(trigger warning: slight mentions of child abuse/emotional abuse)

Olivia had been correct. The Cullens did live in the sort of house that belonged in a high-end architecture magazine. It was ultramodern—clean lines, lots of glass to provide the best views of the surrounding forest, natural wood tones against sharp black—so foreign for Forks. The rest of the town was so homey, simple, practical, a world away from the house before her. It was a wonder that no one had discovered the Cullens were more than human just based upon their house.

For a moment, Lilah second guessed her choice of clothing. She'd gone home after work to shower off the restaurant smell because surely smelling of human food would be off-putting for a group of vampires, and then changed into some of her favorite, comfy clothes. A long sleeved shirt that she'd tie-dyed years ago and a set of overalls that she'd patched at the knees more than once. They were clothes that reminded her of home, the home she'd had with Phoebe, where she was allowed to wear what she'd wanted.

When she lived at her home in Arkansas, her wardrobe was limited. Long sleeves, long skirts, plain colors. White, gray, navy blue, brown, and black were the only acceptable colors in the Porter household. The girls were to keep their hair long, too, and had to keep it in braided styles or in simple buns at the napes of her neck.

So, when she went to live with Phoebe, and was allowed to wear whatever she wanted, Lilah went nuts. She wanted everything colorful and obnoxious, and, as Morgan reminded her repeatedly, she dressed like the interior of a kaleidoscope for a few years. By the time she started college, she sorted herself out to dress, as Morgan said, "a hippie farmer." She had never thought much about it because she was finally dressing how she wanted to, but now, in the Cullens driveway, she felt as though she was committing blasphemy for wearing her tried and true tie dye and denim combo.

She glanced at her watch. It was already eight o'clock. There was no time to go home and change. Hell, even if she did, she wouldn't have a goddamn thing to wear. There wasn't anything sufficiently fancy in her closet. She couldn't go raid any of the stores either. Everything in Forks was well and closed by eight o'clock.

She'd have to go in there looking the way she did. She drew in another long breath and exhaled it, trying to keep herself calm, and finally forced herself out of the car. The outside lights had been left on so she had no issue finding her way up the front stairs. She didn't, however, see Alice coming. She was too fast, and seemed to manifest out of thin air, popping up behind the glass door and eagerly opening it.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," Alice said. Her smile was wide and bright, though a bit more sheepish. "I get a little too excited to have guests, Edward was right when he told you that…please, come in! Can I take your coat?"

Lilah stepped inside. She felt like Olivia, in total awe of the place she found herself in, to the point where she couldn't even speak. It was really a world away from Forks. A world away from the cozy Victorian house in Massachusetts that she missed so dearly.

"Oh, yeah, thanks," Lilah said, finally answering Alice's questions. Perhaps a bit awkwardly, she shrugged out of her old jacket, one she'd patched at the elbows rather than get rid of, and passed it to Alice, along with her bag. "Thank you."

"Hello, Lilah," greeted Edward.

His hands were buried in his pockets. Going by his facial expression, he was still processing the fact that there was a witch in his house. Had to be weird, even for a vampire.

"Hi," she said. The single word fell out of her mouth and Edward was resisting the urge to smile. She didn't have much time to think about it, though, as Carlisle approached.

"It's nice to see you again, Lilah," came the cool and calm voice of Carlisle. He offered a hand for Lilah to shake, which she did. "I'm sure you're glad we're not meeting at the hospital again. How's your hand?"

"Better."

Brow raised, Carlisle asked, "Do you mind if I take a look?"

She gulped, but held her hand out nonetheless. Carlisle took it, gently examining, holding it in his cold digits. He smirked at the sight, unmarred by anything.

"Your work?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes. I got impatient."

He smiled and released her hand. He was impressed, obviously, and said, "I can see why you hate hospitals. It's a lot to go through, when you can fix yourself, and when you've had bad experiences with them…"

"I only went because my coworkers insisted and because I couldn't heal myself right in front of them without getting attention," Lilah said. Unable to stop herself, she gawked at the house a bit more, and said, "Your home is beautiful."

"Thank you, dear. Designing this home has been my passion project for the past few years," said another vampire. She, like the others, was beautiful, with dark caramel brown hair falling in elegant waves over her shoulders. Carlisle slipped an arm around her waist as she came to stand by his side. She, too, offered a cold hand for Lilah to shake. "Esme Cullen, pleasure to meet you."

