17

"One of them was Maria."

He turned and looked at Jasper.

"Shit!" Jasper was sent into a bit of a tail spin by this news. Edward could read, in his mind, that he was actually grateful that someone had at last ended the manipulative bitch, but then he felt guilty for feeling that way. Alice, on the other hand, felt no guilt at all, just a savage satisfaction that the vampire was dead. "Wait a minute, how do you know about Maria?" he asked. Edward held up a hand and Jasper nodded, he would explain it all in time.

"I wandered around a bit, going to various schools over the years. I had enrolled in Ithaca once again in 2008, the music school this time, and was a year into doing a short course when Tanya called me. During the Easter break the next year I went to visit them and warned them about the threat, and when I got back (thank you Alice for the airline tickets), I decided that I would finish school and as soon as we broke for summer I would come looking for you. However fate had other plans.

"I was leaving class one day when I caught the scent of a vampire. I tracked him down and found him. He was the oldest vampire I had ever personally met, in more ways than one, he told me he was almost 1900 years old, and had been turned when he was in his mid forties. He was fascinated by my eyes and asked about them. I explained my diet and he looked intrigued. We arranged to meet up at his apartment but when I got there he had been decapitated and there was no sign of his head. The Apartment was just catching fire; I must have missed his killer by seconds. I tried tracking the vampire responsible for David's death, but lost him outside of town. I packed in my studies and travelled south; at different points in the road I came across either the old scent of vampires no longer around, or the trace of the killer. Then, at the back end of last year I came across two other vampires, Peter and Charlotte, at last there was some information to be had, they had heard rumours of a tracker, It seemed he was going after the bigger covens or especially talented or old vampires, even though he was often totally outnumbered he seemed able to take them on and win. There was no mention of any companion." Edward looked around at the family, their faces were grim as they realised the threat that they had faced earlier that day.

"Are Peter and Charlotte OK?" Jasper asked. Edward could see that he cared deeply for the pair, and was rather glad of it. He had rather liked them himself when he had met them, and it was while he was interacting with them that he read their minds and learnt Jasper's history and his part in the southern vampire wars.

"Yes they are fine, I sent them south and told them they were welcome to stay in the house in Peru, I hope you don't mind?" he asked, knowing already that his parents would offer shelter to anyone that needed it, he got the positive answer from them before they could articulate it, he would have told the pair to use Isle Esme, but it was a secret that they owned the island paradise. "I missed 'the tracker' by a couple of days when he took out the New Orleans coven. The only survivor was a vampire named Laurent, well, I say survivor, he was healing back together when I found him, he had been torn limb from limb and thrown onto the pyre with the other three of his group. He had an arm missing as it had burnt before he could get to it, someone had called the fire brigade and they doused the pile of body parts with water, saving the rest of him. Luckily it was at night and he managed to get away with most of his pieces without being seen. He gave me a picture of the tracker from his thoughts, but he was alone as far as Laurent knew."

Edward paused and looked at Bella, he had been very careful to keep his eyes off her up to that point but he noticed she had turned a rather nasty shade of pale, he thought back to what he had just said and realised it was rather gruesome. He winced and apologised for making her feel ill.

"I knew that sooner or later he would head up for you. After all you are the biggest coven outside of Italy. I had already warned Eleazar back in April about the danger and he had taken steps, none of them hunt alone anymore and Kate has been practising her electric shock treatment. I managed to follow him north from Louisiana to Lexington Tennessee, where he killed at least two vampires, but I don't know who. He headed due west for a few days. Then just 2 days ago he suddenly turned north west. I knew from the Denali's you had recently relocated back here, so I jumped on a plane trying to get ahead of them, I don't know how they managed to get here so fast, they could not use commercial flights and I very much doubt they ran the whole way, but… well here I am." He hoped this potted history would be enough. Most of the time he had been parted from the family he had done nothing of note for years. It was amazing looking back, how little he had actually done in the decades they had been separated.

"You are staying?" Esme asked, her voice small, dreading the possible answer.

"If you will forgive me." He was bombarded by the positive thoughts of everyone around him and suddenly he felt he was a part of the family again. He was humbled and overwhelmed, after all these years of what could basically be termed sulking; they were welcoming him back with open arms.

