I do apologize that the Jasper-centric portions of the chapters are still comparatively short, that will change soon.
FOUR
FROM THE CORNER of her eye, Hermione darted her attention toward Jacob in the driver's seat for the briefest second. Again. She was overcome with the strangest sense that he kept glancing at her—that perhaps they were constantly just missing catching each other's gazes. The way his russet cheeks grew dark every so often led her to think he was aware of the same thing.
She had just finished explaining to them about her 'luggage trick,' and explaining as well as she could about time magic, along with her chronological affliction. A silence had filled the car for a few breaths as the werewolves digested this probably wild-and-impossible sounding information. Then, just as it seemed her very skin started to itch with a bizarre desire—bizarre because it felt so much like an instinct—to lean over in her seat and rest her head on Jacob's irritatingly broad shoulder, or loop her hand loosely around his elbow so that her palm rested against his skin, Seth shot forward to duck his face right back between the headrests, making them both jump a little.
"So, are you staying with us on the res?"
She was grateful for the distraction of the younger werewolf's question. It felt strange to consider that she and Jacob Black hadn't touched, yet. She knew it shouldn't, they'd only met twenty minutes ago, and they had simply not exchanged a handshake, that was all. Interrupted salutations had her turned inside out? Why? That sort of thing happened all the time, so she could not understand why the loss of a simple greeting gesture stood out to her so sharply.
But then, she knew she did understand perfectly well why. Because it was him, and that was the aspect of it that seemed beyond her comprehension.
"No, actually." Shrugging, she glued her attention to the dash, now. She wasn't sure she'd be able to carry on a conversation—especially not one regarding her sleeping arrangements, her considerably lonely sleeping arrangements—with whatever the heck was going on with her and Jacob, otherwise. "Um, I'm staying at a local resort, actually? I feel like I'm already going to be seen as enough of an intruder, I thought expecting to, well, to temporarily live with you, too, would just be asking for you all to wish me gone."
"Not possible."
The words had escaped Jacob's lips in a low tumble of sound. But the car's other two occupants had heard him easily enough.
Hermione couldn't help peeling her attention from the dash to turn her head and look at him. Jake's gaze skittered in her direction, but he didn't actually look at her, his own head still fixed toward the road. Seth's dark eyes were huge as they pinged back and forth between the witch and his brother, like one observing a tennis match.
"I, uh . . . ." Jacob shrugged, pretending he didn't feel the furious warmth in his cheeks. "I just meant you seem very polite and respectful and that's going to go a long way with the elders and the rest of the pack."
An uncertain half-smile curving her lips, she turned to look at the road. She pretended she didn't hear Seth whisper, "Nice save," nor Jacob's hushed, hurried reply of, "Shut up, dude."
Seth was too amused by the interaction—it was so obvious the older wolf was into this girl, their brothers, and even Leah, were going to have a field day with this—to feel intimidated by the growl running beneath the Jake's voice. "Where are you staying?"
Thoughtful, she shifted in her seat. Pulling the folded up brochure from her back pocket, she handed it over to Seth. "The Quillayute River Resort?"
Both werewolves let out a low whistling sound.
"Don't start," she said with a laugh. "I was content to stay in some little place, but Harry insisted. Especially since he's not here to keep an eye on me."
She didn't catch the way Jacob's knuckles suddenly blanched, draining of blood as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. But Seth did.
"Who's Harry?" he asked, as much for Jacob's benefit as for his own curiosity. "Your boyfriend?"
Again, she laughed, shaking her head. Seth watched the tension flood out of Jake's hands instantly. He wondered if Jake even realized he'd reacted like that to the simple thought that she was taken.
"No. He's my best friend, though. We've been through a lot together and I suppose it's become second nature for us to look out for each other. Though, I'd say the last few years, it's been more him looking out for me than the other way 'round." She shrugged. "I don't . . . . I don't really date, anyway."
"Why not?" The boy once more sounded genuinely curious, as though asking on behalf of his packmate was secondary to his sincere wondering.
"That's . . . I'm . . . ." The witch shook her head, biting her lip. She found it really hard to tell that earnest, eager face to stick his nose anywhere but in her private business. Yet there was a strange, immediate protectiveness there, she noticed, as if he were her own little brother, somehow. "It just never really worked. Nothing ever seemed to feel right. Maybe it's my condition, maybe it's just me, but I simply gave up on the idea. Focused on my work. I'm too odd, perhaps. Just being around me unsettles some people once they know. Something about the way I am now, about being sort of . . . ."
"Ageless," Jacob offered in a distracted tone, his gaze on the road.
