For Refolin, Captain of Team WTFIGO. . . here's a few pieces of the puzzle.

With apologies to SMeyer and thanks to Furious Kitten, B-Rizzle-Dizzle, and the team at Project Team Beta for the help!


Chapter 8:

~: Freesias in the Wind :~

St. Petersburg, Jasper's POV

"I don't think so," I said, stepping back sharply as I nearly got nailed by a racing cab driver. The driver seemed intent on throwing his passengers around the backseat, and I felt a little sorry for the owner of the dark hair that went flying into the side of the car. That had to hurt.

Shaking my head to dismiss Mr. NASCAR from my mind, I continued talking into the phone, opting not to cross the street after all. A bench was over to my left, so I plopped down for a minute. "There hasn't even been a trace of her anywhere that I've looked."

"Look for her more! She's got to be there somewhere. She was just there. Just there! If she's changing she won't be able to move and she can't go far. You have to find her!" Edward's voice rasped into my ear, double edged with hysteria and over-caffeination.

Alice's voice cut in. "Jasper, just come home. You've been there for two days. There's nothing else you can do there now and it's not safe to linger. We'll find her again."

Edward immediately started arguing with her and I sighed. I couldn't diffuse the situation from here. There, Esme, Carlisle, Alice, and Edward were sharing a phone line in the kitchen while we tried to figure out what needed to happen next. Esme, Carlisle, and Alice were focused on avoiding exposure and information gathering, but Edward. . . Edward was working on losing it.

I'd seen Edward absolutely crack just three times during my life with Alice. Oh, he had a temper that he lost on a regular basis, but there was a difference between his rage storms and the utter breakdowns he was capable of having. They were caused by just one thing: Bella.

The first time had been truly scary. One minute he was a rational scientist who approached life with a certain pragmatic realism. Sure, he was a little moody and a little angsty, but nothing over the top. He'd been turned against his will, as had we all, but he was coping. He and Carlisle had their lab, their plans, and their dreams. They had Alice to look after, which they did with a fierce paternalism, and then they had Bella. Well, Edward had had Bella. She'd fought through all his walls and captivated him completely. He'd fallen hard, even for our kind, and he would have moved heaven and earth one brick at a time to keep her safe, happy, and by his side.

Then Bella went out the window and it was like rational Edward had never existed at all. I shuddered at the memory. He'd been absolutely feral in his hunt for her. The scientist Edward had gone serial, shredding the Volturi's people with his bare hands when he had caught up with them.

And it hadn't done a damn bit of good. Bella had absolutely vanished. It was as if she'd never existed.

Edward had gone numb after a few weeks. We'd been fooled, thinking he was settling down to a cold vengeance. He'd been a madman about rebuilding the lab, really throwing himself into the formulas. Over the next few months, he and Carlisle had their first big breakthroughs on the neutralizing formula since they'd come to America, and they'd started on the attraction serums.

Then Seth's telegram had arrived from Forks.

She came for him.

Four simple words. Just four words.

Crack number two. Seth had been permanently banned from communications work after that misleading message fiasco. Edward, well, Edward had been in Forks in a matter of hours. It took us months to fish his insane ass out of the woods again.

Housebreaking him again? Years. Fucking years.

There had been nothing to do but work around it. Edward was a ball of inhuman misery. Carlisle had once mentioned that the only thing he'd seen Edward take even half as hard was becoming a vampire in the first place. Given the vendetta Edward took to the lab with him on a regular basis, it was saying something.

Time had passed. Years with no news. Edward had calmed. . . or probably just gotten worn out. The lab work was taking a toll, and the experiments he put his body through were frightening as he skirted the edge of sanity. He just didn't care about living in a world where there was no Bella, but outright killing himself wasn't an option. The experimentation let him torture himself in the name of vengeance as he wouldn't give the Volturi the satisfaction of seeing him truly dead—not before he killed them first. Them, and their new weapon. . . an assassin they called the Distiller. A vampire who ate other vampires. Supposedly could smell your heart and sucked the soul right out of you.

Secretive, mysterious, and managed by a third party, no one knew a damn thing about the Distiller. Rumor said they'd recruited the vamp somehow, but Carlisle and Edward suspected that it was a creation of the Volturi's private labs. They'd gotten into the chemical manipulation business late, but the arms race had been fierce. Carlisle and Edward thought the Distiller was just a Volturi test product they didn't want to fully own up to creating since they couldn't fully control it.

Yeah, the Distiller was a lab creation alright—ours.

