"Will he later hallucinate
his gods? Waking
among mysteries with
an insane gleam
of recollection?
The recognition-
something so rare
in his soul,
met only in dreams
-nostalgias
of another life."
Wild Orphan
Allen Ginsberg
1952
Nick followed Esme into the living room where Carlisle and Edward were talking quietly. They both looked at him as he took a seat. Edward was appraising him curiously, his posture and expression still hostile.
Carlisle took a seat facing him and Edward sat in the window seat. Emmett leaned forward while Rosalie flipped through a magazine at his side.
"Nick, I hope you are willing to answer some questions for us and then we will do the best we can to address yours?" Carlisle looked at him with an unspoken question. "I know it requires you to 'go first' but you know less about what's at stake here than we do." Nick nodded and looked again at the rigid form in the window. Edward was fixing him with a steady, piercing glare.
"That's fine, where would you like me to start?"
"Eddie just wants to know if you nailed her." Emmett drawled lazily. Edward swiveled his shoulders to fix his brother with the same glare he had been shooting Nick. Emmett leaned back in his chair and laughed.
"Emmett, I appreciate your attempt to lighten the atmosphere but please don't be disrespectful. Nick, forgive my sons, this is a stressful situation for all of us."
"You don't need to apologize for me. I've done nothing but welcome one of Isabella's playthings." Edward spat at Carlisle.
"Edward. Manners." Carlisle's voice was terse. "Nick, please start where you feel comfortable." Nick looked at Edward and then back at Carlisle.
"Isabella approached me at Tanner's a week ago. She said she had heard I was a journalist and she said that she had a story for me." He shot a glance at Edward who seemed to relax. "She met with me three times, always in a hotel room in the Village. She told me of her…upbringing and of meeting the five of you. I actually recorded the second and third sessions as well as taking notes if you are interested?"
"You brought them?" Edward asked him. Nick nodded and reached into the messenger bag he had left on the floor next to the couch. He pulled out a handful of tapes and a notebook. Edward looked at them like he wanted to snatch them from Nick but he merely watched as he placed them on the coffee table.
"Why don't you summarize for us and maybe we can listen to the tapes after you go to bed?" Carlisle suggested, looking at Edward pointedly. Edward nodded.
"That sounds fine," Nick agreed, settling back into the couch. He looked at Edward, trying to figure out his hostile reactions. Edward tilted his head at his examination, frowning slightly. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. A crack had appeared in his mask of animosity, he looked unsure for a moment, like the teenage boy Isabella had seen in him when they first had met.
"Isabella stopped at the point where she had left your apartment after…" Nick looked at Edward whose eyes widened slightly. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped himself again and looked to Carlisle with an unreadable expression. Carlisle met his son's glance and turned back to Nick.
"So she didn't tell you how she was changed?" Nick shook his head.
"No, that's where she left off. Where has she been the last fifty years?" He heard a choking sound from the window and Edward rose swiftly.
"I can't…I have to go out. My apologies, Nick. We will speak tomorrow?" Nick nodded to him in surprise as Edward returned his nod and left the room so fast that Nick shook his head in amazement. He hadn't been prepared for that part of the supernatural experience he was having. Emmett chuckled at his shock.
"It takes some getting used to, huh?" Carlisle rose and spoke to Emmett and Rosalie who had been merely watching the drama of the last few minutes.
"Emmett, Rosalie, I am wondering if you can fill Nick in on some of what he can expect to see while he stays with us?"
"Are you sure about that?" Rosalie spoke for the first time, without looking up. Carlisle looked at her.
"In for a penny, in for a pound, Rosalie. Nick will be with us for a while, no doubt."
"There's another option," Rosalie said, looking at him pointedly.
"No, Rosalie. That's not an option. Don't bring it up again." It was as stern as Nick had heard Carlisle's gentle voice and Rosalie's face registered it, looking down and closing her mouth.
"I'm going to speak with Edward. I will catch up with you in a bit, Nick. Esme and my children will see that you have what I need." Carlisle left the room with a slight crease in his perfect brow.
"Sorry about Edward. He and Bella have history, if you know what I mean." Emmett grinned at him. Rosalie elbowed him.
"Emmett, you have no proof that anything ever happened with them." She frowned at Emmett. Nick watched their interaction.
"Yeah, but you remember when he got back from Argentina, right? He was going to tear our heads off if we didn't tell him where she was. And that time Alice sent him to California in '75? I know he saw her then, too. He got that call from Alice."
"Who's Alice?" Nick asked. They looked at him as if they had forgotten he was there. They both looked a little embarrassed. Esme spoke.
"Alice is a friend of the family. We've known her and her husband Jasper since the fifties. She told us that Bella was coming." Nick lifted an eyebrow at Esme.
"Alice is a…psychic, of sorts," Emmett answered. "Some of us have abilities. Alice can see the future. She's the one who told us about you.
