Ok so I messed up. jeez sorry. anyway I did go back and fix it. apparently I posted Chapter 17 twice. So go and read chapter 16 again because that is the one I messed up on. Also here is another one to make it up to ya'll.

Chapter Eighteen: Bella

I couldn't find Caius, anywhere. I didn't ask for help, because according to Felix if I did, I would be breaking the dare, although I didn't see how, I decided to play it by him for a while.

I had been searching for two weeks now.

Aro and Marcus didn't seem concerned at all, and it was infuriating me. Call me crazy, but I was missing Caius. He had a sarcastic wit that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time, and when he wasn't being a pissy vampire- which wasn't often- he was quite good company.

I still emailed Alice on a daily basis using the laptop Jane had bought me, and also kept in contact with Renee and Charlie, (Renee was still going on about hot Italian guys,) and all my other friends. Via email, amazingly enough Rosalie and I were getting rather close, it was the same with Jasper. There was a side to the both of them that I'd never known, and now that I'd found it, I was finally getting to know them properly.

Edward however….

For some reason it wasn't as easy to talk to him as it was to the others. I even found myself emailing Carlisle more than I emailed Edward. I couldn't find anything to write about to him, and even when I did, I didn't know how to put it. Edward didn't seem the kind of person who would be interested in all the fun stupid stuff I did every day with the Volturi Guard, he would be too mature for that. Every time I sat down in front of the computer with his email on the screen, my mind came up blank.

I tried to think about modelling the emails on the conversations that we had face to face before, but once again- blank.

Come to think of it, I couldn't remember a single proper conversation we'd had about a proper subject. We only really talked for a few moments, then he'd either cut me off by distracting me, dazzling me, or just laughing at me.

I had found it endearing, and at the moment I probably wouldn't have been capable of thinking otherwise, but right now… I wondered.

Things had never really been the same since he had left, and now I finally realized that my eyes had been opened.

I should have listened to Jacob. Harsh, but true. I was blinded by Edward's perfectness, and finally when he wasn't there did I only realized just how different and incompatible people we were.

I hadn't realized it the first time we were… apart as I was too lost in my insane denial, trying to cling on to a ghost, but now… Now that I had a break from him, and was thinking clearly, I wondered… Would this be it? He said he would change me if I marie… married him- (deluded old-fashioned vampire)- and like an idiot I had sort of agreed… But…

There it was again with the 'but'.

The truth was, I didn't want to marry him. It wasn't just the fact that I was only eighteen- almost nineteen, but even then, subconsciously, my mind was telling me no!

When I was turned- all sparkly and just as beautiful as any other vampire, finally his equal- would I still love him? Or was it love in the first place, or just a childish infatuation?

I barely knew him! That was the truth.

I didn't know him. He'd been in my life for a year and around eight months, but

I shook my head violently. I didn't know how I felt. I didn't know how I wanted to feel.

On top of it all, I was hearing things.

At night, I kept on hearing someone playing the piano, playing the piano amazingly. A thousand times better than Edward (Here we go again with the Edward bashing). Whoever was playing should give Edward piano lessons.

It was like the Phantom of the Opera, and at night all I could hear was the mysterious playing.

I wanted to ask someone about it… If the whole castle was filled with vampires with super-hearing, shouldn't they be hearing it too?

I'd asked around, but everyone just shrugged and avoided the subject. It was obvious they knew, whereas I was in the dark.

So I sat in my room and sulked.

I'd gone off FRIENDS, Aro had obsessed about it so much, I made me want to beg Jane to change me, just so that I could rip off his head to shut him up, but of course she said no. I'd listened to all my songs on my IPod so many times I could recite them all off by heart, and even YouTube didn't interest me anymore.

I could hang out with the guard, they were awesome, but it did seem a bit needy hanging out with them 24/7, and they did have other duties other than keep the human entertained.

I had just way too much spare time on my hands.

Yeah. Right now, I actually missed Caius following me around like an overgrown silvery haired glowering bat.

I know. Lock me up in a mental asylum already.

