I was buoyed by the Grisham Mill incident for several days. It kept me feeling excited through the more boring hours of each morning, pushed me to focus on moments where I'd otherwise retreat into my thoughts. I was sure the coven would strike again, so I spent each night lurking outside the dispatch office. But the dispatchers didn't gossip about anything useful, just stupid office drama. And the dispatches that came in were nothing useful, either, just stupid kids or drunks smashing mailboxes or pissing themselves in public. The Grisham Mill incident didn't cause as much stir as I'd thought. Maybe bear attacks were more normal in America than I thought? Because that's what they thought it was, and apparently just wrote it off as nothing more.

But as my stoked enthusiasm began to fade, it was replaced by an equivalent frustration. I recognized the feeling from previous hunts, but it was stronger this time. There was just so little to do here that would produce any real results. No data to steal and sift through—I'd already done that. The night scene here was tiny, small enough that I could check every bar multiple times a night if I wanted. And the places that were big around here, the surrounding land with all its trails, lakes, and camping grounds, were too big for one person, even a vampire, to canvas effectively. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack that had been scattered across the entire barnyard.

Except someone was going to die if I didn't find it.

This coven was more careful than any I'd hunted before, it was clear. With each passing day I became more certain that the killing at the mill was a fluke of some kind, that they'd slipped up, gotten sloppy. What else could explain the utter lack of vampire signs? I wouldn't even be here if it hadn't been for a big-mouthed Volturi messenger that I'd just happened to overhear. This coven might have escaped my notice entirely; I might have declared my work finished one day and left this coven alive to continue its atrocities for eternity.

The thought chilled me, but didn't help to motivate me.

But maybe if I was working in a wide area, I needed to cast a wider net. If my theory was correct that this coven was hiding its activity by spreading it out across many counties, then perhaps I needed to pay those counties a visit. I'd need to come up with some excuses for days-long absences at a few places. My innocent Asian tourist alter ego was a familiar sight at a couple establishments and would be noticed missing. If I spent a day or two hinting that I'd be traveling—since tracing my "grandfather's" steps was my excuse for hanging around—then that should be solved easily.

Seeding this idea with the locals was how I got myself locked into a conversation with Charlie Swan at Carver's.

The man walked with his daughter, the girl with the immovable attention. I was already preparing my goodbyes and culling threads of attention to make my departure as unremarkable as possible when her attention stopped me dead. It felt like running headfirst into a brick wall. I was still reeling a little when Charlie spotted me and came over to chat. I would have swept him aside and made my escape, but Bella would have noticed.

So strange to be noticed against my will.

"Hey there, Itu!" Charlie called cheerfully.

Bella rolled her eyes and elbowed him. "It's 'Ito,' Dad," she said under her breath, quietly enough that I wouldn't have heard it, if human.

"Ito, sorry." Charlie shook his head like he'd remembered my fake name on his own. "It's been a minute, hasn't it?"

I put on a friendly smile to hide my irritation. It wasn't his fault. "Sheriff Charlie, good to meet you once again."

"How's the Roadside treatin' you?"

"They have…" I feigned a pause like I was thinking of a diplomatic response. "Provided what I paid for."

Charlie grimaced. "Well I'm glad you haven't had any trouble. What have you been up to?"

"Dad," Bella hissed. "Can't you see he was about to leave? You're holding him up."

I waved my hands. "Oh, it's no trouble," I lied. I desperately wanted to take the out she was giving me, but I also hadn't had the opportunity to speak with the sheriff since our last encounter. This could be an opportunity, and I hated missing opportunities more than I hated being trapped in conversation. "Certainly not as much trouble as you have had recently," I continued.

Charlie's face soured. "Oh you're talkin' about that nasty business down at the mill." He guided us over to his customary corner table. "We don't get business like that around here too often."

"Yes, it seems very peaceful," I agreed. I watched them both carefully, gauging their reactions. Bella seemed disinterested, or preoccupied. She struck me as the less social type. Charlie clearly didn't like thinking about nasty business like murder or, as he must think, animal attacks. I continued. "I had heard stories about North American bears. I am surprised this does not happen more often?"

"Naw, bear attacks are pretty rare." Charlie shook his head. "Most everyone who lives here is smart enough to leave a bear be, and a bear is usually smart enough to leave us be. And it wasn't a tourist or someone who got killed. Bill Meyer was his name. He's a born-an'-raised local, healthy respect for wildlife."

I let my persona look confused. "It seems like he should not have suffered such a fate."

"Now, between you'n'me, I don't think he did suffer such a fate."

It wasn't my persona that projected surprise this time. I looked at him sharply for a brief moment before I could smooth my features back to casual, conversational interest. Charlie didn't seem to notice, but Bella did. I cursed internally.

