Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga.

Friendly reminder, there is a reason that this story is rated mature. This chapter is one of those reasons.


Chapter 17: Until the Sun Rises

Not much had really changed about their relationship, besides the fact that Louisa referred to Jasper as her boyfriend (he didn't particularly care what she called him, as long as he could call her his, which was about as creepy as it sounded. She brushed it off as a cultural difference): she still slept through most of homeroom, she still ate her lunch surrounded by his family, and she still was Spanish partners with the Hale siblings. The only real difference was that Jasper was in much closer proximity whilst she did them.

"Now that we don't have to explain to you why we don't sleep, the three of us can finally have that sleepover!" Alice chirped at lunch the following Monday. Louisa wondered what would happen if she told the excitable woman that learning that they were vampires wasn't all that much better.

Immediately after the thought had occurred to her, she felt ashamed. Alice (and all of the Cullens for that matter) had been perfectly lovely to her, even before she knew that they were vampires. They had never given her any reason to fear them. They were the same people Louisa had known before their secret was revealed. It was unfair to condemn them for something they hadn't even chosen. She knew all of this but the discomfort still lingered, curled up in the pit of her stomach, waiting for the most inopportune time to make its presence known.

"If I recall correctly," Rosalie cut in. "You weren't invited, Alice."

Alice stuck her tongue out at her sister. "Louisa would have said yes if I asked. I was simply sparing her from having to answer."

Louisa rolled her eyes but smiled nonetheless.

"It will have to be next Friday," Alice said, her eyes taking on a glazed look. She sat in silence for a moment, staring off into the distance before shaking her head, like a dog trying to clear its ears of water. "Your father won't let us do it this weekend, not on such short notice. And we'll be in Denali for winter break."

"We will?" Emmett asked in surprise.

Alice hummed in affirmation. "Carlisle will an invite today. He'll ask us tonight."

Edward sighed in frustration at her announcement, prompting snickers from his siblings.

"We have… cousins of sorts that live in Denali. One of them holds a torch for Edward," Rosalie explained at Louisa's confused expression.

"Her thoughts are worse, trust me," Edward added, his nose wrinkling in a disgust.

"So she sexually harasses you?" Louisa asked. That didn't seem very funny.

His siblings didn't think so either, their faces wiped clear of amusement the moment the words left her mouth. "I wouldn't go quite that far…" Edward began, clearly uncomfortable by the direction the conversation had taken.

Rosalie cut him off. "I would," she said, watching her brother through narrowed eyes. "Tanya doesn't always know when to stop."

"Alice, would Carlisle let us stay here if we said we didn't want to go?" Emmett asked. His arm was laid casually across the back of Rosalie's chair, but the way his eyes darted between his wife told Louisa that there was more to his concern than his brother's discomfort.

"That wouldn't really be necessary, but—"

"Yes," Alice said, her eyes glazed over once more. "Esme would shut down the whole trip if Edward asked."

"You should definitely ask," Jasper said.

Edward shot him an annoyed glare. "You just don't want to leave Louisa."

Jasper flicked a grape at his brother's head and shrugged. "I'm allowed to have ulterior motives."

"We could invite the Collins' over for Christmas," Alice said. "I can see them coming over."

Louisa jumped in, wanting to stop the line of conversation before it started. "My dad would agree to it, but only not to seem rude," she said softly. "I don't think we'll do much for the holidays this year." She clenched her jaw and swallowed, trying to get rid of the feeling like her throat was swelling shut. It would be their first Christmas without Mum and Laurie, and none of the Collins' felt much like celebrating. Dad was an only child, and his parents had died when Louisa was nine. Her maternal grandparents, who had never liked her father very much, had flat out refused to see them, a sentiment echoed by her aunts and uncles.