Shaking my head violently so that the world spun, I got off my bed, and walked out of my room.

~~~(o.O)~~~

I spent what seemed like hours wandering around. I'd gotten better at remembering which paths I took, and my feet led me into a rather deserted area of the castle I hadn't been before. (Cliché I know) It was totally quiet, and it had the musty 'not-lived-in-smell'. Ironic seeing as they were the undead.

There weren't any rooms, or doors leading anywhere, just corridors, flat stone passages, occasionally a medieval style window too.

I just walked, not really worried about getting lost. The guard could find me easily no matter how lost I got even if Demetri couldn't track me.

The walls and floors just blurred together, until I wound up walking in a huge circle, and ended up in a rather familiar corridor. It was the same one that went past Aro's rooms, and out of curiosity, I began walking down it.

I saw a door with a MV on it- Marcus Volturi, and then several other rooms without any initials on them.

I reached the end of the corridor, and slightly disappointed, turned back.

The door leading to the second-to-last room caught my eye. It was slightly ajar, and I could see a familiar shape inside.

Cautiously, I reached out and the door creaked open.

Sunlight shone through the windows that framed the room, highlighting the dust particles that spiraled down onto the grand piano that sat in the center of the room.

It was beautiful.

Dark ebony wood and polished ivory keys stared out at me. I had been taking piano lessons back in Forks without telling Edward- I had wanted to learn how to make the piano that sat in his house make the beautiful sounds that he could on it, and so as I sat down on the stool before the piano, I let my fingers run lightly across the keys.

Each note was clear and distinct, and even though the piano was obviously ancient, maybe even hand-crafted by the looks of it, it was in tune, and waiting.

There were several pages of sheet music in front of me, and I didn't even think about why or how they were there, because as I studied the piece of music, I recognized it.

I scanned over the C minors, and the D majors, realizing that this was a four-hand piece, and realizing that the music I had heard at night was this piece, only played by two hands.

I tried the first few notes, pleased when they sounded right, then played the next line. I played the second set, different from the first set, which was the music that I heard at night.

(To those who are confused- a four-hand piece, is when the music has been written so that two people need to play a different overlapping piece at the same time, but if you play the four-hand piece two handed, you basically just choose one 'set' to play. {To play one set, you just play every second line, or every first/third/fifth... ect, line.})

As I kept on playing, the notes flowed, my hands dancing across the keyboard, the ivory keys cool and familiar against my fingertips.

I closed my eyes and felt the music. The notes fell like raindrops across glass, and the music swelled, reverberating throughout the room, weaving a spell in my mind, creating a whole new world. There was no Edward, Jacob was still just my friend, no crazy Psycho red-haired vampire after me….

Just me, for a stolen moment, free.

The music built up, swelling triumphantly, deepening and my soul was singing, reveling in the music… All my worries just poured away, like water down the sink, and I let myself go.

I didn't need the sheet of music anymore, the notes seemed to pour from my own mind, and my fingers moved across the keys without conscious thought.

The music flowed so smoothly, the notes melding together like it wasn't just me playing…

My eyes snapped open, and as I saw who was sitting beside me, running his fingers fluidly over the keys, I screamed, and fell backwards off the stool, cracking my head on the stone floor.

Caius didn't even look up from the keys. He continued playing the haunting tune, his gaze fixed on them like trying to imprint the ivory blocks into his memory.

Caius played the piano?

"What… How? What… What, you… I… Is… Why are you here?"

Caius turned, fixing his red eyes on me. "This is my room."

I gawked. "Your…."

I quickly looked around, and I (very stupidly) noticed that it wasn't just an empty room with a piano. Caius's room?

But… his room was… I had been in his room…

The truth hit me, and I could have done an Aro- and slammed my head on the stone walls. Of course that dusty room several stories below couldn't have been his. I had thought it was a study when I first entered it, and that was exactly what it was. A flipping study.

That explained all the weird looks I had gotten… Aro and Caius exchanging weird looks when I talked about renovating Caius's room- the room I stood in now didn't have a single musty bookcase- the guard looking at each other strangely when I said that I'd been in his room… It all made sense.

Sort of.

Caius's real room was just as impressive as Aro's- apart from the golden doors and the giant AV (or CV in this case.) the theme was mainly blue and black with touches of purple, as opposed to the red and gold of Aro's room.

There was a rather extravagant (could those be diamonds?) chandelier hanging right above the piano, a pair of double doors which I assumed led to Caius's wardrobe… A huge black four poster bed in the corner, there was a huge window which stretched from one side of the room to the other, and a low window seat, big enough for two… There wasn't much stuff on the walls, except for one portrait…

It was like the full size one I had seen of the Volturi in Carlisle's study, but in this there were only two people.

It took me a moment to recognize Caius.

