Edward

Two weeks had passed, and I still couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Elizabeth and Bella walking and laughing together in the school corridors. Whatever warmed up the Ice Queen to my little sister, though, didn't work for the rest of us. Emmett didn't care, and Jasper was confident in his wife's common sense. Only Rosalie and I weren't happy about that friendship. Rosalie was jealous and angry because there was a risk that an 'intruder' would once again discover the family secret (and I knew she was referring to 'my' Bella, not the one she had welcomed with open arms in the family and in her heart). Maybe my judgment was clouded by the inner dislike I felt for her, but I couldn't imagine a more unlikely friend for Bella. They were too different in my eyes.

Mick and Elizabeth's table became ours as well. It was the only good thing to have come out of that situation… Thanks to them, we had become virtually invisible. I wished I was virtually invisible to Elizabeth as well, but she seemed to enjoy provoking me every occasion she had. I never met a more litigious creature in my life! And reading her mind wasn't a great advantage with her, because Elizabeth always spoke her mind, one way or another. Mick, on the other hand, was convinced that before the school year was over, Elizabeth would kill me or fall for me. Absurd!

His thoughts showed a deep affection and loyalty for that girl. I wondered why. Maybe Elizabeth hadn't been always like that. Or maybe there was a gentler, less sarcastic side in her that she kept hidden, only for Mick and Bella to see…

My reflections were interrupted by Mick's laugh. Elizabeth, being her usual sweet self, kicked him hard under the table and told him to shut up.

"No I won't. Ouch. That hurt!"

"Serves you right. So, Bella? What is your answer?"

Bella was at loss for words. "I don't know, really. I've never done things like that."

"You know everything about ghosts and supernatural things… and you never had someone read tarots for you?"

"Let's say I had my fair share of bad luck in the past. I'd like to think it's over…"

Emmett pretended to choke on his soda to mask his laugh.

"Come on. I'm good."

Bella shrugged, and she eventually said yes. Rosalie sighed, unhappy.

Elizabeth took out from her schoolbag an old, battered deck of cards, and she started to dispose them in the empty space between her and Bella.

"From where do you want me to start? Usually you go from the past to the future…"

Bella took a deep breath. "Future."

Elizabeth turned a couple of cards. Now we were all staring at her.

"Nice. Don't worry, the bad luck is over… at least in the present and immediate future. Really good cards, Bella, under every aspect... Do you have a boyfriend you never told me about?"

Bella gave a look at Jasper. She was wondering if she could tell Elizabeth the truth. After he smiled and quietly nodded to her, Bella raised her hand and pointed at him. Elizabeth looked at him as well.

"Well, that explains lots of things… you two make a good couple, by the way. Ok, past. You ready?"

"Have fun."

Elizabeth smiled, but her smile soon vanished. She was whispering the names of the cards to herself but, judging by what I was hearing in her mind, they weren't good cards. And then she turned the last card… She kept looking from the card to Bella, and the other way around.

"What the hell happened to you before being adopted?" she asked her. The surprised, almost scared tone in her voice alarmed us all.

"I… told you about my biological family. We never add up."

"The understatement of the century, I'll say."

She put the card down. The Death.

"You're probably the first person I read the cards to that has this card on her past instead on her future. It's… uncanny."

"I almost died after I turned… sixteen. Got attacked by some wolves. Does it count?"

Bella was frightened. We all were. Elizabeth could have picked that card by chance… but what if she didn't? Alice's face flashed in my mind for a second. What if she…?

"Bella, sorry… I didn't mean to scare or upset you with this…"

"No, it's ok. I put it behind me."

Elizabeth gave her a piercing look, trying to decide if she was telling the truth or not, and then she decided to change topic. She asked Bella about her silver necklace, and Bella told her how it was a gift from his childhood friend Dave, from the period when she lived in the La Push reservation. In return, Elizabeth showed her the bracelet with the carved decorations she always wore, and said it was her great grandmother's.

"She was a Kalderash storyteller. She wrote down all the legends of the tribe. My favorites are the ones about the vampires."

"Bad vampires that the tribe punished with magic curses?" said Bella, asking the question we all had in mind.

"No, actually… to my tribe, or at least to my family, vampires are good."