She felt Jasper's knee brush up against her leg. She could see him out of the corner of her eye. He wasn't staring at her in concern. His face was the same smooth surface it usually was. But she could feel his concern for her all the same. She gave his knee a small squeeze in appreciation before focusing on the rest of the Cullen's whose conversation had devolved into who was going to give the worst Christmas present that year. Apparently, Esme had been going strong for twenty-eight years in a row, much to Alice's displeasure ("I can see the future, yet I can't figure out how to beat her!"). Jasper assured her that the annual ugly sweaters she knitted them would win this year for sure.

"A single toothpick and a fifty-pence piece," Dottie's voice interjected. "That would help you win."

"They've never read Harry Potter," Louisa explained after a moment of blank stares from Forks' resident vampires.

Dottie's eyes widened in shock. "Why are you friends with them?"

Louisa shrugged. "They're pretty to look at. What's up?"

Dottie shifted from foot to foot, her eyes darting between her sister and the Cullen family. Louisa could see Dottie's reluctance etched across her face and decided to take pity on her little sister. She gave Jasper's knee a final squeeze and stood, bidding farewell to the family, and led her sister out of the cafeteria.

"I can't find Spencer. We were supposed to meet for lunch," Dottie said, biting her lip, eyebrows furrowed.

Louisa wasn't sure what her sister wanted her to do with this information. "Have you asked any of his friends where he might be?"

"I am his friend," Dottie replied. "His only friend."

Louisa tramped out the pity she felt for the gangly teen and focused on her sister instead. "Where was he last seen?"

"He had gym before this," Dottie explained, her voice taking on a hysterical edge. "We always meet outside of the library for lunch. He doesn't like eating in the cafeteria."

Louisa reached up and eased Dottie's lip from her teeth before she bit through it before assuring her sister that she would help find her friend. She linked her arm with her sister and the two made their way towards the gymnasium. She listened to her sister ramble about how she usually helped him with his Spanish homework in exchange for math tutoring, and how missing a meeting was very unlike him. Louisa had a sneaking suspicion that there was more than simple tutoring happening, but didn't mention it to her sister.

The gymnasium was empty when they arrived and Louisa wasn't sure why the sight filled her with anxiety. Louisa ran her fingers across a bin of volleyballs, thinking, trying to picture Spencer's last known movements. He would have had to have been in gym class— Dottie had seen him go in that direction. He played volleyball, or at the very least attempted to. He was in the middle of a growth spurt and was still getting used to how long his limbs were. After class, he would have had to change out of his uniform. Louisa's feet were moving towards the boy's locker room before she was aware of it, and pushed open the door.

It was empty too, and Louisa heard her sister sigh in relief. She repressed a snicker, trying to focus. She surveyed the room, taking in the lines of benches and small metal lockers. It smelled like… well, teenage boy was the only real way to describe it, but times a thousand, and she gagged (Louisa felt a surge of pity for all of the Cullen boys who had to enter the room). She breathed through her mouth and tried to focus. Again, she moved before making a conscious decision, this time towards a specific locker, tucked away in the farthest corner from the door. To hide from the others. Her fingers brushed against the combination lock. 35-27-07. The locker door swung open, still full of clothes.

"Hey, Spencie," a voice drawled to her left. She cringed, her eyes darting to the side, looking for a place to hide. Seeing no escape, she turned around to face him. A vaguely familiar teen was standing, dressed in his street clothes, hair darkened from a recent shower.

Louisa blinked, and the image was gone, her heart pounding in her chest. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Sure, she had investigated, hunted down missing people before. But that was before she knew she was a psycho-whatchamacallit. She should have at least told Jasper that she was going. Dottie's voice broke her internal worrying. She needed to focus.

Louisa didn't respond, brushing past her sister instead, her hand trailing behind her, fingers running against the cool metal. She could see other students adverting their eyes as the tall boy dragged Spencer by. She passed the showers, water still dripping from the faucets, the air humid. Two more boys had appeared, grabbing hold of Spencer's flailing limbs, picking him up. Louisa began to walk faster, pushing open the door to the locker room. He had been ambushed while he had been changing, water droplets falling from one of the boy's hair onto his bare chest. She was sprinting by the time she pushed open the gymnasium door, ignoring Dottie's shouts as she ran out onto the blacktop. The air was cold and the rain was colder against their skin. She vaulted over the short fence that separated the blacktop from the field where they played football when the weather was nice, not bothering with the fence a few feet away.