His ruby eyes stood out of the painting, sparkling and alive with joy, a gentle smile curving across his face. I followed his gaze, and saw the smaller, slighter woman with dark hair, several shades darker than mine with reddish-gold hints in it, with a necklace of what looked like a swallow around her neck, standing beside him, an arm slung across his neck, standing on tiptoe, a smile mirroring Caius's, her eyes fixed on his.

There was so much obvious love, affection and adoration in their gaze, I felt like I was intruding, just by looking at the portrait.

The music stopped, making me turn quickly.

I hadn't seen Caius in almost four months, and I had forgotten his absolutely petrifying glare which made me want to curl up in my bed, and yank the covers over my head.

Then he spoke. "That said, why are you in my room girl?"

So it was back to 'girl'.

I began to speak, but my throat was so dry the words stuck in my throat, so I started again. "I was bored, so I went for a walk, and your door was open, so I saw the piano…"

Caius didn't look interested at all. His gaze drifted to the window.

I followed his gaze. He had an amazing view, his room was so high up, the small houses below looked little more than boxes.

I knew that now I should be taking up Felix's bet- get Caius out of the room- but it just seemed like the wrong time. Or maybe it wasn't just the wrong time. Maybe it was always the wrong time… Right now I didn't want to make things worse with Caius.

I wasn't stupid. Being here right now, I could put the pieces together. The woman in the picture was Athenadora, and Caius had loved her. If I had been Jessica, I would laughed at the thought of Caius loving someone, but it all made sense.

Whatever had happened that night almost four months ago had clearly something to do with her.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I'll just… go."

His voice called me back, and it was so unexpected, I nearly flew out of my skin. "No, it's fine. Stay."

I stopped, stunned. Was it an order, or a request? Did he seriously want me to stay in his room? He didn't seem the type to just let anyone hang around in their room.

I turned slowly, and just stood there.

His cold eyes regarded me, and they were just so different from the eyes in the painting, I shivered unconsciously.

When he spoke again, it wasn't what I thought he'd be asking. "You play the piano?"

I blinked at him like an owl. No duh. And then the words slipped out. "No duh. Of course I can't, because just before that wasn't really me playing- just a cyborg."

He didn't really react, and I couldn't remember whether or not it was normal for him. The last time we had properly spoken was when he was being all freakishly happy, and the time before that, he was yelling at me and calling me a useless pitiful human.

He just kept on staring at me, like he was trying to figure something out.

I was never one for long or awkward silences, so I decided to break it. "Um… That was an amazing piece of music… do you know who wrote it?"

"I did."

Oh.

OH! Come to think of it, I wasn't really surprised, not really. It was his room after all, and…. And after today, well, I couldn't exactly claim that I knew him.

"Wow. Um. Well, it's really good." His face remained blank. "I mean, really amazing… Uh, could you teach me?"

I cursed myself the second later, he'd probably throw me out…. But he didn't say anything. It was like talking to robot. No emotion, no nothing. Not even a flicker in the burning red eyes.

"Do… Do you need anything?" I asked the robot.

The robot said nothing.

It just occurred to me then, that Caius was a vampire.

I almost laughed out loud at my stupidity.

I had just spent too much time around the Cullens, who tried to live their stolen lives together, and around Aro, who acted like a hyper-maniac child, and Marcus, who sometimes I doubted to be vampire at all, and the guard, who were so normal and yet supernatural at the same time- that I had started to think that they were still human. I had never really had any real experience with proper vampires, only James and Laurent, and those Romanian vampires, but each of them had very obviously tried to kill me….

And Caius was one of those.

He wasn't tame like the Cullens, and he never acted human either. He may have looked only three years older than me, but he had been walking the earth for two thousand years or more, seen things I'd never imagined, and he most certainly wasn't human of all things. He wasn't even close.

I should have run. I should have fainted… I should have done something embarrassingly feminine, but instead, somehow my limbs moved, and I ended up sitting uncomfortably close to the robot/vampire/Caius and beginning to play again.

Inside, I was screaming at myself. Did I really have no self-preservation? Why was I even really here anyway?

Did I want to die?

I just kept playing, wondering how my calm façade was folding up, when Caius's fingers joined mine.

For several of my heartbeats there was just the sound of the music overlapping and flowing like rivers over rocks as the notes melded together smoothly, but then I realized I was playing too fast, and when I tried to slow down, I lost the rhythm.

There was a sigh, and suddenly a pair of ice-cold hands were hovering over mine, playing the same notes for me. "You're playing the F major too fast, you need to positing your fingers- here, and let your wrist go-"

I think I might have fainted for a split second at the touch. "Um, yeah, um. Yeah. So. Thanks." I managed to stutter, and as usual, he ignored me. His hands were lightly touching mine, guiding them over the keys, and his chest was just millimeters behind my back. I froze automatically, eyes wide as he played the notes with unnatural gentleness.

He could probably hear my heart hammering in my chest, I didn't know whether or not it was from fear or surprise, but he let go of my hands and sat down again, playing the same scale at the same speed as me.

I got it wrong again.