Not that we'd brightened up to that initially. No, no, no. Decades. . . fucking decades. . . of all the wrong kinds of research, the wrong kinds of work, the wrong kinds of weapons development. Edward with his nose to the grindstone day and night, sweating out new formulas, making the breakthrough for the change formula that brought us back the option of humanity.

Game-changer, that one. The Volturi were pissed beyond belief. Edward had doubled down and worked harder. Feeding, bathing, and social interaction were ignored, since all he had time for was the lab.

We got the bright idea of staging an intervention and told Edward to take a vacation. I remembered him sitting at the microscope, jaw dropped, lab coat flopping, eyes huge in his face, protesting.

"What will I do if I'm not working?"

Alice had come up with the brilliant idea that we would make him into a perfume spokesman and playboy. We'd diluted the attraction serums for a human market and wanted to raise capital for more lab work on the change formula. We needed someone suitably attractive to sell it, and we needed Edward to take a break before he snapped. So we proposed to dose him up and send him out into the world of humans to unwind.

He'd accepted it like some kind of death sentence.

Still, he'd lived it up with a certain grim determination. He made a science out of being a dilettante and falling in with the wrong sorts of people. The jet-set party circuit ate him up, the perfume sold like hot cakes, and Edward tolerated it all, barely. We all knew he was just counting down the days of his five year vacation until he could "die" from the high life and we'd let him back in the lab to get on with his anti-social Bella-hunting existence.

Then one day, just off the coast of Amalfi, he walked down to the docks for a boat ride with Laurent. He liked to hang with the vamp, to remember what he really was and to play with fire a little. It was Edward's way of living on the edge during his human years.

So there they were, just two big playboys on their way out for a pleasure cruise.

Until Laurent's friend pulled herself up out of the water and said hello.

You always find things in the last place you look.

Edward had raced to connect the dots in his own head for a Bella who didn't know she was his Bella. Instead, she thought she was a super killer.

Okay, so she was a super killer. Minor technicality, right?

We'd always suspected they'd send the Distiller after us, but we hadn't—and Edward especially hadn't—truly been prepared for what that reality might look like, smiling up at him in a barely there bikini and calling herself Tanya.

He'd played his cards close to his chest with us, and it wasn't until the last minute, the night of his big gamble, that Alice had even caught on to what he was doing down there at the villa in Amalfi. He'd begged her to let him go through with it, convinced her that his plan would work, and then. . . well. . . Bella called his bluff.

Crack number three was still being investigated by the Italian police.

Not that the ongoing investigation was entirely Edward's fault. I mean, what can you do when the Volturi—

"Jasper?"

"Sorry Alice, my mind wandered." There was no more background noise on her end, so I could only assume Edward had stormed out of the room, crack number four temporarily avoided.

"Where did it go?"

"1928, Forks, Italy."

Alice sighed. "Why not 1924?"

I smiled into the phone. "I've always preferred 1925."

"But we met in 1924."

"True, but the first time I got you all to myself was in 1925."

She chuckled. "Edward and Carlisle were just a little protective, weren't they?"

I snorted. "Baby, it was like a competition between them. It's a miracle they let me talk to you at all."

"They didn't want to, did they? I hadn't been free very long, and they were just being cautious. They didn't want to let me out of their sight for a second."

"I know." I'd had to practically install myself in their hotel to even catch glimpses of her in those days, since Edward and Carlisle were determined to shut me out. "Still, good things come to those who wait, right?"

She laughed. "Patience was never your strong suit. It was a good thing, too, or Carlisle and Edward would have kept you hanging for years."

"Instead we got the garden."

"Mmmm-mmm," she hummed into the phone. "You smelled better to me than any of those flowers."

I pushed up off the bench and started walking again, letting my mind wander in the memory with her even as my feet took me onto the next block. "You positively glistened in the moonlight. It was all I could do to keep my hands to myself."

She laughed. "You certainly stood close enough, didn't you?"

"The better to breathe you in, my pretty," I said in my best Big Bad Wolf voice, and sniffed loudly for her amusement. While she cackled at my antics, my body froze as it processed the air I'd just inhaled.

Freesia. Fresh freesia. I gasped and started sniffing again, frantically trying to source the trail of the one scent that didn't belong in the cityscape.

"Um, Jasper, baby, you can stop sniffing now. You sound ridiculous."

"No more games, Alice. I smelled her. She was just here!"

"What?!" Alice's shriek was nearly supersonic, and I could hear people rushing back into the room on her end.