She turned her head, studying his profile in the soft, vaguely greenish evening light. "Yeah."
He nodded, deliberately forcing himself not to meet her eyes—to continue focusing on his driving. He wanted to look at her, yet at the same time didn't. He wanted to pummel Seth for kicking off this awkward turn in the conversation in the first place, yet at the same time, wanted to thank him for settling his own curiosity about a matter he'd not even considered until the younger werewolf had asked.
He wanted to know everything about her, yet didn't want to know anything at all, because these instincts he didn't recognize were, well, unsettling.
"Just like us," he said in quiet voice; she noticed Seth's own shrug and nod from the edge of her periphery.
The comment seemed to knock the air from her lungs. "Wait, really?" Maybe that was the source of this sense of connection, then.
"We don't start aging until we stop shifting, and we kind of have to choose to stop," Seth explained, watching the lights dancing in the loose bits of her wild hair. "You've got really pretty hair."
Hermione's eyes widened a little in shock. "Got to say I don't hear that very often, but thank you. I like your hair, too. A bit jealous, actually. I wish mine would behave so well."
She fell silent. She would just bet they didn't have to worry about what their hair looked like when they rolled out of bed in the morning. No, no. Jacob Black probably popped right up from his pillow with that sleek black mane all perfect. Hanging in neat jet ribbons over his shoulders . . . down his back . . . . Moving against his reddish-brown skin in delicate brushes as he—
Sitting up a bit straighter, she gave herself a shake. Bloody hell. Daydreaming with the man sitting right there beside her! What the hell had gotten into her?
He, with suspicious timing, cleared his throat and shook his head. She didn't bother looking over at him, instead going perfectly still in her seat as she wondered what this chat regarding hair had made him think about.
"Um, so then what's the plan?" Jacob asked with a shrug. "Do you want to go there before you meet with the elders and the pack, or after?"
"After, definitely. I mean, I have to run errands, anyway. If I read that brochure correctly, I've a fridge to stock and a coffee maker to fill up."
"You did," Seth called from the backseat, having opened the brochure for reference.
"I feel bad you've got to chauffer me about, though."
Jacob waved away her statement. "Not like I've got anything better to do."
"You don't, um, have—have a girlfriend, or something?" Realizing how it sounded the second the words left her lips, she stumbled on, "By that, I mean it won't cause you any problems to be at some strange woman's beckon call?"
Seth snickered. "Closest thing he's got to a girlfriend is Bella."
Jacob squared his jaw and sighed. "Like you and Harry, she's not my girlfriend, but she is my best friend, or well, was. Bella Swan."
One of Hermione's brows arched very high on her forehead. "Your best friend is named 'Beautiful Graceful-Bird'?"
Jake laughed, Seth made a thoughtful expression.
Jake shook his head. "Never really thought of that, before. Anyway, technically, it's Cullen now. Keep forgetting to do that."
"Suppose I'm not one to talk. I once had a cursed-werewolf friend whose name translated to 'Wolf-boy Wolf.'"
"You're not friends with him anymore?" Jacob braced to hear a story about something her friend must've done to drive her away. The cursed ones didn't have control over themselves, as the elders told it.
"He, um, he died."
"Sorry," both werewolves said in the same breath.
"It's been a while. I just don't like to talk about it. So, back to you and your best friend 'Bella'?"
Jacob nodded, letting her redirect the conversation. "She and I don't hang out much anymore. I don't really have a life outside the pack. It's kind of better that way, anyway."
Her lower lip puffed outward in a pout. She couldn't imagine not spending time with Harry—disregarding that she was about to spend a lot of time separated from him, of course. "It's sad to be without your best friend, though, isn't it? May I ask what happened?"
"She became a vampire."
Her chestnut eyes grew enormous.
Jacob pursed his lips, glaring at Seth in the rear view mirror. "Thanks for that."
The younger wolf threw up his hands. "We're werewolves, she's a witch. It's not breaking anything to talk about vampires."
"Look, it's a whole thing," Jake said in a drained tone. "The elders are going to tell you about the treaty, anyway. My great-grandfather signed an agreement with the leader of the vampire coven in the area—"
"They're seriously called covens?"
He snorted a laugh. "Yeah. But, um, anyway, the agreement was we don't hunt on each other's lands—we've updated it so we can travel in peace on each other's lands and we can hunt 'together' if there's a common enemy—and we co-exist in peace . . . so long as they don't bite anyone. And of course, she goes and falls in love with one of them, and then there's this big group of vampires in Italy, like to believe they're in charge of their kind, who told them she had to be changed or die, so . . . . She was changed."