Alice bounced on her toes like a hyper-active elf. She thrust a package at him; he read in her mind that it was a birth certificate, drivers licence and… a class schedule?

"Hey!" he protested, "I never said I would be going to high school."

"It's totally up to you," Carlisle said and when Alice opened her mouth to protest he silenced her with a look. Edward realised that his father thought that if he didn't get his own way he would leave again. He felt guilty, he had done so much damage to the family.

His eyes drifted to the human again. The sandwich was just a pile of crumbs now, but it was obvious that she hadn't eaten any of it. His eyes narrowed as he tried his damndest to penetrate her mind. Nothing… there was a total blank where her thoughts should be.

He envisioned telling Alice about his inability to read the girl and she jumped as the vision hit her. He smiled; he had thought that that would work!

{Nothing at all?} she asked. Again he projected his thoughts into a 'future' conversation.

{Nothing, totally blank.}

{That is strange, I can see her future, and Jasper can sometimes control her mood, I wonder if it has anything to do with the way she smells to you? If being your singer means that she is immune to your powers?}

{Singer?} he asked.

{It's what the Volturi call a human whose blood is so powerful to a certain vampire that it is impossible to resist.}

{Hate to burst your bubble but I am resisting!} Edward pointed out. Alice raised an eyebrow, and he conceded. If it hadn't been for his family befriending the girl and helping to hold him back in the first few minutes, she wouldn't be alive now.

{So you will go to school?} Alice pressed, even though Carlisle had basically told her to drop it.

{I don't know, I wasn't planning on it, I'll be honest.}

{What were you planning?}

{I wasn't!} he laughed slightly, drawing the attention of everyone else in the room.

{Bella goes to school!} he grimaced at her. {you can fight all you want Edward, but I have seen this future for years,} Her mind ran through a montage of various visions, the meeting that could have happened that day without the Nomads, the meeting that could have happened in a few years time. Then he caught a fleeting glimpse of something Alice hadn't meant him to see. Bella, a vampire.

"NO!" he stepped forward threateningly, there was no way in the world he was going to let the girl become a vampire. She was healthy; he probed his father's mind as best he could but found no evidence of him thinking of any medical worries with regards to her.

"It will happen." Alice said. The rest of the family had been aware that something was going on between them, but they had no idea what.

"I won't let it!" He insisted.

"It can't be stopped." Alice told him, her mind quickly sifted through the future where he was actively trying to stop the girl becoming a vampire, the longest he was able to postpone it was 2 years. The alternatives after that time seemed to all lead to her early and painful death if not to her immortality.

"There has to be a way Alice!" he protested. {what if she moved back to her mother?} Bella dead in 18 months/ Bella in foster care being abused by the man supposed to run the home she was placed in/ Bella a drug addicted prostitute, turning tricks to make a score and handing the rest of her earnings over to her mother… "NO! Jesus Alice!" she blanked her vision quickly so he wasn't subjected to them anymore. {What if we set her up with a scholarship and sent her to college?} Bella's mother tracking her down before she was 18, taking every penny from her and leaving her destitute/ Bella collapsing from overwork trying to make ends meet while her mother spends every cent she earned, leaving her no way of going to school.

"See what I mean?" Alice told him.

He nodded, still determined not to let it happen, but unable to fight the visions. It wasn't as if Alice was picking the worst case scenarios, he was seeing them as soon as she was.

He dragged the chair from under the table and dropped into it like a normal teenager of the day, very unlike his usual posture and behaviour.

"What did you see?" Emmett asked.

"Never mind." He waved the family questions away. Alice just shrugged when they asked her.

"How does it work?" Emmett pressed.

"How does what work?" Edward asked.

"Well I know you can read Alice's thoughts, but it was obvious communication was both ways. Alice can't read your thoughts. How did you…" he waved his fingers near his head in a manner that was supposed to signify thought waves, but Edward just laughed at him.

"Oh come on! That isn't fair!" his brother protested.

