you should get a cage for that evil pixie," Chris continued.
"Chris, don't you want to show us what went happened?" Edward asked just when Dylan entered my room.
"I can't tell you, I can only show you and I can't show you my hair either," Chris replied when she took notice of Dylan.
"What?" I asked in confusion
"I would show you, but Dylan is here now," she explained.
"What? Am I not allowed to be here?" he asked.
"You are not allowed to see my hair."
"Alright, I'll close my eyes."
Dylan squeezed his eyes shut and Chris tested first if he was truly not looking before she took the hat off.
I frowned in confusion.
Her hair was a bit shorter now but it looked a lot neater. Her hair was now shoulder-length and was cut in layers, which actually looked quite good on Chris.
A single strand was falling into her face and Chris blew it away in annoyance.
"I don't get your problem;" Edward admitted, voicing my thoughts.
"Don't you see it?" Chris asked.
"There is a little red on the tips," Dylan noted.
Chris whirled around to glare at him.
I noticed then that he was right and there was a little red at the tips of Chris' hair, which looked fine to me.
"You weren't supposed to look," she whined now.
"Why not? It looks pretty."
"No, it doesn't."
"It looks fine Chris, really," I reassured her.
"Ugh what do you know anyway?" Chris asked and threw her hands up in exasperation.
"It's read. Freaking red. How am I supposed to live with that?"
"If you don't like it just dye black over it," Edward said dryly.
Chris just stared at him before she stomped out of my room and shut the door to her bedroom loudly.
"Sounds like almost everything is back to normal," Dylan muttered and then left my room as well.
Processing his words quickly I shook my head to myself.
With the dreams that I was having lately, I could definitely say that nothing was back to normal. Nothing at all.
A/N:I'm not sure if you have guessed it on your own, but this is it actually. The chapter before the last :) I've been waiting so long to finish this part and I can't believe that it took me a year to write all this :O
I really have to thank you all for sticking with me like this.
Please, please, please, pleeeeease review and I'll promise to reply.