"You're very accomplished, Dr. Cullen," Lilah said.

"Please, call me Esme," she said. It was not put-on, it was a very kind and genuine request. "I'm only 'doctor' when I have my lab coat on."

"Same goes for me," Carlisle added. "No need for the formality in our own home, especially if we're to be friends."

"Oh, I—"

Lilah was about to say she wasn't expecting friendship, that they didn't owe her anything, that she already felt as though she had intruded enough on their lives. But she didn't get the chance, as in the kitchen, which was a part of the open-concept main floor of the house, an over timer went off, causing both Alice to spring over. Lilah followed her, and saw that there was another vampire there. He was almost as large as the house itself, both tall and broad, a stature that was at odds with the small, white apron he wore over a button-down shirt.

"Yes!" he said. There was something childlike in his exclamation, and even more so in the eager way he opened the oven and pulled out a tray of blueberry muffins with his bare hands and held them up like a war trophy. "They're perfect!"

"Yes, so don't go dropping them!" Alice said. She hopped to grab them from him, being close to half his size. She shot him a look, and, with bare hands as well, took out the hot muffins and arranged them onto a cooling rack. "Go introduce yourself, Em."

Blueberry muffins. Lilah's favorite. Constance had to have told them that. And then they went out of their way and made them.

She kicked herself. They'd done too much. She hadn't meant to, but she'd already asked too much of them.

'Em,' the massive vampire with dark brown, curly hair sauntered over to Lilah, a surprisingly kind smile on his face. Out of the five vampires she'd met in Forks, he seemed the most obviously vampiric based on his inhuman size, but also, strangely, the most human because he was so animated, so clearly full of life. Lilah couldn't help but to grin back as he thrust a huge hand in hers and gave her a vigorous handshake.

"Emmett Cullen," he said. He looked her up and down, and said, "Y'know, I'm almost a hundred, and I never thought I'd meet a witch. I thought I'd seen a lot since I got turned, but meeting a witch? Never had that on my bingo card…is it offense if I say I'm a bit disappointed you don't have a pointy hat and a broom?"

Typically, such a comment would have bothered Lilah. Not because it wasn't understandable, but because it was the exact kind of picture her father had painted in her head of witches. Big, ugly, women with terrible cackles, soaring around on broomsticks wearing all black, making deals with the Devil, sending out demons to torment little children for laughs…the kind of woman she'd been terrified of turning into as her powers manifested. The image in her mind was inextricably linked to evil, to the thing she was raised to hate, the thing that she'd become anyway, against her will.

And yet, now, coming from a vampire she'd just met, it didn't bother her. At all. In fact, she laughed along with him, because there was something so undeniably good-natured about Emmett that she couldn't get upset at such a comment.

Emmett's laugh was warm and hardy, and he then made an announcement, saying, "I like the witch! She's got a good laugh."

Again, somehow, that felt like the nicest thing anyone had said to Lilah since she'd arrived in Forks.

Alice appeared with the muffins placed neatly on an antique china plate.

"Would you like one, Lilah?"

Her heart thrummed. Too much. These strangers had already done too much.

She just barely made out Alice and Edward exchanging a glance, after which, Alice said, "It was no trouble, Lilah. I wanted to make you something so you felt welcome in our home, and Constance mentioned that you loved blueberry muffins. Both Emmett and I wanted to make them…I burnt the first batch on accident, so he wanted to prove he'd be a better baker than me…really, though, it was no trouble. It gave us a good excuse to use the kitchen for once."

Above Alice, Emmett nodded, grinning from ear to ear. That would explain why he was so proud.

They'd already gone to the effort. It'd be more rude to refuse at this point.

"Thank you," Lilah said.

She took one and took a bite, well aware of all of the eyes on her, but quickly forgot, as she was overwhelmed with the taste of home. So much so that she nearly cried.

"They're delicious, really. Thank you."

Emmett released the unnecessary breath he'd been holding in, relieved.

"Thank god!" he said. "I was worried my amateur skills wouldn't be good enough for a real chef, but I stand corrected. I'm even more brilliant than I previously thought."

"Here, why don't we have a seat?" Esme said.

She'd grabbed a spare, smaller plate from the kitchen, and handed to Lilah, tucking it beneath her muffin. Lilah thanked her, and like the others, followed her lead into the living room. She took a seat on the long, angular sofa, which was just as comfortable as it was stylish. Alice settled to Lilah's left, Edward took the armchair to her right, and Esme and Carlisle sat on the opposite love seat. Emmett, still in the ill-fitting apron, stood behind Edward, resting his hands on the back of the chair.