"It's easy if you think about it." He grinned. He had forgotten how much fun he could have winding Emmett up. The teasing had never been only one way between them, something he had forgotten after he left the family.

Emmett's mind was a blank… well as much a blank as a vampires mind could be. He just had no idea how Edward was communicating with Alice. Edward read everyone else's mind and realised that none of them knew.

"He's imagining a future conversation with her, as soon as he decides what he will say; she reads it in her visions and answers him in her thoughts." Bella spoke softly, but kept her eyes on her plate.

{She really is very quick.} Jasper thought, impressed. {this isn't the first time she has cut through the minutiae. You will find she is exceptionally observant as well.}

Edward nodded his thanks. "Who were you reading then?" Emmett asked. He smiled, Emmett hated to be left out of any conversation and many a time in the past he had pretended to be reading someone's mind and answering them just to rile him."That is SO annoying!" he jumped to his feet, intending to grab Edward around the throat and rub his knuckles into his head. He had just stretched out his hands as Edward ducked under him and pushed away with his feet, the chair tipped but before it landed on its back Edward had Emmett in the same hold he had just been attempting and rubbed his head as hard as he could. The sound of boulders grinding together filled the air and Jasper and Carlisle laughed.

"Be careful of the furniture!" Esme warned them. He manipulated the fight so that they headed for the windows; Alice got to them in time and opened them so that they rolled out onto the lawn at the back of the house. No matter what Emmett tried he couldn't get the drop on Edward so he charged straight at his brother, steaming past as Edward side-stepped him at the very last second. Even when Emmett tried to use tactics, he tended to think through every move through before acting; Edward read his intentions and managed to counter.

"Jasper! Help!" Emmett shouted. Jasper jumped into the mix, Carlisle a second after. Jasper had years of experience fighting the Vampire Wars in the south, so Edward changed his attack to him, thinking the fight would be more balanced like that. Carlisle may be the oldest vampire there, and a pacifist to boot, but that didn't mean he was an easy target. Emmett tried his best but only landed a couple of punches on his sire, whereas he was subjected to a wedgy that left the back of his jeans torn at the waistband and had his head rammed into a tree. Jasper and Edward, however were a totally different story. Neither one could get an advantage over the other. Jasper attempted to just use his instincts and flow, but his thoughts gave him away, giving Edward a split second warning. However the warning wasn't enough for him to defeat his opponent. The stalemate lasted for a good 20 minutes, until Carlisle called them to stop. The four men linked arms over each other's shoulders and walked back into the house laughing. The women (except Bella) had got tired of their antics and had drifted off into the living room almost immediately.

"Ok, Edward." Jasper lounged on the sofa facing the big screen TV; he threw the package onto the table holding the games console. "You are Edward Cullen, Carlisle's nephew, recently orphaned and here to live. Age 17, originally from Chicago… etc. You know the drill." Edward nodded. He concentrated and his face became rounder, cutting 4 years off his looks. He tucked the drivers licence into his wallet and threw an almost identical one on the pile. He passed the other papers to Carlisle.

"I'll use my own credit cards," he said, Alice turned to look at him and shook her head and he looked down at his wallet, she was right, they were in the name of Edward Masen, he swapped out the cards as well and crushed the old ones into unrecognisable lumps of plastic before Esme could see the name and get upset.

Bella looked at her watch again, Edward frowned, was she trying to leave? Why? However before he could say anything, Alice noticed and danced over to her from the computer station she had been sat at surfing the web.

"Time to go home?" she asked.

"I have to make Charlie his dinner." Bella explained. Edward grimaced, from what he had gleaned so far her home life had been shocking until she moved in with her father, but really was he any different? He threw the thought forward and Alice turned to him as Bella got her coat and hat.

{It's a hell of a lot different, she makes Charlie his dinner because she wants to, he would have been happy continuing the way he always had, but she insisted.} Alice told him. Still it wasn't quite right; she was so young to have so much responsibility. Alice flashed pictures of the very young girl she had been, cuddled up on the kitchen floor with a duvet because her mother had not paid the electric bill, cooking her own meagre dinner, and shivering from the cold. She switched it to a more up-to-date picture of Charlie getting up an hour early for work and putting snow chains on the truck for her. Edward nodded his acceptance of Alice's point of view.

