Carlisle:
Esme wasn't smiling when we got back to the house, but she wasn't fuming either. She was quiet, composed, making an effort not to give anything away.
"Not mad?" I inquired hopefully as we shot through the door and came to a halt.
"Not too mad," she clarified, flicking her hair over her shoulder, not making eye contact.
"I'm sorry."
"I know." She turned and disappeared up the stairs to have a shower. I sighed.
It was stupid of me to think I could hide such an enormous problem: as soon as she watched or heard the news – or talked to anyone in town, for that matter – my efforts would have been destroyed anyway. She was right about her abilities, but I just couldn't help myself: I had to protect her from whatever I could. I'd happily have her annoyed with me like this for the rest of time if it meant she was safe, except that she hated being annoyed with me.
"I'm sorry, Carlisle, I would have warned you…" Alice groaned, sitting on the staircase with her head in her hands. Jasper was sitting beside her, concerned.
"Don't worry about it," Jasper and I said at once. A CNN program was running in the background, on very low volume – forensics specialists debating the serial killer theory as a viable explanation for the Seattle murders. Jasper kissed Alice on the forehead and wandered over as they showed a section of footage. Alice turned her attention back to searching various futures, and I joined Jasper.
"Where are Emmett and Rose?" I inquired.
"Emmett went for a run, but Rose is upstairs brooding – as usual," Jasper replied with a grim smile. Esme floated downstairs – much neater now, and smiling, but not for me.
"Good morning Jasper," she greeted as she joined us.
"Getting the silent treatment, huh?" Jasper teased quietly, elbowing me in the ribs.
"It's my own fault," I admitted. At that moment, Bella and Edward walked in. We pretended to be paying attention to the television – our excellent hearing would explain the low volume.
Emmett strolled in too, wearing an enormous grin.
"Hey Edward," he greeted. "Ditching, Bella?"
"We both are," Edward reminded him. Emmett laughed.
"Yes, but it's her first time through high school. She might miss something." Edward rolled his eyes, and threw me a newspaper.
"Did you see that they're considering a serial killer now?" he asked. I sighed. She knows, Edward….I told him, glancing at Esme, who smiled crookedly – apparently telling Edward something amusing.
"They've had two specialists debating the possibility on CNN all morning," I explained.
"We can't let this go on," he insisted.
"Let's go now. I'm dead bored," Emmett said with enthusiasm. A hiss echoed down the stairway. Rosalie was determined to be difficult these last few days. "She's such a pessimist," he muttered to himself.
"We'll have to go sometime," Edward agreed with Emmett.
Wait. I had seen what newborns could do, and I was well aware the Volturi could turn up at any moment. Not to mention, it wasn't our business and we would do well not to get mixed up in it…that was the view I had to keep, despite my growing discomfort.
"I'm concerned. We've never involved ourselves in this kind of thing before. It's not our business. We aren't the Volturi," I pointed out.
"I don't want the Volturi to have to come here. It gives us so much less reaction time," Edward said, with a worried glance at Bella.
"And all those innocent humans in Seattle," Esme murmured, stepping closer to me. "It's not right to let them die this way."
"I know," I sighed. I was working hard to keep the emotion off my face, and even harder to keep it at the back of my mind. Logic only. It's not our place to deal with this. It's not our problem, and right now, we can't afford to make it our problem unless we have absolutely no other choice.
"Oh, I didn't think of that," Edward remarked suddenly, tilting his head slightly towards Jasper. "I see. You're right, that has to be it. Well, that changes everything."
What changes everything? I stared at him, confused. How?
"I think you'd better explain to the others," Edward said to Jasper. "What could be the purpose of this?" He started to pace, staring at the floor, lost in thought. Alice was beside Bella in a flash, but her steps were not as lithe as usual.
"What is he rambling about?" she asked Jasper. "What are you thinking?"
We seemed to gather around him without even realising it. He looked around uncomfortably at every face in the circle, and finally his eyes fell to Bella.
"You're confused," he stated.
"We're all confused," Emmett grumbled. He hated Edward's one-sided conversations: Jasper's were rarer, and even more irritating.
"You can afford the time to be patient," Jasper told him, just a little reproving. "Bella should understand this too. She's one of us now."
Esme glanced up at me with the slightest of victory smiles on her face. My heart plummeted. I could only think of one reason to reveal Jasper's story at this moment: Seattle's dark and terrible secret was a newborn army.
.o.o.o.
Esme:
"How much do you know about me, Bella?" Jasper asked. The smile disappeared from my face, and I squeezed Carlisle's hand. Emmett sighed exasperatedly and flopped down on the couch with exaggerated impatience. It's not that he wasn't sympathetic, but he was bored, anxious and already knew his brother's story well.
"Not much," Bella admitted. Jasper looked at Edward, who met his gaze.
"No," Edward said, in response to one of Jasper's thoughts. "I'm sure you can understand why I haven't told her that story. But I suppose she needs to hear it now."
