Many thanks to Project Team Beta, and apologies to SMeyer.

Chapter 2:

TABLES IN THE WALL

Chicago, Alice's POV

Our resident temperamental child, Edward, stormed back in from the lab and plopped himself down at the table.

"News?" he asked, in his usual hostile tone.

"None," I replied. "She's being quiet, wherever she is."

"That is not a good sign, Alice."

Rather than respond, I just looked over at Jasper, who was leaning his angular bones wearily against the kitchen counter. We had arrived back in Chicago that morning, worn out from another scouting tour. The eight missing people Edward had flagged were just that—missing people. They hadn't been buried, dropped in canals, or abandoned in their basements. One of them was even still alive. Two of them were so far off her usual victim profile list that I was disturbed that he'd even wanted us to check them out. Then again, Edward was losing his mind, so I was inclined to forgive him.

Inclined. Not actually going to, though. We'd been through almost 70 years of this kind of crap, off and on, and I'd had enough. Edward was as a good as family, but even for family, there's only so much crazy you can tolerate before you draw the line.

"I've made another list. There's a family in Poland and—"

"Edward, no."

He glared at me. I glared right back at him from my spot against the wall. Shoulder blades nestled firmly against the wall, I shifted my gun to the front so I could cross my arms and communicate my frustration with him more effectively. He narrowed his eyes, far too accustomed to getting his way on all things Bella related. I set my jaw and we both ratcheted up the hostility level.

Jasper let us work at it for a minute before lighting the fuse on the situation. "Edward, we don't think she is in Europe anymore. It's doubtful that she's here in America. If she is in Canada she can't hide forever, and the wolves will let us know when they spot her so we don't need to hunt there. If she is in Russia or China or India the networks are so poor it could be years before any of her kills hit our radar. Or she could sit out in Australia eating bushmen and we would never find out. We've done everything we can do at this point, Edward. We are wearing ourselves out and our cover story thin chasing down every hare-brained suspicion you have. It has to stop. For all we know she's dead."

There was a slow count of ten, and then Edward threw the kitchen table into the wall. The four chairs followed it with perfect precision, alternately shattering and embedding bits of themselves into the wallpaper. He flexed his hands and started breathing deeply as he watched the splinters settle.

Hey genius, I thought, you're supposed to meditate before you lose your temper.

Edward had been vamped just long enough to hear my thoughts again if they were directed at him. When he snarled like that, it was hard to remember he'd ever been a nice guy. I was glad he was out of furniture to throw.

Jasper cleared his throat to refocus Edward's attention away from further kitchen destruction. "We are negotiating a very delicate balance with the Volturi, and it takes concentration. Focus. Precision. It does not take being in a plane forty hours a week. Do you understand?"

I willed him to understand. The planes we used were very nice, very luxurious, and very much small, enclosed spaces. I'd spent enough time in small, enclosed spaces before Edward and Carlisle came to fish me out of them, and while my gratitude to them for that rescue had kept me close ever since, it wasn't going to be enough to keep me climbing back in those zippy little traps much longer.

I'd never do it for them if I didn't owe them so much. Only Jasper knew how much it was costing me right now to play this game, and I didn't want to play that card on top of everything else Mr. Raging Brooder was dealing with. I just wanted him to understand that he was being irrational and that he needed to try to let it go before Bella made us all crazy.

Edward just kept up his deep breathing, eyes flickering between Jasper and I before he finally turned and walked stiffly out of the room.

I looked over at Jasper. "That went well, don't you think?"

Jasper shook his head. "Go save my lamps, I've had them since the Depression."

However, Edward wasn't throwing Jasper's precious Art Deco lamps across the living room or putting the sofa through the French doors. Instead, he was just standing, looking at the wall, hands clasped firmly behind his back.

Our pictures hung in a scattered array, showcasing our lives since we'd come to America. There were dozens of Jasper and I from our courtship, our wedding, and our trips together. Dozens of happy moments were on display, but Edward had eyes for only one: Bella at the lakeshore.

She had been notoriously camera shy as a human, so we'd never had many of her. Between the labs and houses that had been bombed and burned over the years, his personal collection had been winnowed down to just a few lingering snapshots. He'd lost the other one when she'd stolen his jacket on her way out the door again two years ago, so now this one on our wall was all he had.

Well, that and his not-so-little obsession with her current whereabouts.

"Edward . . . " I said to him softly, putting one hand tentatively on his shoulder. He didn't move. "She'll turn up when it's time and not a minute before."

"How can she run from me? How can she hide?" His voice was pure agony, bottled, aged well, and decanted.

"Edward, you know she's not herself right now." I left out the part about him chasing her around shooting at her as potential motivation for wanting to hide out. He killed himself enough over that as it was, and Jasper really liked those lamps.