Spencer was shivering violently, dressed in nothing but his gym shorts and soaked to the bone. Even before Louisa reached him, she could see that his skin had taken on a bluish-grey tone by the time she reached him. She wasn't sure if her hands were shaking from anger or horror, but she had trouble untying the jump ropes that forced him to kneel in the mud, arms outstretched, tied between the opposite ends of the football net frame. She managed to catch him before he fell face first into the ground. Louisa was already stripping off her jumper and wrapping it around him by the time Dottie caught up with her.

She didn't bother to ask him what had happened, even if she thought he could have answered her. She tried to help him stand, but even with Dottie's assistance, he was too heavy, too tall, and shaking too violently for them to get a proper grip on him. She screamed as loud as possible in her head, hoping that Edward could hear her. A moment later, Emmett Cullen materialised in front of them, and Louisa had never felt so relieved to see the mountain of a man so much in her life. He scooped up Spencer like he was a rag doll, and jogged back towards the school, perhaps a tad bit faster than what was possible for a human, Louisa and Dottie hurrying behind.

Edward was standing at the door, holding it open, a grim expression on his face. "Alice called for an ambulance. She's gone to fetch the nurse."

Rosalie was standing a few feet behind Edward, towels in her hands. She tossed one to each sister before turning her attention to Spencer, peeling away Louisa's soaked jumper and beginning to dry him off.

"Be careful that you don't rub his skin," Edward instructed, closing the door and stepping towards them.

Rosalie gave her brother a dirty look. "I know what to do," she snarled.

Louisa stepped backwards, away from her sister and leaned against a wall, shaking from adrenaline. The wall wrapped its arms around her, and she jumped, craning her neck, only to realise that the wall was actually Jasper. He rested his chin on her the top of her head, evidently unconcerned that his own clothes were getting wet. They watched as the school nurse arrived, then paramedics, who strapped Spencer onto a gurney, and wheeled him away. Another paramedic approached her and asked her if she needed assistance as well.

Louisa realised that the dripping sensation coming from her face was not rainwater, but blood from her nose. Louisa shook her head and informed the paramedic that she usually got nosebleeds in the winter. She accepted a handkerchief from Jasper nonetheless.

"What is going to happen?" Louisa asked, mostly to fill the silence that had filled the air after Spencer had been wheeled out of the gymnasium, a concerned Dottie trotting behind.

It was Alice who answered, her voice sad. "Nothing. He won't tell anyone who did it."

Louisa pictured the faces that she had seen in her mind and asked Edward who they were.

"A few of his brother's friends. They're on the baseball team," Edward replied. "But it doesn't matter."

Anger pulsed through her veins at his words. "Of course it matters," she snapped, ignoring Jasper's thumbs as they stroked her arms.

Edward shook his head. "He won't tell anyone what happened. There is nothing we can do."

"Can't we look through the footage from the security cameras? Surely they would have captured it," Louisa asked.

"You're not in Tacoma, Louisa," Edward explained gently. "There aren't any security cameras." Which was convenient for the Cullens, should they do something less than human. Not so much for Spencer.

She turned around to face Jasper. His face was emotionless. He raised a hand and brushed a strand of wet hair out of her face, his motions smooth, methodical, steady. She realised then that he wasn't particularly bothered by what had happened — Spencer didn't mean much to him, and he was only concerned because Louisa was dripping with water and blood and frustration. For an empath, he wasn't the most empathetic. She resisted the urge to scream because she knew it wouldn't do any good. It probably hadn't occurred to Jasper that he should worry about Spencer.

The rest of his family was bothered by the situation but knew they couldn't logically do anything without revealing themselves. And neither could Louisa. She rested her forehead against Jasper's chest in defeat.