We all watched her with perplexed look that she interpreted as incredulity towards the well-established cliché of the bad, blood-sucking vampire that lived in coffins and was afraid of crosses and garlic. She revealed herself to know many true things on the subject, like our supernatural speed, how we sparkled 

like diamonds under the sun, or how the color of the eyes changed when we needed to feed. Again, we felt menaced. She knew too much. Right now she thought of these things just like simple legends… but we knew we had to pay extra attention from that moment on.

Bella

I knew Elizabeth was deeply fascinated by the legends of her mother's gypsy tribe, but I had no idea she knew that much about vampires! Thank God she thought everything was just myth, or we would have a serious problem in our hands. Not to mention that Rosalie would tell me the biggest 'Told you so!' an immortal being had ever said to another immortal being because I let her into my life and the life of my family…

While I was still examining her bracelet, her eyes fell on mine. It was a gift Esme and Carlisle had given me for my twentieth birthday, my first as a vampire. It was composed by two thin, rigid circles of gold entwined together with an oval stone in the middle. A stone with the Cullen family crest on it. Everyone had their own: Rosalie had a penchant, the boys a wristband, Carlisle and Esme two rings – their wedding rings.

"It's… very nice," said Elizabeth. "the hand, the lion, the shamrocks… justice, dauntless courage, perpetuity. The chevron means protection… as in protection given to another being."

"Exactly," I said, "It's our family crest. We all wear it." I was really surprised. It didn't happen often that someone could tell me exactly what every symbol on my family crest meant. But that wasn't the only surprise. Elizabeth was paler that me in that moment. She kept looking at me and the bracelet, like she'd never seen me before. I gave a look at Edward, but it was like he couldn't hear her thoughts… and my God, her heart was beating so fast… she was scared of me. Why?

Elizabeth got on her feet and ran away, saying that she had forgotten to do something that day. Mick tried to go after her, but she was faster than him. He just went back to our table and gave us an apologetic look.

"I'm sorry… I really don't know what happened to her."

And neither did we.

Elizabeth

Oh God. Oh my God. My heart was going to jump out of my chest. I made up an excuse to leave the school while I was running out of the mess hall. I couldn't stay there any longer, not after I…

I started breathing again once I was in my car. In my head, like a broken record, there was my grandma's voice, telling me the vampire legends that were part of the Kalderash heritage… and the ones that concerned my family. She had used them to teach me Romanian, I knew them only in that language.

I hit the accelerator, and I drove faster than I could to my grandmother's retirement home. She was the only one that could tell me if I was getting mad or not. In that moment, madness sounded like the best option to me. Because, if I discovered I wasn't mad, that would mean…

Oh God. I hoped to convince some nurse there to give me some Valium. I was this close to falling dead on the floor, my heart didn't want to stop racing…

For the first time in my life, I ignored the polite greeting of Ms. Norwich, the head of the retirement house, and ran directly to the garden, where my grandmother was looking after her roses. When she decided to go 

there because she didn't want her increasing health problems to interfere with our lives, my father gave to that place enough money to grant her a roof for at least thirty years. That money was also my grandmother's assurance she could do whatever she pleased in that place. Hence, the roses, a piano in the tea room, and a million of little things she had studied over the years to make Ms. Norwich miserable, even if I knew she had grown to like her in the end.

"Grandma? Grandma Helena? Are you there?" I said, looking frantically for her in every direction.

"For God's sake, Elizabeth!" she said, emerging from behind a bush of roses with both her hands on her hips. "Are you planning to give me a heart attack, young lady?"

I literally ran in her arm, hugging her tightly. Grandma immediately realized something was wrong, something big. She stopped looking after her flowers, and she took me in her rooms, making me sit on her sofa and offering me a cup of fresh made tea. I took a couple sips from the teacup she had put in front of me, and I finally started to calm down some.

"And now would you please tell me what are you doing here? You should be at school! And do Grace and Allen know of this getaway of yours?"

"No, they don't. I didn't plan this… I need to talk to you, you're the only one that can tell me if I've lost it or…"

"Just tell me, sweetheart. What's wrong?"

"The ring, Grandma. I need to see your ring. The one you inherited from... well, from Magdalena."

Grandma gave me a piercing look. "Why are you so interested in that ring, my child?"

I sighed, exhausted. "Just show me, please. Explanations later. I really have to see it."