~~~(o.O)~~~

An hour later, I was back in my room, trying to decide on whether or not to be stunned, or stunned, or….. stunned.

So I'd found Caius, and it seemed the better I got to know him, the more confusing it was for me to understand him. He was nothing like how I remembered- a completely different guy from the one I'd met around four months ago.

I leaned back in my chair, balancing it on two legs, staring at the black blank celling above me.

I'd spent a while in his room, awkwardly learning how to play the piano properly, I had to say, with all the harsh impatience and unnatural vampire-ness, he was an excellent teacher. I'd picked up a thousand more tips in half an hour than I had for six months with Piano lessons. It really helped to have a millennia old vampire teach you to play the piano.

I closed my eyes, arms wrapped around my knees as I thought. It seemed nowadays I thought a lot. Everything was moving way too fast- one of the down-sides to living with vampires- and it didn't seem like only a few months had passed. My whole perspective on the world had changed, even the way I thought had changed.

The Volturi weren't soulless murders that Edward had made them to be, and they didn't kill for pleasure either, I could tell. They weren't sorry for what they did though, which did bother me a bit, and I couldn't bear to be within earshot of the throne room when the guard fed (once a fortnight) or even look them in the eyes when they were done, but… I'd started to think of them the way I did Charlie and Renee, the way I thought of the Cullens. Proper family.

Call me crazy, but I imagined they felt the same way. Sort of.

My eyes snapped open, adjusting to the light.

I had thought that someone had been in the room just a second ago….

There was no-one there.

I shook my head to clear it, mentally banging my head on a wall for hallucinating for the second time, and rested the chair back on its four legs.

Great. I was turning into a hermit recluse. I hadn't even spoken to Jane in at least four days, or the rest of the guard for a day or so. I didn't know where they were exactly, except for the fact that they weren't here, and hadn't seen fit to tell me where they were going.

I didn't have enough energy to talk to Aro, I didn't want to have long 'marriage talks' with Sulpica, (they were very awkward), I couldn't be bothered to go find Marcus, I had just seen Caius mere minutes ago and was still confused, and the human receptionist had been… involved in a fatal incident a week back and there hadn't been a replacement.

Therefore, I was stuck here.

My eyes rested on something hiding under the fabric of my long-suffering bag, which was peeking out from under the couch.

Aha!

I grabbed the drawing kit, almost breaking the pencil in the process, and flopped down on my bed, lying flat on my stomach, my legs sticking out the other side of the bed.

I drew circles all over the first page of refill, weird smiley faces and x-d out Pac men. Mr. Happy ended up strangling Mr. Sleepy somewhere in the middle of the page, Rapunzel was running around the page with her hair on fire, and then a shark swam up the margin and ate a hedgehog.

I rolled my eyes, but couldn't bring myself to rip up Mr. Happy or the shark, so I just flipped to the next page and pursed my lips. I couldn't really think of anything to draw.

Was this it? Was everything I did doomed to boredom?

I slammed my eyes shut and forced the pencil to the page, just writing random nonsense on the paper.

My eyes still firmly shut, I began tracing shapes and angles, not really knowing what I was drawing, but not daring to open my eyes to see.

After a few moments, the pencil seemed to meld itself to my hand, the shapes becoming easier, which was weird because, a. I basically was the worse artist ever, b. This wasn't a flat surface so the picture would probably wonky- not that I even knew what I was drawing, and c. Because my eyes were shut.

I didn't realize my eyes were open until I was shading in the empty spaces, and admiring the undoubtedly best sketch I'd ever drawn.

That was until I realized what exactly I had drawn.

It's just a coincidence…. Just a coincidence…. It doesn't mean anything. It does not mean anything.

Of course that didn't help when my eyes were fixed on the no-longer blank piece of paper before me that held a rough, but detailed sketch of a particular vampire leaning over a particular human, teaching her how to play the piano, not looking at the keys, but at the human.