No Stone Left Unturned

Louisa went to bed furious that night. She wasn't sure when she fell asleep, but she assumed she must have at some point. It was a light sleep, one where you could sort of hear what was going on around you and your brain incorporated it into your dream— the nonsensical kind that you wouldn't be able to describe when you woke up. There were footsteps, somewhere close by, and her brain tried to tell her that they were coming from within the walls, but most likely belonged to her father when he checked on her before turning in for the night. There was breathing, soft, steady. Her own most likely. Scratching. Rats.

Rats, those were problematic, she tried to reason with her brain. They carried the Bubonic Plague in the 1300s. Louisa didn't want to get the plague. It sounded like a very unpleasant illness. She wondered if any of the Cullens had been around then. Maybe Dr Cullen had been. He seemed pretty old. Louisa wondered if Dr Cullen knew how to treat the plague. She should ask him when she next saw him. For research, of course. Not because she was worried about the rats living in her walls. That would be—

But what Louisa thought exactly, was interrupted when she hit the floor, landing hard on her shoulder.

She lay on there for a moment, the hardwood floor cool against her skin, her brain trying to process what had happened. She had been curled up under her covers one second and was tumbling to the ground the next. Had she fallen out of her bed? Louisa sat up, massaging her shoulder and squinting at her bed in confusion. She'd never rolled out of bed before. Her mother had always said that Louisa has slept like a rock, even as a baby, prompting many frantic checks to ensure that she was still breathing. Fitful sleeping was not something she was prone to, but perhaps there was a first time for everything? Tiredly, Louisa reached up for her bed, prepared to drag herself back in and fall asleep, only to stop short. Something didn't feel right.

It was almost as if her bed was too close to her. Louisa dove for the table lamp next to her bed, flooding the tiny room with light. She thought that it was because her eyes hadn't adjusted to the brightness at first, but after almost a minute of furious blink, Louisa had to admit to herself what her brain was seeing: her bed was no longer standing flush against one of the bookshelves, but nearly a foot away, angled as if someone had grabbed the foot of the metal frame and shoved it violently towards the centre of the room— and with more than enough force to throw her out of her bed.

She backed slowly out of her room, refusing to take her eyes off the bed until the last second, as if afraid that it might hop up and chase her. She threw herself into the dark hallway, her socks slipping on the wood floors, and sprinted towards her father's room. If she had to choose between waking him up or spending a second longer in her room, she would take an irate father.

Tiredness overwhelmed her the second her fingertips brushed against the cool metal doorknob of her father's room, so strong that Louisa nearly fell to her knees. It was the kind that settled deep in your bones and made you feel heavy; the kind that you couldn't get rid of, no matter how long you slept. It took her a moment for her to untangle the sensation from her already scrambled thoughts. Her father was exhausted.

Louisa wrenched her hand away from the doorknob and backed away from her father's closed bedroom door. She couldn't wake him up, not for something as stupid as this. She was almost seventeen, for God's sake. She couldn't go running to her dad every time something scary happened. She glanced over her shoulder back towards her own bedroom, the door ajar, yellow light spilling into the dark hallway. But it didn't feel stupid, and it didn't feel just scary. Gooseflesh erupted across her skin at the thought of entering her bedroom again.

She glanced briefly in the direction of Dottie's room and considered going in there instead, but rejected the idea almost immediately. If she woke Dottie up, her sister would want to know what had happened, and Louisa was too stressed to think of a plausible lie. She couldn't tell Dottie about her bed moving or else the younger girl would start to panic, and a panicked Dot was not something Louisa wanted to deal with. She considered calling Pyotr but quickly dismissed the idea as well. She had harassed him enough already this month, and no matter how good of a friend he was, she was positive that he wouldn't appreciate being woken at three in the morning to hear her rambling about how her house might be haunted for real. If only she had a friend who she didn't have to worry about waking up.

