"Me," said Jasper simply.
I stared at him. Had he forgotten almost killing me on my birthday? Did he think that I'd forgotten? I thought that he was worried about spending time in close contact with me, now he was offering to bite me. For the first time, I found myself wondering if I was actually going to survive the change. Maybe Jasper would start drinking and be unable to stop. Maybe he would drain me dry.
Would any of the other Cullens be able to stop him? Jasper had stopped Jane in her tracks: Jane, who made my Edward a quivering wreck without smudging her lipstick! Jasper could make her legs go weak.
If he was drinking from me, what could stop him? I'd seen the feral look in Edward's eyes on that hunting video. I knew that vampires were at their least human when feeding. What would Jasper be like if he was feeding on me? The first human blood he'd tasted in goodness knows how long. Surely he wouldn't allow anyone to tear him off me.
And, what would Edward do? He would try as hard as he possibly could but . . . he wasn't the strongest or the fastest vampire in the world. He didn't have Jasper's fighting experience, I knew that. If Emmett could rip off one of his arms, what could Jasper do to him? My death could be the least of his worries. If he actually tried to fight Jasper, Edward could get himself destroyed!
Jasper rolled his eyes at me, "thank you for that shot of distrust and fear, Bella, that's just great."
I looked over to Edward for support, surely he understood.
"Are you having second thoughts, love?"
"No, not at all!" I said quickly. It had taken so long to get Edward to come around to this idea, I didn't want him to suspect me of a second's hesitation now that we were here. "I just . . ." I had no idea how to explain what I was thinking. I could hardly stand there in front of Jasper and ask if there was much of a risk that he might start killing off his family members.
More from boredom than any desire to ease the tension, Rosalie came over to Edward and took his hand. "Let me look you over," she said.
Edward frowned, "I'm fine."
"He's fine," Jasper echoed.
"Oh, yes? And precisely how many medical degrees do you hold, Jasper?"
"I've seen this sort of thing before."
Rosalie ignored him. She began to examine Edward. It was similar to the kind of exam that I've had many times following one of my more dramatic falls, but not exactly the same. Edward had no pulse for Rosalie to take and he didn't need to breath at all, so she wasn't concerned with that either. She did seem concerned with his mind, his eyes and his hands, though.
She asked him rather obscure questions. "Name the last four presidents of Russia."
"Dmitry Medvedev, Vladmir Putin, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev" Edward barked.
Rosalie frowned, "Gorbachev was never president of Russia."
"Fine, but you asked for the last four. Gorbachev was President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic; which amounts to the same thing. Happy?"
"What's the square root of 323,761?"
"569" he snapped at her almost before she'd finished asking the question.
"What was Bella wearing yesterday?"
"Powder blue boot leg jeans, a corn silk polo neck sweater and white sneakers with a blue trim – the same sneakers she's wearing today – and Marc Jacobs Daisy."
Even I didn't remember my outfits in that much detail. But Rosalie apparently did, because she nodded in satisfaction.
"Alright, close your eyes and give me your hand."
Edward rolled his eyes first, but he did then close them.
He held out his left hand, casually, slightly too fast because he was irritated by Rosalie's checks.
I was glad that she'd told him to close his eyes. I wouldn't have wanted him to see my reaction, because even I could see that Edward's hand was trembling.
He must have seen it in the mind of one or more of his siblings, though, because Edward's eye's snapped open.
Rosalie took his shaking hand in hers and held it steady. Then she put it gently back by Edward's side.
"What did you expect?" she asked, "that you would be completely unaffected? There's no point carrying on now. I'll check on you again in an hour and we'll see how you're doing."
"Ok," he sounded a lot less irritated now.
"You will be fine," Rosalie said, losing her stern face, "promise." She leant forward and brushed her fingers through Edward's hair in a maternal gesture.
The touch seemed to relax him. He turned back to me, "I can't read your mind, you know. What are you so unsure about?"
"She's afraid that I won't stop in time" Jasper explained dryly. "I know that I'm not exactly the best in my family at control, Bella, and I do understand why you might have difficulty trusting me. But, I have changed hundreds of humans, and I've lost remarkably few of them during the change."
He smirked at the look of terror on my face.
Alice tutted, "don't be silly. Jazz knows what he's doing. It makes sense for it to be him."
"But . . . Carlisle . . ."
"Has changed a grand total of three humans into vampires," Edward said firmly, "Jazz is the family expert."
"Oh, I'd sort of imagined that you might . . ."
Edward shook his head, "it is possible to get this wrong," he reminded me, "and I don't think that we should take that risk. I don't know if I would succeed, but I know that Jasper can."
"You can keep all your clothes on," Jasper said, clearly enjoying this all very much, "you don't even have to lie on a bed if you don't want to. It doesn't have to be exactly like the films."
I had a flashback of Jasper standing behind Jane: his strong arms wrapped tightly around her; his body pressed hard against hers; his sharp teeth right by her neck, poised to penetrate. It was almost as though I could feel his thighs hard behind mine, his chest solid behind my back, his breath, cool and sharp on my throat.
If any gorgeous vampire was going to sink his teeth into my flesh, I had thought it might be Edward, not his brother.
"It would be very clean and impersonal," Jasper went on, "I only need to hold you like so," he put out one hand and reeled Alice over to stand in front of him, "then it's just one little nip, just here." He turned his head, licked his teeth and kissed Alice slowly and deliberately right on the side of her neck. Alice shivered. "Easy as that," Jasper concluded, flashing his incisors at me.
"Or," he went on, "if you would be more comfortable sitting down . . ."
There was a big squashy sofa in the middle of the room, covered with a cream material decorated with out-sized red flower heads. Alice sat down and Jasper knelt next to her, leaning across, pressing himself to her chest, front to front, melding their bodies together. His hair dusted her exposed collar bones. He hovered for a moment, with his face just inches from hers, then he kissed her neck again.
"Really, Jasper, even I think that there are some things that should be saved for the privacy of your own bedroom," Rosalie scolded.
Jasper pulled himself away from his wife and willing display model and grinned at me.
"I was demonstrating," he said, "would you like me to continue, Bella?"
"No," said Edward firmly. "Despite that absurd display, there is nothing all that intimate about changing someone. You have nothing to worry about, Bella."
"Of course not," Jasper joined in, still grinning, "are you ready now?"
"Not right now," Alice told him, "Rose is right. There are some things that require privacy and before we actually change Bella, Edward has got to show her the script."
"What script?"
Edward glared at his sister. "It's nothing," he said.
"It must be something," Rose said, "to make you blush like that, it must be something good."
"Something interesting," Emmett said.
"Something juicy," Jasper added.
"Something private," Alice said firmly. "Good luck Edward."
Now, normally Edward is desperate for any excuse to escape his teasing siblings and spend a little bit of time alone with me. So it was rather surprising when, instead of dragging me a little too fast from the room, he stood still and transferred his scowl from his sister to the floor. "Jane could be back any moment," Edward said, shiftily, "we probably shouldn't split up."
"Quite right," Jasper said, "you should stay here and go over some more options. For example, you might like to lie down, like so . . ."
Alice was annoyingly happy to comply with Jasper's directions.
"Oh, fine," Edward said irritably, "we'll retire before this gets any more obscene." He stomped out of the room muttering "I don't blush . . ."
I ran after him, taking his arm and trying to soothe him. Poor Edward did hate being teased. "I am slightly concerned," I said, "what kind of vampire films exactly has Jasper been watching?"