20. I HAVE QUESTIONS.

"What do you mean 'they're coming for us', Arch?" Asked Edythe, eyes wide. "We haven't done anything wrong, and we're not going to anytime soon."

Archie shook his head. "The choice hasn't been made yet, Edy. I don't even know if they know yet. All I know is that it's for something…" he squeezed his eyes shut and let go of Jessamine's hands, holding his own quivering fingers out like he was touching at an invisible crystal ball, "…for something that's already been done. But I just don't know exactly what that something is." He turned to look at Beau and Edythe who were sitting together on the couch now. "Did anything – exposing - happen on the honeymoon? Were you careful around the humans, Edy?"

"I looked out the window in the airplane, but that was just once for two minutes and nobody saw. Beau was blocking their view. We also went with this small tourist group up to the top of a waterfall, but I had an umbrella with me most of the time because it was raining. We were very careful; nobody would've seen anything. That's all I could think of at the top of my head." Beau's hands tightened around her hips and his jaw moved up and down a little. I knew what that meant – he was definitely wanting to say something. I thought about what my mom said and about what Beau looked up on the computer because of it, yielding myself to the unpleasant memory and the images which it conjured up in my mind. I wrapped my arms tight around myself, like I was feeling a draft - a very unpleasant, very unwelcome draft - that left me cold.

"Is that even possible?" Edythe was looking straight at Beau now, almost scared, and her voice came out a near-silent sound.

"What is?" Beau started, alarmed. Edythe sighed, her gaze flicking back on me.

"Seriously, what the hell? Could you just stop doing that?" I scoffed, narrowing my eyes at her.

"Your thoughts are very loud, Julie." She answered, crossing her arms over her chest and mimicking me.

"Just ask your husband about it like a normal person, then." Yeah, as normal as a person who almost murdered the so-called love of her life can be. I saw her flinch a little when I said that – or, rather, thought it. I sniffed. It was intentional. She instantly pulled away from Beau. "He'll tell you everything you want to know, trust me." I motioned my hand towards Beau but her mom beat her to it.

"What did you want to say, Beau?" Carine asked, taking a step forward. She sat down in front of them and crossing one leg over the other leaned forward a little bit, tucking a slender white fist below her chin.

"I know it might sound crazy, but I was just thinking that… that…" he let out a stuttered breath and his face flushed so deep a shade of red I thought he was coming down with a fever.

"Just spit it out, Beau." I growled. My patience was dwindling away to nothing. He looked from me to Edythe then back at Carine again and taking another breath, his eyes slid shut.

"I think… I think that Edythe might be pregnant."

Dead. Silence.

Edythe's hand began to shake as she brought it to the place her jacket parted and she let out a breath, preparing for the impossible… and the inevitable.

She jumped up, scared. Like she was caught up in the worst kind of dream and was desperately searching for a way out; begging her brain to wake herself up and escape it all. But you can never quite run away from yourself, can you? From what you are; from what's inside of you. Whatever it was.

"What is it?" Asked Beau, seizing her hand.

"Thoughts." She breathed. "Thoughts… that are not my own. I can read them; I can feel them." She touched her stomach again and squeezed her eyes shut, like she was concentrating hard on a math test or something. "No, more like half thoughts – not fully formed thoughts. They come and go." She continued, blinking. Her hands moved away from her torso and she brought her fingers up to rest on her lips.

"That's impossible." I barked. It couldn't be – or, maybe I just didn't want it to be. I mean, maybe she was just picking up on someone else's thoughts around here; mine's, her siblings, parents. Hell, maybe it was just some nearby camper; some overzealous backpacker passing through this neck of the woods. That would explain things, surely. That was the only way to make things make sense. Carine gave Earnest a look before coming up to Edythe and I tugged on Carine's sleeve as she passed by. "It's impossible, right?" I whispered, hearing this strange sense of urgency in my own voice and I fell back, waiting for Carine's answer.

"I would think so – at least, it should be." She looked up at Edythe's scared face, rested her hand on her cheek, and began to speak again. "A vampire's body is immutable; forever unchanging once turned. When you take a look at the female vampire body specifically, that would mean no menstruation, no ovulation, none of that. It cannot - or should not be able to - accommodate the changes which conception, pregnancy, and birth ultimately demand. It's simply-" she sucked in a breath, gnawing at her lip before turning a troubled glance on her daughter, "unheard of." Carine shook her head. "I can certainly attest that it is impossible for me, at least." She said almost sadly and put her hands on her chest. Earnest came up to her side and put his arm over her shoulders. She squeezed his hand, eyelashes fluttering like she was upset.