Jasper. The thought came to her at once, and she was almost embarrassed that she hadn't thought of it sooner. He was dead and didn't need to sleep. He also had the added bonus of being much scarier than a potential ghost. She would call him, she decided, quietly padding back towards her bedroom. He would be able to put this into perspective for her. She was just stressed and tired and obviously wasn't thinking clearly, and he would be able to reassure her of that.

Steeling her nerves, Louisa stepped back in her room, crossing it in a few steps to where her cell phone was sitting on the bedside table, charging. Then she froze her hand centimetres from the device. Was calling Jasper even a good idea? Sure, she wouldn't be waking him up, but surely he found something to occupy his time with at night. Even if he wasn't busy, who was to say that he would want to listen to her paranoid ramblings?

Her phone lit up, a message from an unknown number appearing on the screen:

Make up your mind, you're giving me a headache –A

Perhaps it was because she was exhausted, but the only A she could think of was that chick from Pretty Little Liars, which did not offer her any comfort in her present situation. Hesitantly, Louisa picked up her phone and was about to ask who was texting her, when another alert flashed across her screen.

I'm hurt that you that you don't have my number saved in your phone, Louisa. –Alice

Oh, right. Psychic. Maybe she would be able to tell Louisa if calling Jasper was a bad idea.

Don't call. You'll wake up your dad.

Louisa was saved from having to ask any further questions by another text alert, this one from a number that had actually been programmed into her phone.

The Babe: what's wrong?

Simple and to the point, just like Jasper. Louisa grabbed a pillow and her comforter off her bed and exited her room as she considered how to respond. By the time she got herself situated on the couch in the den, she had three new texts from her boyfriend, each one tinged with increasing worry. The final one informing her that he was on his way over.

She responded quickly to that one, but he didn't reply, most likely because he was en route to her house. She wasn't sure how she felt about that: more than a little weirded out (they had only been dating for a week, after all) but perhaps relieved too, that she didn't have to deal with this all on her own. Louisa retrieved a bag of ice for her shoulder from the kitchen then sat in the darkened den, picking at her cuticles, and waiting for her newly acquired boyfriend to show up. She didn't have to wait long— less than ten minutes after his last text, Jasper was standing at the back door, tapping lightly on the glass.

"You're injured," Jasper noted after stepping into the kitchen. He gently took her arm and inspected what would surely turn into a spectacularly colourful bruise come morning. "What happened?"

Louisa had to admit that she had no idea, which terrified her. Still, she tried to explain to Jasper, whose face was blank, but the look in his eyes grew more and more concerned. "Do— are ghosts real?" Louisa finished hesitantly. The question sounded stupid, she knew it did, and she felt idiotic for even entertaining the idea, but her boyfriend was a vampire and so was his entire family, so there wasn't really a point in trying to pretend like the existence of ghosts wasn't a possibility.

Jasper leaned forward, his nose skimming across her skin from her jaw to her hairline and back again. "Perhaps," he said finally. "It would be unwise to exclude the possibility."

"So you've never run across one?"

"Not that I'm aware," Jasper replied. "Though you look quite close to one at the moment. You're quite pale." He led her through the kitchen and back into the den, depositing her on the sofa before kneeling in front of her. He gently pushed her into a reclining position and covered her with her duvet. When she asked him if he was comfortable kneeling on the floor, the corner of his lips quirked into a grin and he leaned forward to rub his cold nose against her face once more.

"Why is this happening?" She whispered. She could barely see him in the dark, and maybe that's why she felt it was safer to ask him: she couldn't see his expression and worry about whether or not he thought she was pathetic, and he couldn't see the how scared she was. Of course, he could no doubt feel it, but somehow that didn't seem as daunting.

In one fluid motion, Jasper rose to perch on the sofa, and Louisa shifted to give him more room, ignoring the odd feeling in her belly that arose from their closeness. She had been closer to Jasper before, but this felt different, more intimate. And the most frightening and confusing part was that she didn't mind the feeling. Relished in it even. Jasper lifted a hand to stroke her cheek while the other rested on her hip.

