A/N: Enjoy! The next chapter will be the last. Thank you all for reading and/or reviewing! I really do appreciate it. It's for you guys that I decided to post the unedited work (I don't know what happened to my beta; just that I can't reach her anymore).

Chapter 21- Research

"Bella? Bella?" Bella's mother, Renée cried, frightened.

Bella sprinted into view, sweat dripping down the side of her face. Her hair was completely messed up. Normally, I would have been annoyed, but this did not fit into the "normal" category. She was looking around the room, trying to find where the sound was coming from.

"Bella, you scared me! Don't you ever do that to me again!"

Bella swallowed as she saw her mother on the TV screen.

The TV screen went blue and Bella turned slowly. She stared at someone not in the range of the video camera.

"Sorry about that, Bella, but isn't it better that your mother didn't really have to be involved in all this?" The tracker asked kindly.

Bella gasped as the full realization of it hit her. "Yes," she answered, relieved.

"You don't sound angry that I tricked you," he told her, a touch surprised.

"I'm not," she said.

"How odd. You really mean it."

There was a long pause.

"I will give your strange coven this much, you humans can be quite interesting. I guess I can see the draw of observing you. It's amazing— some of you seem to have no sense of your own self-interest at all."

There were footsteps as the tracker walked nearer.

"I suppose you're going to tell me that your boyfriend will avenge you?" He asked, a touch of hopefulness in his voice.

"No, I don't think so. At least, I asked him not to."

"And what was his reply to that?"

"I don't know. I left him a letter."

"How romantic, a last letter. And do you think he will honor it?" He asked sarcastically.

Bella was oblivious to the sarcasm. "I hope so."

"Hmmm. Well, our hopes differ then. You see, this was all just a little too easy, too quick. To be quite honest, I'm disappointed. I expected a much greater challenge. And, after all, I only needed a little luck."

"When Victoria couldn't get to your father, I had her find out more about you. There was no sense in running all over the planet chasing you down when I could comfortably wait for you in a place of my choosing. So, after I talked to Victoria, I decided to come to Phoenix to pay your mother a visit. I'd heard you say you were going home. At first, I never dreamed you meant it. But then I wondered. Humans can be very predictable; they like to be somewhere familiar, somewhere safe. And wouldn't it be the perfect ploy, to go to the last place you should be when you're hiding — the place that you said you'd be.

"But of course I wasn't sure, it was just a hunch. I usually get a feeling about the prey that I'm hunting, a sixth sense, if you will. I listened to your message when I got to your mother's house, but of course I couldn't be sure where you'd called from. It was very useful to have your number, but you could have been in Antarctica for all I knew, and the game wouldn't work unless you were close by.

"Then your boyfriend got on a plane to Phoenix. Victoria was monitoring them for me, naturally; in a game with this many players, I couldn't be working alone. And so they told me what I'd hoped, that you were here after all. I was prepared; I'd already been through your charming home movies. And then it was simply a matter of the bluff.

"Very easy, you know, not really up to my standards. So, you see, I'm hoping you're wrong about your boyfriend. Edward, isn't it?"

"Would you mind, very much, if I left a little letter of my own for your Edward?"

The frame widened, and Bella's horror stricken face was enlarged.

"I'm sorry, but I just don't think he'll be able to resist hunting me after he watches this. And I wouldn't want him to miss anything. It was all for him, of course. You're simply a human, who unfortunately was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and indisputably running with the wrong crowd, I might add."

He stepped towards her. "Before we begin…"

"I would just like to rub it in, just a little bit. The answer was there all along, and I was so afraid Edward would see that and ruin my fun. It happened once, oh, ages ago. The one and only time my prey escaped me."

Someone paused the video. I turned around, already knowing who it was. Jasper.

"Alice, you sure you're ready?" He asked, anxious.

Maybe I wasn't ready. Years and years of being in the dark, not knowing the truth, and now? It was suddenly in my grasp and I was afraid to explore it.

Steeling myself up, I nodded. "Press the play button, Jasper."

"You see, the vampire who was so stupidly fond of this little victim made the choice that your Edward was too weak to make. When the old one knew I was after his little friend, he stole her from the asylum where he worked — I never will understand the obsession some vampires seem to form with you humans — and as soon as he freed her he made her safe. She didn't even seem to notice the pain, poor little creature. She'd been stuck in that black hole of a cell for so long. A hundred years earlier and she would have been burned at the stake for her visions. In the nineteen-twenties it was the asylum and the shock treatments. When she opened her eyes, strong with her fresh youth, it was like she'd never seen the sun before. The old vampire made her a strong new vampire, and there was no reason for me to touch her then." He sighed. "I destroyed the old one in vengeance."

"Alice," She breathed, astonished.

"Yes, your little friend. I was surprised to see her in the clearing. So I guess her coven ought to be able to derive some comfort from this experience. I get you, but they get her. The one victim who escaped me, quite an honor, actually.

"And she did smell so delicious. I still regret that I never got to taste… She smelled even better than you do. Sorry — I don't mean to be offensive. You have a very nice smell. Floral, somehow…"

He took another step forward, and I could now see him, caressing Bella's throat.

This time I snatched the remote and pressed the pause button with a little too much force necessary. "Ugh, he makes me feel sick." What a monster.

We were silent for a while, imagining what would have happened if we had gotten there too late.

"No wonder I don't remember anything from my past life," I muttered.

Jasper was silent as I turned on my computer. Double-clicking the Internet Explorer icon, I tilted my head. This was going to be interesting.

Jasper grinned. "Glad you're feeling better, ma'am."

I fought the urge to smile as I searched for my identity.

"I'm Mary Alice Brandon, born in 1901, and I 'died' on the same date of my admission to the asylum. So that means I was 'dead', to my family when they stuck me there, right?" I asked Jasper.

"Maybe," he said, looking troubled.

"Do you think that it's weird for me to be telling you the dates of my own birth and death?"

"We are vampires," he stated matter-of-factly.

I laughed. "Did I tell you I had a niece?"

"No, but I don't need to see the future to know you're going to tell me."

"Well, I sort of already told you."

Jasper opened his mouth to say something, but snapped his mouth shut as I looked at him.

"What?" I demanded.

"Is your… niece… still… alive?" The last word was barely audible.

I smacked him on the head. "Of course she is. She's in Biloxi."

He half-smiled. "One day, we've got to pay her a visit.

I laughed. "She'd be… surprised."

Jasper stood up and I jumped on his back. "To the room," I commanded.

Shaking his head in laughter, he set me down on a chair next to the bed. "I love you, little monster."

"Where are your manners?" I asked him teasingly.

Smirking, he cupped my face in his hands and whispered into my ear. "My apologies. Will you let me make it up to you?"

Without waiting for my reply, he leaned down and pressed his soft lips to mine.

A/N: Review, please! It's almost over...