Lilah took another bite of her muffin. She noticed that there was a book on the coffee table by the carefully curated flower arrangement. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. A very well loved, highly annotated copy. She smiled softly at the sight of it. She'd read it in one of her philosophy courses in college.

"Constance explained the basics of your situation to us," Carlisle said. His eyes were focused on her intently, yet more softly than she'd expected. "That you're on the run from your father, who has taken it upon himself to bring the witch trials back to modern America."

The disgust in his tone was palpable. It comforted Lilah, in some way.

"I don't know how much Constance told you about us—about me in particular, but we would be more than happy to help you with this issue, Lilah," Carlisle continued. "I am old enough to remember the original witch trials, in England, and then here in America…my own father hunted witches and, as a young human, so did I…I'm ashamed to admit it now, but I was too much of a coward to go against my father. It was only after I was turned into a vampire that I gained the independence to live with my own ethics and morals about the sanctity of human life, ironically enough. When I came to America and saw that the senseless killings, the witch trials had continued, I couldn't stand it…I killed the men in charge to put a stop to it."

"My great-great-great-something grandfather," Lilah said.

There was a pause. Carlisle folded his hands together. Esme set one of her hands on his knee in support.

"Yes," Carlisle said. "Daniel Porter…he was…particularly abhorrent, as you likely know."

There was another tear stinging Lilah's left eye. "Yes. He's still the role model for the men in my family…my father reminded me of how many witches our family had killed when he—"

Her voice broke; she couldn't finish the sentence. She was sure she hadn't needed to anyway. Carlisle had read her medical records at the hospital and they'd all talked to Constance. Surely they had a fairly good picture of the things her father, her sperm donor, had done to her, and what he'd do to her if he found her again.

"We would all be more than happy to help keep you safe while you're here in Forks," Esme said, picking up where her husband had left off.

"I feel it's my personal responsibility to help witches whenever I can now," Carlisle said. "Not that it can erase anything I did to them while I was human, but…it lifts a weight off my conscious."

"I can't ask any of you to do that," Lilah said. Emmett nearly gasped. None of the others looked surprised, not even as she grew more fervent, almost panicking. "You've all been very kind, but I can't ask for help…not any more than you've already done, Constance told me that being here in Forks would be enough…I don't want to be any kind of inconvenience, I can't—"

Her heart was more than thrumming now. It was threatening to break out of her chest. Her father's words echoed in her head again. Burden, you're a burden, Delilah. All I have done for you, for what? For you to become an evil monster, a witch? I've wasted years of love and affection on you, I've fed you and clothed you and raised you to be a good Christian woman, all for nothing.

Ah, that was the root of it. Her father. Of course. Despite everything Phoebe and Constance and Morgan had done to try to make her realize that help and love weren't transactional, she didn't quite believe them. Her father had made it clear that she was not someone worth helping. It was why she did so much to help others and be independent—if no one helped her and loved her, no one would be disappointed when their investment in her didn't pay off.

The logical part of her knew that was bullshit. The emotional part of her, the part of her that was literally causing her to panic in the house of strangers, believed it wholeheartedly, just as much as she had when she was a little girl.

Then it hit her. A wave of overwhelming, unnatural serenity. It was delightful. She leaned back, basking in it for a moment, finding refuge from her own mind and body and emotions, only to let her head fall into her hands. It wasn't hers. The Cullens were doing something to her with their vampiric abilities. It was out of kindness, yes, but it wasn't hers, it was another burden she'd put on them, and it was making it worse.

"Jasper, stop."

It was Edward's voice, and a new name. Through her intense anxiety and even more intense embarrassment, she looked up, and saw that two new vampires appeared, one male, one female, both blonde, both as beautiful as the others. The female vampire eyed her with little more than suspicious indifference, while the male looked at her with pity.

That stung. She was pathetic, she knew, but she didn't want to be thought of as such. She'd worked so hard since Phoebe adopted her to become strong and independent and everything her father had prevented her from becoming. Her breakdown and his acknowledgement of how pathetic it was stung.

"The last two members of our family, Lilah," Edward said, gesturing to the newcomers. "Rosalie and Jasper."

sorry for the cliffhanger