"But," I said, "I heard the body was savaged just like a bear attack."

His face turned downward into a deep frown. "This ain't good conversation for a meal, so I'll just say one last thing about it. That scene was fishy. I gotta look into it more to see what, but that wasn't a bear attack."

I contained my shock this time. This man was possessed of either an uncanny intellect or an unusually wide perspective. "Yes, forgive my morbid curiosity," I said, allowing the topic to change.

"Anyway, you doin' anything interesting?"

"I was considering visiting the beach. La Push? My grandfather mentioned it a few times."

"Mhm, La Push's always a nice place," he said. "Hey, Bella, weren't you and Jacob gonna go down there today?"

Bella turned away from the window to re-engage in the conversation, reluctantly. "Um… yeah, I think so."

Charlie beamed. "Why don't you give Ito here a ride? I know your truck's got room for three."

"Dad!" Bella looked mortified, glancing at me, wide-eyed, as if begging for help. Luckily for her, I also did not wish to be trapped with her and this 'Jacob' for an entire afternoon. It would raise too many questions about how quickly I could get from place to place, and would tie me too closely to the Swan family.

I let my face become slightly flustered. "Oh, the offer is generous," I began, racking my mind for anything I could use to justify refusing a free ride to a location fifteen miles away.

"I'd have to check with Jacob anyway," Bella cut in. "It was supposed to be an us thing."

"And I already purchased my bus ticket," I added.

Charlie looked between us, then sighed and muttered "Kids, what're you gonna do?" under his breath. "Alright, alright," he said aloud, raising his hands in surrender. "You win, I won't push my generous offer on you."

"I mean no offense," I began, but Charlie waved his hands.

"No no, I get it. Bus folks don't like doing refunds anyway."

The waitress approached with Charlie's usual order and I took my opportunity to escape. I made my hasty goodbyes and excuses and apologies, the very picture of an overly-polite Japanese tourist stereotype, and left. Of course that meant I had to go purchase a bus ticket to La Push beach. I'd outright stated that I had such a ticket, and it would be far too easy to be caught out in that lie. It was why I didn't often engage with the humans I tried to protect. I just wasn't very good… no, that wasn't right. I was plenty skilled at remaining aloof and detached, but I had to admit that Bella was revealing something disturbing about me: I used my psychic gift like a crutch. Without the convenient severing of attention, I wasn't nearly adept enough at extricating myself from conversations.

All these thoughts cascaded through my head while I bought the ticket and while I lounged in the rearmost seat of the bus. An impulse seized me and I opened my mouth wide to exhale onto the window, as I'd often done on chilly days as a child. I'd always drawn little figures in the fog and earned a scolding from my mother for smudging the windows. But this time the glass didn't fog. It hadn't for over a hundred years.

I leaned back and pulled my hood lower, trying not to think about how much faster I could have gone on foot. On the one hand, being locked into this course of action was frustrating. It represented a clear gap in my skill set, and it was taking me further from my self-assigned hunting ground. On the other hand, though, I had been preparing to widen my net to neighboring counties. Through that lens, this was just the first of several trips my alter ego would be taking. It may do even more than my words to establish my new pattern of behavior with the locals. And would it hurt me to relax for once? If I had no choice but to go to the beach, maybe I should just enjoy it a little.

None of that made the minutes less agonizing.

I practically leaped from the bus when we finally arrived. The bus driver opened his mouth to say something, but I slapped his attention away and he said whatever it was to the people behind me instead. I made sure my hood blocked out the occasional sunlight peeking from the overcast sky, then took the most direct path to the sand. That meant vaulting a low wall from the parking lot and walking across a bunch of rocks and weeds, and drawing the judgmental stares of an elderly couple taking the proper path around. I let them look; they'd just see a surly teenager and grouse about it for a while, then forget me. I, meanwhile, would be where I needed to be with no further delay.

The beach was… well, it was something. I couldn't properly remember the last time I'd visited a beach, but I was reasonably certain it was meant to be more… special than this. The ocean washed up onto the sand then pulled away with a soothing sound. Older couples walked the beach, some hand-in-hand, others merely side-by-side. A few packs of teenagers dashed from the parking lot, the girls shrieking as the boys tried to hassle them in some way. It looked like one of them was holding something… A bug? Probably, from the reaction he was getting. It was then that I noticed that another group of kids was coming down. This place was, apparently, pretty popular. I worried for a moment that the beach would become overly crowded, but the packs soon dispersed into little cliques of three or five and spread out to what I presumed must be their favorite spots. I scanned them over for any who might recognize me—I'd had enough of being known for today—but didn't see anyone.