"Us too." Started Eleanor in a tiny voice, stepping forward with her arm around Jessamine. Even Blondie reacted to this, jaw clenching tight and cheekbones buckling. I turned away, letting out the breath I'd been holding. I have questions. Lots and lots of questions.

I felt sick.

"Yeah? Then what the hell's wrong with her?" I shook my head, jerking a thumb in Edythe's direction. Carine didn't have an answer for that. I clicked my tongue, turning to look at Beau. My shoulders shrugged and my eyes just stared straight out at him. My lip twitched and trembled a little bit and I shook my head, feeling this strange heat bubbling up in the pit of my stomach when I saw him opening his mouth to speak but nothing came out. Why did it hurt? That's it; I was so done.

"This is crap." I tore my gaze from him and lurched away, escaping to the large window which looked out on the serenity of the forest behind the house, hoping it would calm me down. It didn't. My hands were balled up into two shaking fists and I slammed them against the glass, letting a breath out through my teeth. I was trapped.

"Jules, hey – just look at me." I ignored Beau's request, but he went on anyways. "It's just a theory, alright? We don't know anything for sure yet."

Oh, so now he was worried about my feelings?

I turned around quick. "Oh, I think you do. I think she does." I pointed directly at Edythe, "She is the mother of the thing, after all." I growled, my tone sharp; abusive. But I couldn't care less. He looked away in silence.

Here's the thing - I guess having seen Edythe like, well, that these past few days and about what she was seeing and what Archie wasn't; then the thought wasn't as crazy as I would have liked to think it was at first. It's impossible, really – at least, it should have been. But impossible things were happening every day, so what the hell did I know? Did anybody, really?

I turned around again after letting it sink in like hail against bare skin.

"So, let me get this straight - my best friend slash boy I love somehow managed to knock up his vampire girlfriend." I crossed my arms over my chest, nodding my head very slowly.

"Wife." He quickly interjected like it made a difference.

"Sorry, my bad." I said, not sounding very apologetic in the least. I pressed my lips tight together and shuddered, trilling my cheeks. Those words so don't belong in the same sentence together. Not one of them. Of course – they're obviously so perfect for each other that the guy I love gets the dead girl walking pregnant! It was like I was the punchline to some huge cosmic joke. I looked towards the sky which had since begun to darken through the skylight set in the roof of the house before slowly making my way to a window in the living room and opening it, letting in the cool, damp air and feeling it blow against my face.

"Jules." Beau tried again. I didn't answer him right away.

"You expect me to say, 'congratulations'? Or what?" I finally began in a hushed, angry whisper through my teeth. Was he being serious right now?

He reached for my shoulder. I shook his hand off. "Jules, you don't understand - this wasn't supposed to happen. I didn't know." My eyes drifted to where Edythe was standing in the living room. A hand was over her chin and I saw her brows furrow, lips trembling, and she didn't even say a word. I turned back around to look at Beau and shook my head, hard.

"You're damn right it shouldn't have!" I shot back, feeling a lump forming in my throat. I ran my tongue over my lip before biting the inside of my cheek, trying hard to control the swirling mess of emotions inside me - it was really over now, wasn't it? I couldn't tell if I was more angry or sad - I wasn't even sure if I had the right to be either of those things; I just knew that regardless, it hurt my feelings. He hurt my feelings; he hurt me. And I hated that. Why did it have to be this way? It was a losing game. Just as I was about to say something else, Archie put a hand up to stop me and touched a finger to his temple. His eyes were closed but you could tell they were shifting beneath his eyelids, like a person in REM sleep. He grabbed a paper pad and a black gel pen, just scribbling out what looked like a bunch of gibberish to me on it. He dropped the pad and his eyes flew open.

"What is it?" Edythe asked, yanking the pad to her. Her eyes flicked from him to the paper and back again, a look of intense concentration flashing across her face as she pointed each bullet of garbled-up nonsense out to him with the clicker part of the pen.

"So, in other words – it's inevitable." Edythe whispered in a quivering voice.

Archie nodded. "So far, at least. They're going to find out one way or another."

"But why do they want Beau, too? I just don't understand." Her voice broke a little.

"I don't know, Edy. I'm so sorry."

"But I still don't get it - why would they get in trouble for that?" I asked. "It's just a kid, isn't it?"

Carine inhaled a sharp breath before answering my question. "Only the known is safe. It is one of the Volturi's mottos, per se." Edythe flinched when she heard the word "Volturi" and I think Carine caught that. She clamped her mouth shut before opening it again and tried making her voice a calm, even sound but I could tell she was struggling with that. "Obviously, if what we suspect is true, they will want to assess whether the child will pose a threat to our kind." She touched a hand to her temple and shivered, like she was recalling a bad memory. Edythe trembled a little bit, tugging her jacket even tighter around her.