She got up, and after a few minutes she emerged from her bedroom with her jewelry box. She opened it in front of me, and she immediately took out a silver ring that she immediately gave to me.

Oh God, I thought, while my heart skipped a beat. I wasn't seeing things. The lion, the hand, the shamrocks, the chevron. It was the Cullen family crest. And I was holding it in my hand.

"Tell me again, Grandma… tell me again the story of this ring."

Grandma Helena decided not to ask other questions, and like when I was a kid, she started telling me the story I loved the most, the one centered on our ancestor, Magdalena. When she was around my age, she traveled across Europe with her family and her tribe. Many men asked her in marriage, but her father wanted to concede his only daughter to the richest man he could find. One night, one man whose offer Magda's father had rejected went to their camp and kidnapped the girl. Before that man with blood red eyes could harm her, a blonde-haired man came to her rescue. The beautiful golden-eyed stranger killed her aggressor, healed her wounds and took her back to her people.

"He was not from the country where Magda and her people lived in that moment. He didn't seem to belong anywhere. Out of gratitude for having saved his daughter, Magda's father, along with the other member of the tribe council, allowed him to live with them for as long as he wanted. But when the tribe trespassed the mountains and had to choose the direction to take next, the golden-eyed man chose to leave. His condition of immortal, benevolent creature was no mystery for our family anymore… but he 

wanted to find other creature like him, other creatures that chose not to kill humans to live. The ring, that Magdalena's father made for him, is the symbol of the friendship between him and our family. Like we welcomed him in time of need, so he'll do it… if our paths would cross again."

"Thanks."

"Elizabeth… now I want an explanation."

"I saw five crests like this one. On five schoolmates with skin white as chalk and cold as ice… all 'adopted', but with the same exact golden shade in their eyes. One of them is my best friend! Grandma… the golden-eyed creature you talked about… is a vampire?"

"You never believed those stories to be true, did you?"

"How could I? Vampires, werewolves, demons… hunters… you're really telling me all these creatures really exist?"

"I never saw them with my eyes, but I always believed in their existence. And... You saw the crests yourself, right? But to be sure beyond the reasonable doubt, you have to discover if the one that saved Magdalena is part of that family. He should look in his mid-twenties… blond, thin, short hair…"

"Curly hair?" I said, thinking immediately of Jasper. Grandma shook her head, and rose again to take something from a drawer.

"Look for him. You find this man, you'll find your answers," she said, giving me a small portrait made on a small sheet of old paper. It wasn't much but it was a start. And if I was right, I was looking at a portrait of no one else than Dr. Carlisle Cullen, Bella's adoptive father… and adoptive member of my gypsy family.

Could my life become any crazier? I hoped not. On the way to the hospital where Bella had told me his father worked, I couldn't stop thinking of how everything made sense now… not only the Cullens absences during the sunny days (they all had more than believable excuses for skipping school, anyway), but also… well, it wasn't important anymore. Gabriel was out of my life, this time for good. He was still looking for me in Canada, as far as I knew… I hoped I wasn't wrong. I realized too late how dangerous he was. And now that the legends had become reality, that just made him more dangerous… Oh, come on. It had been more than a year now. If he was back in town, I would be the first to know. And he wasn't, because there wasn't any proof that I had ever come back to Chicago. God bless Mick for that.

I looked at the ring that was now shining at my finger. Enough with Gabriel, I had more important things to think about. Like Dr. Carlisle Cullen, who was now going out of the hospital after the end of his shift… a very long night shift judging by the time, but since vampires didn't sleep, time was of no importance to them, right?

"Doctor Cullen?" I said, approaching him. God, the portrait didn't do him justice. He was inhumanly beautiful. I reminded myself to breathe.

"Yes… how may I help you, young lady?" he asked me with a kind smile. I took a very deep breath, and I showed him the ring on my hand. His smile slowly faltered; his eyes moved from me to the ring like I did earlier with Bella… did that really happen just a couple of hours before?

"My name is Elizabeth St. John. My grandmother is a descendant of a Kalderash girl named Magdalena, and gave me this ring after I told her that five of my schoolmates, your adopted children, wear it as their family crest. I know the story behind its creation, the true story, and I think you know as well of what I'm talking about. And now, please, I beg you… say something."