"Thank you for coming today, Bella," he said as the two girls headed out to get her home.

"Um… err, you're welcome?" she said blushing, seemingly not sure what the proper response should be. He watched them get into Bella's death-trap of a truck and drive away. He turned back to the room. Every eye was watching him. Their minds however were all carefully blank. He decided he didn't care what they were thinking and shrugged.

"I'll be in my room." He told them and took the stairs as fast as he could. He was pleased at the state of his room (though puzzled that someone had added a bed), and the fact that Alice hadn't appropriated it this time. He looked through the large collection of music with approval. He pressed 'play' on the stereo and smiled as Clare de Lune drifted out of the speakers.

Bella had been mesmerised by the speed, style and grace that Edward displayed as the men… boys fought. She very much doubted that Carlisle often acted like this, but he was so happy to have his son back the joy radiating from him was almost palpable and obviously needed an output. She hoped to God though that they were so busy that the mind-reader didn't have either opportunity or reason to read her.

He really was gorgeous. She was running out of synonyms for him, as she had listened to him speak, his voice melodious and smooth, she had been trying to find new ones and put them in alphabetical order, in the hope that it would stop him reading her private (and rather sexual) thoughts … attractive, bright, brilliant, colourful, dazzling, delightful, dreamy, drop-dead, easy on the eyes, elegant, enjoyable, exquisite, fine, foxy, glittering, glorious, good-looking, grand, handsome, imposing, impressive, knockout, lovely, ravishing, resplendent, splendid, stunning, sublime, sumptuous, superb… to name a few. She felt her face heat up as she watched him dodge his opponent. The t-shirt he had on showed every one of his muscles in splendid definition (ripped… she started the list again and added the new adjective), they rippled as he moved and dodged Jasper's attacks. Jasper also moved well, but it was Edward she could not take her eyes off, even if she did have trouble tracking him as he moved so fast.

His movements were smooth and graceful, like she imagined a big cat would move, a lion perhaps or a jaguar. All lean and tight, fluid and… she blushed violently, was it suddenly warm in the Cullen house?

When the game was over and they all trouped back to the house she suddenly felt uncomfortable again. Like an outsider trespassing on a private affair. Jasper met her eyes as he threw the package that Alice had earlier given Edward onto the table and gave her a slight smile.

She bit her lip as she wondered how she was going to make her escape. She looked at the watch that, of course, was not working again. She would have thrown it away years ago but it had been left to her by her Grandmother, and it was the only thing that Renée had not sold, basically because no one wanted to buy a cheap watch that didn't even keep time.

Alice bounced over to her, "Time to go home?" she asked.

"I have to make Charlie his dinner." Bella explained. She didn't REALLY have to make him dinner. Charlie would be just as happy with Pizza on a Saturday evening, but she felt like she was contributing something to the house when she cooked and cleaned. After all the man had coped very well without her, she had to make it up to him somehow for imposing on him like she was.

Alice jumped into the passenger seat of her truck. She frowned at her friend, wondering why she was coming with her and not staying with the recently returned family member.

"I just thought I could come along for the ride." Alice told her without being prompted. This made Bella suspicious immediately, she looked sideways at her friend, but could not take her eyes off the road too much as it was very narrow until it met the highway and the surface wasn't the best.

"What aren't you telling me?" Bella wanted to know.

"Oh LOTS!" Alice grinned. Bella bit her lip in frustration. She only realised how frustrated she was when she actually hurt herself. She thanked God that she hadn't broken the skin and made herself bleed. However it seemed that Alice was only along for the ride, because as Bella pulled up to her house and turned off the engine, Alice got out and headed off back down the road.

"Do you want to borrow my truck to get you home?" she asked her friend, holding out the keys. Alice laughed and Bella blushed, she had had firsthand experience how fast the Cullen's could travel. Alice waved and suddenly she wasn't in sight any more. Bella sighed and went into the house. She looked through the refrigerator, Charlie, true to his word, had stocked up. She pulled the makings of southern fried chicken out of storage and set to making one of Phil's favourite dishes.