"Yeah? Well, then you don't have to tell them squat. Simple. They'll be none the wiser." I said with a shrug. "Right?"

Carine sighed again. "Of course, there are always ways to keep them in the dark. But it is much more complicated than that - the threat of exposure sooner or later is invariably high, and we will be implicated for our silence -all of us- should they ever find out we were keeping something like this from them in the first place. And…" her words trailed off and she took another breath.

"And what?" I asked.

"Perhaps their concern may be well-warranted, and that is where I am truly torn." She crossed her arms over her chest. "Perhaps… perhaps it is only right that they should know, because we do not even know what we are dealing with ourselves here."

"It's just a stupid baby. How dangerous can it be?" If it's anything like Beau, I think the only real danger the kid would pose is to himself. But if it was more like its mother…

My face turned white.

Maybe she had a point.

Carine looked like she was wanting to say something else but stopped herself, looking to Earnest with uncertain eyes instead. "Let's just say… it can be very dangerous." She finally finished in a low, shaking voice.

I swallowed. Great. It was all Edythe's fault and Beau was the one who had to pay the price.

Why? Why, why, why?

"I'm out." I knew how this would end, and I wasn't sticking around to see it through. I turned around and walked with quick strides to the glass front door, reaching for the handle.

"Jules." I felt Beau's eyes on me and stopped.

"What do you want from me, Beau?"

"To stay. Please."

But it hurts.

"Give me one good reason why I should do that."

"Because I'm scared, Jules. I can't do this without you." His face came right up to mine, his hand touching my shoulder.

"You tell your pregnant wife that." I said, glaring back at Edythe and shaking off Beau's grip on me.

"I'm scared for her, Jules. I know I have no right to ask you this, but please. Just help me to protect her." His eyes widened and trembled as he turned toward her. She caught his look and walked up to him slowly, like every step she took were weighed down with lead, and fell into his arms.

"I'm so sorry, Beau." She pressed her cheek to his chest, hiding her face in it.

"No, I'm sorry." I heard him say into her hair. For what though, it was hard to tell. For falling in love with her? For getting her pregnant? For everything else? Shouldn't he be saying sorry to me, too? I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands.

I didn't say anything for a long time. I closed the windows shut with both hands and I stayed looking at them as I thought of the whole mess of it all. My chest clenched up, that hotness bubbling and bubbling until I just couldn't take it anymore.

"How did this happen? Why did it have to happen?" I cried out, asking no one in particular at first. Then, I turned my burning gaze on Carine, whose face was framed by two blonde curls which escaped from a messy ponytail and she took a step closer to me. Edythe took a step closer to her mother and I narrowed my eyes. That hotness was boiling away in my chest again. "You're the doctor here, aren't you? How'd that happen, huh? You said yourself that it should be impossible. She's freaking dead, for crying out loud! Her whole system is shot; she's literal dust, isn't she? You all are. There's no way she could actually give life, she could only take them." I scoffed, my voice coming out louder than I intended it to. I was glaring directly at Edythe now. "That's all bloodsuckers are good for." I seethed; my tone angrier; more abusive with every word I said. I know I can have a sharp tongue, and some would say I knew how to cut you where it would hurt. I call it just being honest.

Jules!" Beau's voice rose. He looked upset. "Stop it." He reached for my wrist and Earnest took his place beside Edythe, pulling her close. She buried her head in his chest and I saw him whispering in her ear.

"Don't touch me." I growled so angrily I thought I might phase right then and there. I yanked myself free from Beau's grip with ease, lurching away.

"Honey, I don't know." Carine said, throwing her hands up. "I don't know." I saw a flicker of pain in her eyes, like the words I said really did hurt her and I almost felt bad for saying them. "I have never seen this; I have never heard of this even once before in history. Not even during my time with… them." Carine made sure to steer clear of the word "Volturi" now for her daughter's sake. You can't say bloodsuckers weren't polite creatures, I guess.

"Yeah, because it's freaking impossible, that's why. And now you've got a target on your back because of her." I began quietly this time, shooting a look at Beau then Edythe.

"It takes two, Julie." Archie said, putting an arm around Edythe. Why did he have to bring that up now?

"I'm well aware." I growled, but closed my eyes and let out a shaking breath, trying to calm myself.

"Temperament like a boy." My dad used to say almost proudly before the accident. I couldn't help remembering that comment at a time like this and I wasn't quite sure why. Beau was reaching a hand out to me again, but I dodged it. "I'm going out for some fresh air. Don't follow me." I finished, eyeing him especially. He lowered his hand as I disappeared into the blackness of night. Phasing, I sped off into the forest with no intention of ever coming back.

I let out a howl and whined a little, blinking back the tears I could feel settling in behind my eyes.