"She died in my room," Louisa said when it became obvious that he wasn't going to say anything. "Is that why I keep having visions of her? Did she somehow cause my —"

"No," Jasper said firmly, stopping her. He grabbed hold of her growing anxiety and tugged at it, removed it, and replaced it with calm. "Nothing caused your psychometry, Louisa. It's always been a part of you."

"But it's never been like this," Louisa replied, her words more hysterical than what she was able to emote. "Even if I've always had this thing, I've never had this problem before. It's gotten worse, ever since I've moved here."

Jasper took hold of one of her wrists and raised it to his face. His nose began to rub against it, gently gliding over the thin skin that covered her veins. "You speak of your gift more like it is a curse," he noted.

"Isn't it?"

"No more than you are," he replied. Very slowly, as if he was approaching a spooked horse rather than his mate, he placed a kiss on the inside of her wrist. "It's a part of you, Louisa. It always has been. Nothing caused it. If you asked your father, he would probably tell you that you had always been an inquisitive child, even before your accident. The amnesia was most likely a catalyst. It forced your brain to look for clues about who you were and rely on your gift for information about your past. It's simply become stronger over the years."

"But I've never had headaches or nosebleeds before I moved here."

Jasper watched her for a moment, noticing how tears were leaking from the corners of her grey eyes. She probably didn't realise he could see them, or else she would have wiped them away already. He resisted the urge to do so, not wanting to disabuse her of the notion. He liked being able to see what she was truly feeling. He could sense it, but usually, she always hid it behind a mask, particularly anything negative. Vampires (that was, everyone who wasn't the Cullens), were usually expressionless. It kept you safe, others not knowing what you were feeling. He guessed that her face wouldn't be quite so expressive if she was aware that he could see her perfectly, but he liked to pretend that she did know because then he would know that she trusted him. "You are surrounded by history, Louisa," he explained. "More than you have ever been before. I alone have existed for over one hundred and fifty years, never mind the rest of my family. Your brain is trying to catch up with what you are experiencing."

"I don't like it," Louisa murmured.

Jasper's heart both dropped and soared at her confession. He wondered how often Louisa truly shared her innermost thoughts with anyone, usually concealed behind sarcasm and jokes, and felt lucky that she was blessing him with them. But the weight of her words tugged at his dead heart; how could she not see how incredible she was? He felt frustrated, unable to express his thoughts in words. He didn't want to tell her that she would come to accept her gift— he hoped that she would, of course, but he didn't want to try to tell her how to feel.

Instead, he offered her reassurance in a way that he knew she would understand. "You used your powers today to find Spencer Garner," he said. "When you found him, his core temperature was twenty-eight degrees. Edward estimates that he was minutes away from cardiac arrest." He began to rub his nose along the inside of her wrist, feeling the blood pulsing through the delicate skin, as he waited for her to process his words. "You saved his life."

They sat in the darkened den, silent, Louisa trying to process his words, and Jasper more than content to let her. She listened to his deep breaths, and she wondered why he rubbed his nose against her so often. She could have asked him, but she was exhausted and figured that it could be a conversation for another day. "How was I thrown out of my bed?" Louisa asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "We can investigate after you have slept."

Her heart thudded painfully at the idea. She reached up with her free hand and cupped his jaw. His eyes opened lazily, the colour almost glowing in the dark. "Can you stay?"

His lips quirked into a smile and he leaned forward to place a kiss on her to her temple before resting his forehead against her own. "Until the sun rises," he promised.


"To see what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice." –Confucius


A/N: Fun fact, I've gotten hypothermia in the summer when it was about 37 outside. I was attempting my scuba diving certification. I was passed, under the condition that I would always wear a thicker wetsuit. They teach you in training that the body loses heat faster in water than air, which is why it is usually a poor decision to dive without a wetsuit. Anyway, what did you think? I would love to hear your thoughts on the chapter or predictions for any future chapters. Lots of Love, CheckAlexa