Jasper started rolling up the sleeve of his ivory sweater, and held his wrist under the lampshade beside him. There was a rough crescent scar on his pale skin. I brushed my fingers along the bite mark at my wrist: a perfect, smooth crescent, and was filled with the pity I always felt for poor Jasper.
Bella stared at Jasper's scar, and slowly her eyes widened as the realisation dawned on her.
"Oh," she breathed. "Jasper, you have a scar exactly like mine." She held out her hand, the silver mark much more pronounced against her complexion than his. Jasper smiled grimly.
"I have a lot of scars like yours, Bella," he said solemnly. He pushed his sleeve higher up his arm, and I couldn't help shuddering though I had seen these marks before. The scars criss-crossed like a tapestry; reminders of his terrible life in the vampire armies of the south.
"Jasper," Bella gasped. "What happened to you?
"The same thing that happened to your hand," Jasper answered in a quiet voice. "Repeated a thousand times." He laughed ruefully and brushed his other hand down his arm. "Our venom is the only thing that leaves a scar."
"Why?" Bella gasped again, still staring. I was staring too…I felt rude, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the thousand scars that ravaged my son's arm.
"I didn't have quite the same…upbringing as my adopted siblings here," Jasper explained. "My beginning was something else entirely. Before I tell you my story, you must understand that there are places in our world, Bella, where the life span of the never-aging is measured in weeks, and not centuries."
Carlisle gently kissed my hair and returned his attention to the very quiet television. His hand clung to mine fiercely - fearfully, even - and I wondered whether he was paying attention to the news report at all. Another threat...the last thing we need at a time like this.
Alice came to sit by my feet to hear Jasper's story. Edward's eyes were on Bella's face, monitoring every change as Jasper launched into the story of Benito and the vampire armies, territory war and the definition of hell breaking loose. He moved onto his changing after the overview – a story I had heard over and over but one that never failed to horrify me to no end.
"In so many years of slaughter and carnage, I'd lost nearly all of my humanity. I was undeniably a nightmare; a monster of the grisliest kind."
This was the part that got to me the most. My lovely, caring Jasper who tried so hard to keep us all happy; who worked so hard to resist what he had indulged in for nearly a century before joining us, having such horrible opinions about himself.
"Yet each time I found another human victim, I would feel a faint prick of remembrance for that other life. Watching their eyes widen in wonder at my beauty, I could see Maria and the others in my head, what they had looked like to me the last night that I was Jasper Whitlock."
Bella was nearly as white as I was now. Breath came in and out of her lungs slowly, as if she had to force it, but the only part of my body that moved were my fingers, clinging tighter to Carlisle's as Jasper went on.
"Yet I had to keep killing – what choice did I have? I tried to kill less often, but I would get too thirsty and I would give in. After a century of instant gratification, I found self-discipline…challenging. I still haven't perfected that.
"I was in Philadelphia. There was a storm, and I was out during the day – something I was not completely comfortable with yet. I knew standing in the rain would attract attention, so I ducked into a little half-empty diner. My eyes were dark enough that no one would notice them, though this meant I was thirsty, and that worried me a little.
"She was there – expecting me, naturally. She hopped down from the high stool at the counter as soon as I walked in and came directly toward me. It shocked me. I was not sure if she meant to attack. That's the only interpretation of her behaviour my past had to offer. But she was smiling. And the emotions that were emanating from her were nothing I'd ever felt before.
"'You've kept me waiting a long time,' she said."
"And you ducked your head, like a good southern gentleman, and said 'I'm sorry ma'am,'" Alice interrupted, laughing at the memory. Jasper smiled at her.
"You held out your hand, and I took it without stopping to make sense of what I was doing. For the first time in almost a century, I felt hope." Jasper took Alice's hand as he spoke, and I found myself smiling at the love that radiated between them. I had always loved that part of the story.
"Alice told me what she'd seen of Carlisle and his family," Jasper continued. "I could hardly believe that such an existence was possible. But Alice made me optimistic, so we went to find them."
"Scared the hell out of them too," Edward interrupted with a roll of his eyes. He turned to Bella to explain. "Emmett and I were away hunting. Jasper shows up, towing this little freak who greets them all by name, knows everything about them, and wants to know which room she can move into."
Alice and Jasper laughed, and I found myself chuckling quietly.
Well we couldn't refuse them, could we? I teased Edward. I laughed too, and so did Carlisle.
"When I got home, all my things were in the garage," Edward continued.
"Your room had the best view," Alice shrugged. All three of them laughed.
"That's a nice story," Bella said. "I mean the last part. The happy ending with Alice."
"Alice has made all the difference," Jasper agreed. "This is a climate I enjoy."
We were allowed to enjoy the tranquility for a moment, before Alice turned to her love with a serious expression.
"An army?" she whispered. "Why didn't you tell me?"