Until I saw Bella again.

I cursed under my breath and turned to watch her from the corner of my eye. She was with a boy—must have been Jacob—and they were chatting amiably. I watched them for a moment longer, just enough to determine how best to avoid them, then turned and made good on that intention. I really needed to suppress my instinct to surveil; my purpose here was to establish a roving pattern so I wouldn't be missed when I widened my net. Given that, I could afford to relax. I took a deep breath. That was how humans relaxed, right? The air filled my lungs and hissed out through my teeth. The motion seemed to help, so I took another breath, this one through my nose. Long and slow and… What was that smell?

My eyes snapped open and I glanced around. Was that a dog? I searched and found no dog. No wolf, either, though that wasn't surprising. I would have put it down to someone with too many dogs just stinking the place up, but it was too distinct. I defaulted to 'dog' and 'wolf' only because I hadn't smelled this before; when I caught another whiff, I realized this was something different. Relaxation forgotten for the moment, I did my best to project an apathetic teenager wandering the beach while I actually followed my nose to find whoever smelled so strange. Maybe it was a coyote? I'd heard of those, but I didn't think there were any around this region. It didn't smell feline or ursine, either.

Forced to move casually, it took me some time to track the scent to its origin. I followed it slowly north along the beach, the bystanders slowly thinning to nothing. I nearly lost the scent again, but a gust brought me another powerful dose at the same time it delivered a familiar sound.

"So what did… mean about… don't come here?"

It was Bella's voice. What did I have to do to avoid that girl? The wind didn't let me hear everything, even with my superior hearing. But the scent was obviously coming from her or… I rounded a rock and saw her companion one more time. It was him. He smelled like a dog! But again, not really a dog. What was it?

"…not really… to say…"

Two tangentially-related thoughts collided in my head. When I'd first met Bella, I'd suspected she was a werewolf, but ultimately concluded she was just an odd human because she lacked the distinctive scent werewolves were meant to have. The distinctive scent this 'Jacob' was shedding like a winter coat. I checked over my shoulder, suddenly irrationally worried I would be seen. But there was no one, just a couple screaming kids running past Bella and Jacob.

"…I want… know…"

"You know… the Quileute… wolves?"

I made a show of relaxing against a large rock as the noisy teens ran past me, too, then resumed my attempts to follow the werewolf. The wind shifted, taking both the scent and any hope I had of overhearing their conversation. There was still something bothering me about him. The scent was somehow wrong. It was too faint, like a thin coat of paint over glass. As I was trying to puzzle out what that could mean, Bella tripped. I couldn't see what she tripped over; it was probably her own feet. Jacob caught her arm and saved her from falling face-first into the sand, and happened to glance over his shoulder, a little flustered, as they parted. His gaze fell across me and I, instinctively, swept his attention aside.

And it worked.

I ducked behind another rock in case Bella looked, but I had my answer now. If Jacob were a werewolf, I wouldn't have been able to redirect his attention. The scent he carried was one of association. His family, his tribe, if I'd heard him correctly, were certainly lycanthropes. I turned back toward the main beach as I realized something else. I'd seen in a flyer that La Push was part of a Native American 'reservation,' which was part of the arrangement the United States had with the peoples they'd displaced during colonization. If Jacob was a Quileute, and the Quileute were werewolves, then that meant I was standing on werewolf territory. I quickened my steps, and thanked the universe that vampires had no distinct scent. It meant that the lycans shouldn't realize I was here and I shouldn't have to deal with the bad blood between our species.

The coven I was tracking, though… They must not technically be on Quileute land, or else it would have been a horrible mistake for them to spend any time here. I was surprised the Volturi allowed them to stay so near, technicalities be damned. Vampires and werewolves being so close together was a powder keg with a lit candle sitting atop it. It was virtually guaranteed to explode and, in the process, hurt far too many humans and cause a headache for the secrecy-loving Volturi. Maybe they didn't know? Somehow that possibility unsettled me more. There were too many unknowns floating around here for my liking.

I decided not to wait for the bus to return. I'd culled attentions fairly aggressively as I'd entered and exited the bus, so I could be confident I would be forgotten. That's what I told myself as I sprinted through the forests between the roads and dodged traffic to get back to Forks in just a couple minutes. The truth was that I didn't want to spend a moment longer on werewolf land than I absolutely had to. I didn't go back to my room or out on patrol; instead I went to the library. I intended to research everything I could about the boundaries of Quileute land. I couldn't afford to trespass by accident and compromise my hunt.

Somehow I doubted "Hi, I'm a nice vampire that's only here to kill other vampires and definitely not you guys," would accomplish much.