"Do you guys have 'abilities'?"
"Well, all vampires are really fast, strong, pretty, like my Rosie here." Emmett stroked his wife's cheek and she slapped his hand away. "Well, not quite as pretty. Plus we have good hearing, sense of smell, vision and stuff."
"Alice's husband can influence your emotions, manipulate them." Esme added. "And Edward…he can read minds."
"He can read my mind?" Nick was suddenly uncomfortable and tried to think of what could have offended or angered the volatile vampire. "I wish I'd known that. I probably offended him."
"Don't sweat it. Like I said, he's usually pretty uptight and Bella just sets him off. He's convinced that she's going to set the Volturi on us any day now. Of course, he's been convinced of that for like 50 years now."
"Volturi?" Emmett flinched and looked at Esme and Rosalie apologetically.
"I'm sorry, I've been saying too much. We should really let Carlisle fill you in on all the details tomorrow when Eddie's calmed down a bit."
Despite the excitement of the day Nick found himself yawning. He looked at his watch and realized that it was quite late.
"Nick, let me show you your room. You must be exhausted." Esme stood up and ushered him out of the room.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"The Volturi are the governing body of all of our kind, all vampires. They are a group of three brothers who live in an ancient city in Italy. They are protected and fortified by a guard made up of vampires with talents; trackers, some with offensive powers, the ability to harm others from a distance, some with special sensory powers." Carlisle spoke with him the next day, his family seated around him. "Aro, the leader of the three, has made it his business to pursue those with special abilities. They are an extremely cultured and ambitious group, they feed upon humans, as do most of our kind. The only law that matters is that we never expose ourselves to humans."
"So if the Volturi find out that Isabella revealed what she was to me they'll go after her?" Nick glanced around the room. Everyone was present but Edward. Carlisle had explained that he would be able to get caught up by reading their minds but that he had some work to do. Nick knew that someone had listened to the tapes and read his journal. They had been exactly where he had left them on the coffee table but placed in a more orderly way, edges squared up.
Carlisle paused, clearly trying to select the right words. "Isabella is a member of the guard, she is Aro's…favorite." He placed careful emphasis on "favorite."
"So, they won't do anything to her for revealing her secret to me?"
"I don't know; it seems unlikely. Like I said, Isabella is special to Aro, he confides in her. If they find out they will definitely come after you, though." Carlisle spoke carefully.
"And they may come after us, for harboring you," Rosalie added. No wonder she hated him, Nick thought. He had placed them all in danger.
"So, how did you know that Isabella had told me? When was the last time you spoke with her?"
"We knew about you because Alice told us."
"But Alice is selective in the timing and content of her information," Rosalie said, her beautiful face stiff with disapproval. "She didn't tell us that Isabella was going to reveal what we are until it was too late to intercede."
"I haven't spoken to Isabella in some time. Edward has probably seen her more recently." Carlisle looked like he wanted to say more but he paused. Then he examined Nick's face carefully. "Edward and I were talking about something last night that I'd like to ask you about." He considered his words. "We have both noticed a tendency to be, well, frank with you about things which we had not intended to."
"You understand that we are used to being extremely circumspect in what we say to humans. To live among humans we must be very private and quite good at deception. Edward and I both noticed that we found ourselves saying things to you that we had no intention of saying."
"I did it, too," Emmett interjected. "I started telling Nick here all kinds of stuff, without really wanting to." Rosalie snorted and Emmett looked at her apologetically.
"I suppose I am asking if you have noticed this yourself?" Carlisle looked at him curiously. Nick considered his question carefully.
"People have always…told me things. It's part of what makes me a good journalist. I have just assumed that I had a trustworthy air or something. I've never had anyone tell me that it felt like it was against their will." Nick looked at Carlisle, feeling almost apologetic. Carlisle was so polite that it made Nick feel rude, like he'd violated his trust.
Carlisle seemed to read his discomfort. "It's alright, Nick. We know that you don't intend to violate our privacy. I rather imagine it's something you have little control over."
"Imagine how strong it'll be when he's one of us," Rose elbowed Emmett as soon as the words slipped out of his mouth.
"Emmett!" Carlisle reprimanded his "son" and then looked at Nick apologetically.
"I'm sorry, Nick." Emmett spoke hastily. "I didn't mean to frighten you." He turned to Carlisle then. "But you know it may be necessary. Why wouldn't we be honest with him?" Emmett looked at Carlisle earnestly. Nick watched as Esme nodded and Rosalie looked at her husband with clear fury.
"I don't think I understand," he said, looking from Carlisle to Emmett.
Carlisle looked at him with sympathy in his eyes. "If the Volturi find out that you know about…our kind, the only choices they will present us with will be to change you or they will end you. If they give us the choice."
"Change me into a vampire?" Nick asked, although the question seemed obtuse even while he was asking it.
