Chapter 2

VPOV

I paid a visit to my one human friend, Andrew, who was my go-to for preparing fake passports and creating new identities. He was an ideal ally for my kind: he was never one to turn down a thick stack of cash, and never asked questions. He knew what I was, having once lost a sister to a vampire attack. Somehow, he'd pieced the facts together and come up with vampire, recognizing that bears or other savage animals wouldn't drain a body entirely of blood and leave little marks on the neck.

Even so, he didn't seem to hold a grudge. It wasn't as though he could tell anyone about the existence of vampires – who would believe him? Instead, he settled for researching them, and became known for an interest in the paranormal and various mythologies.

Today, I went to him, needing two new passports and birth certificates. He skilfully created our new identities, changing our hair colour to dark brown and picking random eye colours. Two hours later, I was waiting for the sun to go down before I left, and as I waited, I inspected the documents.

They were, as always, perfect. Somehow he'd added very slight age lines to my face, making me look a bit older, and Bella now had dark, navy blue eyes.

I would have to pay him extra for this. I handed over the cash and left, easily jumping from shadow to shadow, making sure I moved too fast for the human eye to see or track. As I ran, I wondered what I'd do when Andrew died. Of course, I could always see if he wanted to become immortal; that way, I'd still have a loyal person on my side, there to fake documents if I needed. On the other hand, I could just keep traveling, not staying in one place long enough to garner attention. It could get tiresome, but then, the world kept changing.

I'd have to see what Bella preferred.

I arrived home to find a note, telling me that Bella had gone out hunting and would be back soon.

True to her word, she was home twenty minutes later and agreed to help me refresh the dye in my hair- over the past few months, the colour had begun wearing off as I washed it and now glimpses of my natural red were showing through. In the bathroom, I faced away from the mirror so as to be surprised how I looked as a brunette. The dye was sickly-sweet scented, some kind of fruit, I thought. I wondered why any human woman would voluntarily have to do this.

An hour later, I was done rinsing the extra dye from my hair. Stepping out of the shower, I looked at my new dark hair in the mirror. It looked almost a perfect match to Bella's hair colour, perhaps a little darker, and I didn't quite recognize myself.

BPOV

Victoria entered the lounge where I was looking at my documents, memorizing my new details. My new birthday was June 10, and I was twenty-two years old. Hair colour, eye colour… easy details, not something I needed to worry about. My bedside table was well-stocked with blue contacts, and they were so dark that when I had them in my eyes looked a deep shade of purple.

I could always tell people that my eyes seemed to change colour with the light, if it came to that.

Victoria seemed to be waiting for me to look up at her, and I did. She was completely brunette, her hair now almost entirely the same shade as mine. I'd looked at her new information too, and it seemed that with a three-year age gap, we were to be sisters.

Two days later, we both put in contacts and headed to the airport. Luckily, the day was gloomy and rainy, heavy dark clouds covering the sky. We didn't have to worry about covering every inch of our skin, which I was grateful for. At the airport, we ducked into the ladies' room to ensure that the contacts were holding up, which they were. I'd spent ninety-nine percent of my life as a human, and somehow I still was fairly well versed in how they operated. I put it down to instinct; I didn't have a lot of human memories. Humans needed the restroom frequently, and I imagined that Victoria would understand the double use: we could duck into a stall, use a compact to check our eyes and refresh contacts while pretending to be human.

One time we'd timed them, from putting them in until they wore off, and we discovered that it took four hours for the venom to completely destroy them. I was surprised that it'd been so long; contacts weren't made of the most solid material, and I had thought they would only take a few minutes to wear off.

We still had plenty of time, and decided to explore the shops and see what we could find to amuse ourselves. In a bookstore, I thought I had a flicker of memory – the store was small and cozy, there were books on and in every available surface and I had a flashback to when I was human, buying a book. I thought that my memory-self was determined and curious, and I wondered why. Was it not just a novel I'd bought?

I dismissed the memory and returned to my current thoughts, fiddling with the dial on my watch to anchor myself to the present.

Victoria was looking around, apparently awed. I wondered just how long she'd been a vampire, and if she'd ever had need of human gadgets or technology, or if she'd even used them.

I realized there was still so much about her that I didn't know.