Her brow furrowed as she sorted that information. That sounded like a headache-inducing amount of drama summed in a relatively compact number of sentences. "If your great-grandfather signed this treaty, but your friend only recently became a vampire, then how did they manage without breaking—?"
"Their leader, Carlisle, is a medical doctor. He proposed a procedure—that she be injected with her husband's venom—"
"Wait, wait. Venom? These vampires have venom? Like insects?"
The werewolves nodded.
"Non-magical vampires are strange creatures," she observed in an awed tone.
Jacob shook his head, laughing again. "So, she was willingly injected with the pack standing witness. And then we all just as quickly took off once that was done, because it's an excruciating process and she only agreed on the grounds that her husband, alone, stayed with her to see her through the change."
"Ah." It seemed the only response she could work up. Really, what could anyone say to all of that?
"Anyway, you're going to need someone who knows the area—and has a car—to help you run your errands, right?"
"Right" She nodded, trying not to smile. "And so this is you volunteering for the challenge, that it?"
He grinned, his teeth pearly-white against the rich hue of his skin. "Something like that."
The air from the woods—damp, briny, and yet sort of . . . bright feeling, somehow, though she wasn't at all sure how something could 'feel' bright—had fully invaded the car by now as they made their way along the highway. Hermione closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. The simple act felt both calming and cleansing. As though nothing else in the world mattered in this moment but the air in her lungs.
Whenever she'd gone camping with her parents, hell, even when she'd been on the Horcrux Hunt with Harry and Ron, she'd loved the smell of the woods. The rich earthiness was soothing, and yet, this was somehow a lusher scent, still.
Shaking her head ever so slightly as she rested the back of her skull against the headrest, she whispered, "The air here is simply gorgeous. I love it."
Jacob grinned wider in spite of himself at her hushed observation. There was something about her appreciating the area that warmed him.
Carlisle found Edward standing on the inside of the glass-paned walls of the foyer. Still as stone, his oldest son watched something on the other side of the glass.
"Something's wrong," Edward said softly, as usual answering the question before it had even left the other vampire's head. "I can't get a lock on his thoughts. Neither can he."
A pensive frown gracing his lips, Carlisle turned his head. Jasper was pacing . . . no, pacing wasn't the correct description of the movement. This was something edgier, more predatory . . . prowling. Yes, Jasper was prowling back and forth across the porch.
"Has he said what's bothering him?"
"All he's said is he doesn't know."
With a sigh, Carlisle clapped a gentle hand over his son's shoulder. "Then perhaps this is one of those times you should try to control your ability. If he doesn't even know what he's thinking, maybe you shouldn't be permitted to attempt figuring it out, either."
Edward uttered a dark laugh—as if Carlisle, of all people, didn't know how hard his ability was to control. If he had any choice about it, he would only read thoughts when it was important, and only from people who didn't make him feel like he needed a shower after picking through their minds.
"I wish it were that simple." He gave a shake of his coppery head. "Jasper's rarely not in control of his own mind. To be honest, it frightens me a little."
With another sigh, Carlisle backpedaled. Leaning his hips back against the panes, he folded his arms across his chest. "Explain it to me."
Shoulders sloping, Edward did just that, describing his brother's bizarre behavior when they'd been reading earlier that afternoon. How he'd not known quite what he'd been thinking then, how he still wasn't sure. Which, by sheer nature of the conversation's trajectory, led to why Edward felt obliged to try to sort Jasper's thoughts for him.
"Sounds nearly like when he's caught the scent of human blood." Carlisle winced as he rethought that. "Minus the surge of violent action to get at the source. You're sure there was nothing he was picking up on that maybe you didn't?"
Edward once more shook his head, dismissing Carlisle's thoughtful observation. "I've been with him nearly the entire day. There's been nothing unusual around. I can't account for why he's like this."
Carlisle frowned again, nodding. He had believed Alice when she said this separation between her and Jasper needed to happen, that Jasper would be all right. And, for the first few days, it seemed she had been correct. So then what was this? It seemed only logical that perhaps he was not handling her absence as well as she'd predicted.
Nodding, Carlisle opened his mouth, but Edward robbed him of the chance to voice his thoughts.
"Yeah, hunting might be good for him. He doesn't seem to be thirsty—at least not enough to cause an issue—but it might distract him."
Carlisle pursed his lips, waiting for Edward to meet his gaze.
"I'm sorry. I'll try to stop doing that."
His adoptive father snickered. Edward really needed to pay more attention to his own actions. Pushing away from the wall of glass, Carlisle exited the house.