"We will try to prevent you from having to make that choice but it may be necessary," Carlisle was apologetic. "You may want to consider what you might chose if it comes to that."
"The choice between dying and being like you guys?" Nick laughed dryly. "I would think it would be an easy choice. I mean, who wants to die?"
"Don't assume that being like us is any better than dying." Edward had appeared in the door silently. Nick looked up, startled. "Any misery that you may have becomes eternal."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to assume that your life is easy." Nick looked at the man in the door. There was something different about him this time. He was less angry, his posture softer, more unsure. Edward shook his head.
"It's alright, none of this is your fault." It felt like an apology and the room remained silent. Edward looked up again at Nick. "I was wondering if we could take a walk? I wanted to show you something." Nick nodded and stood up.
They walked out of the house together silently and followed a path into the woods. After a few minutes Edward looked at Nick almost shyly.
"I want to apologize for my poor behavior last night. As I said, none of this is your fault. My discomfort with your ability to make me say more than I wanted made me forget my manners."
"Apology accepted," Nick said, curious about this change of tone.
"We appreciate you allowing us to listen to your notes and listen to the interview." The vampire said "us" but Nick picked up the subtext; he had a personal interest in hearing her words.
"How long has it been since you heard her voice?" As soon as the question came out Nick regretted it. Edward looked at him with a flash of anger in his eyes.
"Don't turn this into a love story in your head, Mr. Geracimos. Isabella doesn't love anyone." They were approaching a small cottage, perhaps some kind of guest house. Nick didn't dare ask.
"My ability makes living with others uncomfortable sometimes," Edward answered his question. "It's a little quieter out here for me." He opened the door and ushered Nick in. It was sparsely decorated, a desk and a chair, a battered couch, some bookshelves and an old piano. There was pile of journals on the desk; they had dark brown and black covers and were of varying sizes .
Edward gestured towards the pile. "I decided that since you would get the whole story out of me whether I liked it or not I would just give you access to my journals."
"Are you sure? I don't want to…"
"I can't talk about her without my current…feelings coloring my telling of events. It will be more accurate if you hear it this way." Edward had a deep frown on his face. "There are years of tedium in there. I've marked the portions that concern her so you don't have to wade through it all. Of course, if you are considering immortality, you might want to read them just to experience what it feels like. Years of the same, decades of the same, you can't imagine." Edward had turned away from him at this point, to look out the window. Then he walked to the desk and picked up one of the journals.
"Nineteen fifty-four. This is what started it." He pulled a faded piece of paper out of the journal. The old telegraph read "EDWARD TO ENCOUNTER SINGER STOP CARLISLE TO GO INSTEAD TO TOMPKINS SQUARE ELEVEN PM WEDNESDAY STOP MORE SOON STOP"
"Singer?" Nick asked.
"A singer, for our kind, is a human with blood that is so appealing, so irresistible, that it 'sings' to us. Isabella was my singer. Alice sent the telegram so that Carlisle would encounter her instead."
"Because Alice can see the future?" Edward nodded. "Then why not just stay away and leave her alone? Why send Carlisle?"
"A good question. I've asked myself that for nearly sixty years. At the time Alice was new to our family and we trusted her guidance absolutely. My father is, in many ways, very naïve for a man of his age. He has only the best intentions and believes everyone around him to be the same way. Unfortunately, that's not always the case."
Nick looked down at the journal Edward had handed him. There was a slip of paper in the middle, marking where he should start.
"Go ahead, I will leave you to it." Edward took a step to the door and then paused and turned around. Hesitating, he asked, "The first session, the one you didn't record, she said that we hated each other from the start?" Nick nodded and then he spoke. He felt as if he was reassuring an insecure suitor, not the enemy of the creature that started all this.
"But then she said she was fascinated by you; she said that your presence sucked the air out of the room." Something occurred to Nick then. "You sent her away because you would have killed her if you were intimate, didn't you? Not because you didn't want her."
The vampire became the seventeen year-old boy again, nodding his head shyly, not looking up. And then his posture stiffened again and the fury returned to his eyes.
"I told you not to turn this into a love story. There are many years between then and now and she's not pining away for me. I last heard her voice twenty years ago, when I stopped her and her lover from killing an innocent man. She warned you and I will too. She's not the victim in this story; she's the killer. She's sentenced you to death, too. Don't harbor illusions about her."
With that he left the cabin. Nick swallowed down the tension at this outburst and opened the journal.
a/n: Big squishy Valentine's Day loves to my beta, EverlastingMuse, and my pre-reader, Liz3615, for cleaning up this mess!
BTW, my first and most obscure fic, "Edward Masen"s 1918 Chicago Blues" has been nominated for a Vampie for best AU. Now, my temptation is to tell you to go vote for me but I am up against some awesome stories. I'm not even sure if I'm going to vote for myself! So all I'll say is check it out: http : / bit (dot) ly / h4HnsV and read some awesome stories! JuJu