"I'll call," I said, sniffing furiously, "when I find her, I'll call." Cutting off the questions coming at me through the line, I leaned into wind to find the strongest source of the scent.

A parking meter.

I was aware that people were staring as I tried to follow the scent pattern. I started exuding waves of "Nothing is happening here" vibes at max power so that I could investigate further. Broad daylight was not my friend as I circled and sniffed the pole, no doubt looking absolutely psychotic to the average bystander.

Bella had been at this parking meter. There was no doubt about it. For the smell to be this strong, she must have practically mated with it sometime in the last hour. Unfortunately, I couldn't source any trail to the meter or away from it. She had just dropped from the sky onto this spot and vanished again, according to my nose.

I shook my head. My nose was shit. I needed to engage my brain.

The sniffing wasn't helping. All I could smell were people and all of the people were full of blood. Their heartbeats echoed in my ears and I could hear their blood pumping in their veins. Delicious. . .

I shook my head again. Focus.

People were everywhere, had been everywhere, were going to be everywhere around this meter. I just had a small window before the scent dissipated, worn away and covered up by human contact.

Warm human contact, brushing its rich aroma over the delicate floral with smooth strokes of that most electric essence, fresh blood. Mmmmmm. . .

Not fucking now! I told my stomach, furious. There was a reason I didn't breathe much, and it had everything to do with my appetite. My fucking out of control appetite that was suddenly in hyper-drive, reminding me that it had been a little too long since the last time I'd eaten.

It was a nightmare come true. I needed to track Bella, which meant I needed to sniff her out. But I couldn't sniff her out without catching the scent of every other piece of prey—shit, person!—in the city.

It was all I could do not to howl in frustration when my stomach out and out rumbled, my throat aching right along with it. The combination made me want to latch onto the next passing throat and just—

Think, Jasper, think! That was it. No more breathing until I got my hunger under control. I needed to use my brain before I went wild. Bella couldn't have just dropped from the sky. She was weak, she was sick, and she wasn't supposed to be able to travel.

I scanned my immediate surroundings. Shops, shops, shops, hotel.

Hotel.

I practically sprinted for the door of the hotel. It was a straight shot over from the parking meter, and I sniffed the door handles aggressively, ignoring the stare from the doorman.

Nothing.

Inside was no better. People smells were everywhere, but there was absolutely no trace of freesia anywhere. The receptionist was giving me a wary look as I approached the desk, clearly agitated.

"Do you speak English?"

She nodded hesitantly and I smiled. "I'm looking for one of your guests."

She shifted uneasily. "We don't release information about guests of the hotel."

"She's about this tall—" I gestured, "with long dark hair and pale skin. She's very thin, and very sick. Probably can't walk under her own power."

Recognition flickered in her eyes, but she pressed her lips together. "We don't release information about guests of the hotel."

I put all my powers on her. Tell me what you know, I willed, and she seemed to sway under the influence. Her mouth opened and I leaned forward, hanging on her every word.

"We don't release information about guests of the hotel. Please leave," she whispered, her voice strained and wobbling as her body shook with the stress of resistance.

I slammed my fist into the reception desk, shattering the counter. "Tell me," I growled, but she just screamed.

Hands clapped onto me from behind and I whirled around, snarling. The security team stepped back, one of them dropping a hand none too subtly to his hip. He said something to me in Russian, but I wasn't listening.

Over his shoulder I'd spotted the main bank of elevators. Suddenly I knew what I had to do to get my answers. Screw the question and answer session. A couple was just stepping out, providing the ideal window of opportunity. Vaulting the goon squad, I launched myself into the elevator just as the doors were closing and pressed the button for the top floor.

I started breathing deeply in the elevator, hoping for a sign that Bella had been here. There was nothing, but that didn't dissuade me. The second the doors opened, I sprinted free, scenting up and down the hall rapidly before sprinting down the stairs to the level below.

Three levels in, I hit pay dirt.

Sort of.

The maid screamed when I burst into Room 418, slamming the door back into the wall as I huffed in the smell of Bella. She'd definitely been here, and no amount of cleaning solution could cover that up.

The fire in the trashcan, however, had definitely covered something up.

"What burned?" I said, pointing. The maid just screamed again. I pushed calm at her, but she was over the edge. Moving to close the door, I realized the handle was embedded in the wall.

Shit, so much for passing as human. I leaned in toward the door to pull it loose and was assaulted by another scent I recognized.