Mr. Perfect Shot had missed his ladylove an unprecedented 11 times before he gave up and just threw the gun in after her. That hadn't worked, either, and it had kicked off the return of his nasty habit of throwing things around when he was upset. Most of the tables in the house came from Ikea now, and Jasper was just tempting fate with those stupid glass lamps of his.

"Edward," I started again, but he shook his head and shrugged my hand off his shoulder.

"I know she's not dead. She's out there, somewhere, doing God knows what to God knows who. And I can't stop that, because I can't find her. I can't find her, Alice, and I can't live like this. I have to know where she is. I need to be able to make things right."

"You'll just have to get used to disappointment," said Jasper from behind us, a lamp cradled in each arm as he walked back toward the basement. Needling Edward when he was holding his precious antique lamps was really begging for trouble, but Edward just went back to staring at Bella's face on the wall, as if he could will it to speak to him and tell him where she was. Eventually, I left him to it, and went to clean up what was left of the kitchen.

Ikea was on speed dial these days, and since I was already on my knees, I sent up a silent prayer that Bella, wherever she was, would turn up soon.

~:~:~:~

Edward was still staring at the wall the next morning when Carlisle got in. He'd skipped the lab, and Carlisle's eyebrows went up at the new table in the kitchen.

"No news?" It was a rhetorical question, really. We both knew that if Bella had been sighted, we wouldn't be dealing with the King of Catatonic in the living room.

"Jasper told him we're calling off the hunt, pending new developments."

"Ah, well. That explains the redecorating." He gestured lightly at the table and the new wainscoting on the wall. I hadn't been able to get the splinters out, and I thought wood paneling would be able to handle more of an impact. It was worth a shot, right?

"Actually, I thought he took the news fairly well."

Behind me, Jasper snorted. I turned and narrowed my eyes at him. He gave me a wide-eyed and innocent look. Carlisle wasn't fooled.

"I need Edward functional and in the lab working on the new formula, not tearing up your home." He gestured broadly at the table, the new doors, the fresh windows, and all the other home improvements we'd undertaken since the return of He Who Must Not Be Irked. "Unfortunately, in his present state, he's not safe for the lab environment either."

"What do you suggest?" asked Jasper, coming to stand beside me. Carlisle was the de facto head of our "family", and he knew Edward under stress better than any of the rest of us ever would. He'd known him when he was human the first time, and been there for him as he adjusted to his new status.

"We may need to dose him."

"He's not going to like that," I pointed out. "He blames it for missing Bella and not being able to chase after her properly before. He wants to be ready to go at the drop of a hat now."

"True, but he's more destructive in his vampiric state." You couldn't argue with that, so none of us did. However, I still didn't like the idea of dosing him against his will.

"What about the dreams? Aren't you afraid he'll be more depressed? What if he tries to kill himself?"

Jasper leaned over and shushed me. "He won't try to kill himself as long as he thinks Bella is still alive. He'll wait for her forever."

"It's not right. We do everything so that people have choices, and it's taking his choice away."

Jasper threw up his hands and started to pace the kitchen. Carlisle sighed and lowered himself into one of the new chairs. I crossed my arms and stared at both of them, daring them to argue with me.

Everything we worked for, the whole mission of the company, the very essence of our task, was to provide people with a choice about how they lived even if they were already the undead. All of us had been made into vampires against our will, and we fought the Volturi to prevent it from happening to others. All the work in the lab now was focused on reversing the vampiric state, so that those who had been turned against their will could turn themselves back.

Unfortunately, it still wasn't a perfect formula. You felt human and had human weaknesses, but your body still wasn't fully human. The effects wore off over time and people switched back to their vampiric form with all the pain of the original transformation. The after effects messed with any special skills you'd developed in your vampiric state. Still, for those of us who hadn't gotten to choose our fates, it provided the illusion of choice.

In fact, most of our customers worked to get a lifetime supply to that they could be permanently in the form of their choosing. There were some who liked to switch back and forth for the novelty of it all, but they were rare. The pain wasn't worth it, and neither was the lost equilibrium on both sides of the equation.

Edward and Carlisle worked constantly to improve the formula. After they'd pretty much perfected the neutralization for the venom we all carried, reversal of the vampiric state was their new holy grail. They dosed themselves off and on, testing their own supplies, but since they could work around the clock in their vampiric states they tended to stay vampy most of the time.

I could feel Carlisle taking advantage of his vamp state to probe my mind and I started reciting nursery rhymes in my head. He and Edward could both scan thoughts, and it was a sneaky way to win a fight.

"Jasper, a little help?"

Jasper acknowledged Carlisle's plea and stalked back over to me. "Alice, you know that we can't leave him standing out there."