Emmett. My brain swam and started racing down memory lane as I struggled to figure out how to tie my past to Bella's watch to this scent here, now.

There was a click from the hallway, and I looked up from the door handle into a black mass. Raising my eyes further, I recognized the leader of the goon squad, with a mean Russian piece leveled directly at me.

He whispered into his earpiece and made a hands-up gesture with his gun. I ignored him and did the only logical thing I could think of with him standing right in front of me, blocking my path.

I pulled a Bella and took the window exit.

Landing in a flurry of glass on the sidewalk, the maid's screams weren't the only ones echoing in my ears as I straightened up. I started sprinting up the block, dodging traffic as I crossed the street and kept running.

Finally I spotted a narrow alleyway and threw myself into it, scrabbling at the walls until I hit the rooftops. There was safety in the sky, because humans rarely looked up.

I punched the button to call Alice.

"Jasper, what the hell?"

I cringed. She couldn't know already. "I'm sorry, I just snapped. I knew she was in the hotel!"

There was a pause. Evidently I was back on speaker line status, because Esme spoke. "Start at the beginning."

"I was talking to Alice and I smelled her on the parking meter in front of the Hotel Moskva. She was staying in Room 418, but she's checked out now."

Alice interrupted in her security queen tone. "Now the rest of it, starting with 'I just snapped' and including all the damage."

I sighed. How to explain that I'd lost my composure without getting myself in more shit? The third degree on this mess was going to be brutal, especially since I needed to leave a few parts out. "Um, I smelled her outside and took a chance that she had been in the hotel. The receptionist knew something but didn't want to tell me and I kind of, um, tried to vamp her, but it didn't work so I, um, smashed, um—"

Edward spoke, cutting off a trailing explanation that had the eloquence of a six-year-old with his hand still in the cookie jar. Despite his earlier raging, he sounded surprisingly calm now, opting to skip the drama portion of the conversation in favor of the Bella portion. "Can she still be tracked?"

"No. It was an isolated scent spot and she's definitely left the hotel. The maid was cleaning the room when I came in."

There was a moment of silence. Edward spoke again. "Can you go back to the hotel?"

"Um, no."

"Did you eat anyone?"

"No!" I was indignant, but it wasn't like it would have been the first time. I knew I should have gone hunting this morning.

There was another pause with total quiet, which was unnerving, and then a flurry of sound as they took me off mute. Bastards and their secret conferences. . .

Edward asked one more question on behalf of the judges. "Are we going to see you on the news?"

I groaned. "God, I hope not."

There were sighs all around before Alice delivered the verdict. "Come home, Jasper."

"Okay," I said in a deflated tone, feeling their disappointment. So much for laying low and scouting out Bella's new location quietly. I hung up and slowly climbed back down the building to hail a cab.

On my way to the airport, I rolled Bella's pocket watch between my fingers. I'd taken the photo of her with Rose and Emmett out because I didn't know how to explain it, just as I didn't know how to explain why I'd gone so crazy in the hotel without bringing up Emmett's scent. Except I couldn't bring up knowing Emmett without having to explain life with Maria, and if Alice found out about that whole situation. . . or if Carlisle found out. . . or Edward. . . fucking hell.

I facepalmed with a crack that made my taxi driver jump. Why did I have to lie in the first place? At the time it had seemed so important to keep it all a secret, but now. . . now I knew better. It was messy, but I could have fixed it. Now it just looked worse since I'd been hiding it for nearly a hundred years.

I growled at the situation and the taxi driver punched the gas, his heart rate revving up faster than the engine. What a mess, I thought. What a fucking mess.

This could have all been avoided if I'd just tracked Bella properly. She'd been right there, and I'd missed her by an hour or two, tops. Then I had to go and blow my human cover, which was why I was being ordered out of the field.

I scrubbed my face with my hands and growled again, shifting across the back seat. The driver's eyes watched my frustrated and fidgety movements nervously and I chuckled darkly. Edward's twitchy ways were suddenly making a lot more sense to me, and as the cab pulled up to the curb it hit me that being cooped up in the plane for the next 13 hours was going to be absolute hell on my fucking nerves.

Sure enough, it was a long plane ride home.

Reviewers have all my love and loyalty and I welcome the questions from all my Team WTFIGO? supporters. Hope this helped. What else needs answered, other than everything?

Reviews, comments, alerts, favorites--Ch 9 teasers await you. After all, Jasper's not the only one having a long plane ride home at the moment. Poor Ben. He was expecting to sleep on the plane, not to be locked in the bathroom!