"Why not? We don't use the living room much and he'll snap out of it eventually. I'll dust him if I have to. A statue is better than making him into something he doesn't want to be just because we can. That's Volturi thinking, and we're better than that."

Jasper and Carlisle winced together. It was a low blow, but true all the same. The good doctor and my handsome husband liked to think so, anyway. Some days I wasn't as sure.

"Alice-"Jasper started in, but another voice cut him off from the doorway.

"How could you possibly dust me?"

"Stepstool," I replied primly. I may be short, but I am not without resources.

Edward laughed. He actually laughed. For the first time in months. Jasper and Carlisle smiled tentatively, wary of a suddenly cheerful brooder.

Leaning against the doorframe, Edward ran his hands through his hair and chuckled at them. "I pictured it in my head. Me, still standing there, and she was flicking me with that feather duster of hers and the little maid costume and—"

"Shut up about the maid costume!" Jasper growled. Neither of us would ever live down that particular Halloween adventure.

Edward grinned a minute longer, and then his mercurial mood snapped back to seriousness as he sat down at the table.

"Do you have the formula with you?"

Carlisle patted his jacket pocket and nodded. "I have samples of the new version that I wanted to show you, but you weren't in the lab."

"No, I was here. Being my usual self, as you can see." Edward gestured broadly at the new wainscoting and the table before laying his arm down on the table. He rolled his sleeve up. "Do it."

"Edward, are you sure this is what you really want?" Great move, Carlisle, I thought. Now you grow a conscience. He heard that and shot me a look. Edward shot me a look, too.

"Alice, I won't be dusted. It's too ridiculous. Besides, Carlisle has a point. I'm needed in the lab."

"But what about—"He cut me off. No objections are permitted when Edward Cullen has chosen.

"Alice, as you said, she'll turn up when it's time and not a minute before." He turned back to Carlisle and made a fist, popping his veins. "Do it."

Carlisle pulled a dart pack out of his pocket and did it.

~:~:~:~

Later, when the initial spasms were over, Jasper and Carlisle put Edward to bed. Ikea had replacement chairs in stock and would bring them by tomorrow. The new formula was frightening to see in action, but Edward was already in a human state of exhaustion.

I started laying out Edward's coffee things for something to do besides fume. I still wasn't happy about the decision because I felt like we'd tricked him into it somehow. The least I could do was feed his human caffeine addictions.

Eventually, I noticed Jasper leaning in the doorway, watching me.

"What?" I asked, gesturing to espresso set on the counter. "He'll want coffee when he wakes up in the morning. It's the least I can do."

"He's British, Alice. He'll want tea."

"No, he's all-American boy now. No tea. Especially not after Italy. It's coffee all the way."

"As you like."

I straightened the set on the counter. Again.

"Alice, he'll be fine."

"We tricked him into this! He doesn't want to be human."

"Well, he doesn't want to be dusted, either."

I whirled around and stomped my foot angrily. "Do not mock this, Jasper Whitlock. It is not funny."

"You'll crack the tile, stomping around like that."

Scowling was the only worthy response I could muster. Jasper slid off the doorframe and came over to wrap me in his arms. "Alice, Edward doesn't want anything but Bella, and we can't give that to him."

"That doesn't excuse manipulating him."

Jasper sighed and tightened his grip around me. "You win, you win. Okay? Happy?"

"No," I muttered into his chest. "I want to fix this."

"There's no fixing it. There's only living with it."

"Don't quote Carlisle at me." He'd said the same thing to Edward a thousand times when Bella had first been turned.

"I say it because it's true. We can't fix Bella, and we can't fix Edward. We can only make him function a little until Bella pops up again."

"How can you be so sure she'll turn up? Especially after what we told Edward? We've looked for her everywhere."

"I'm not sure she'll turn up. But I am sure if she's alive we'll be able to track her down eventually." He was rubbing his hands up and down my back, soothing me. "And when her tracks get big enough, we'll follow them right to her door."

"But Bella doesn't even smell. And she never leaves tracks."

"No," he said, leading me out to den so he could cuddle me into the couch, "She doesn't smell, and she doesn't leave tracks. She leaves something much more obvious."

"Oh, yeah? Then why haven't we seen her mark, even though we've been looking for her almost non-stop?"

"We haven't given her enough time to pile them up," he said, plumping up his side of the cushions. We had an evening ritual of watching the sunset over the lake through the French doors in the den. It was calming, but I was still fussing at him even as I settled into the crook of his arm.

"Pile what up?"

"The same thing she always does, Alice. Bodies. Wherever she is, you know someone's dying."

AN: Many thanks to all my readers and reviewers! I treasure each of you. Comment, add me, or send me a message . . . I have teasers from the next installment . . . back in Bella's POV.