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

Dottie and the Shadow Man

By Monday night, it became very clear why the Sweet case had gone cold. Except for a single short brown hair and a smudged fingerprint found on one of the bookshelves, there was no physical evidence. There were no witnesses to the crime, and nobody could identify Anna's whereabouts in the five hours between the school day ending and her father discovering her body. Her friends and family had been interviewed, but they all painted the same picture: Anna had grown increasingly withdrawn and secretive in the months before her death.

The hair had a root attached and DNA was extracted, but no match was ever found in the national DNA database. Five years after Anna's death, the DNA from the hair sample was identified as belonging to the father of Anna's unborn child, giving the police a clear motive for her murder, but by that time, interest had been all but lost in the case and hostility towards it had risen. What should have been a breakthrough ended up crammed in an evidence box and shoved in a corner at the Forks police station, gathering dust for who knew how long.

It was hard to say who was the most frustrated with it all: Louisa who had heard about, but never actually witnessed first-hand, such a gross miscarriage of justice; Rosalie, who seemed to take the unsolved murder of a complete stranger and the apparent apathy surrounding the case personally (Louisa figured there was a story there but didn't want to push it); Emmett, who hadn't realised how long and boring the sleuthing process usually was; or Jasper, who had to deal with all of their angst.

At least Mrs Cullen ("Please, call me Esme. I'm only twenty-six.") was kind enough to let them occupy the family dining room for their investigation, reminding Louisa that they didn't really need it anyway. The investigation would have been a lot harder had the teens used the Collins' residence as a centre of operations. Louisa had decided to keep her family in the dark about the case. She felt guilty, knowing she was sneaking around behind their backs and going back on her promise, but once she had started, she found it impossible to stop. As soon as school ended for the day, she would drop Dottie off at home before making the increasingly familiar drive to the Cullen's house, where she and Rose would sit and research for hours on end until she had to be reminded to go home for dinner. Even then, Louisa would stay up late into the night, reading over the case file and making jotting down possible leads to follow up on in a notebook by flashlight.

To explain her disappearances, Louisa introduced Jasper to her father as her boyfriend. Her father had been slightly confused by the abrupt announcement, but had taken it in stride, and had invited Jasper over for dinner. Jasper, who couldn't eat human food due to his… less than savoury meal preferences had managed to weasel out of the invitations thus far by claiming to be allergic to whatever had been offered to him, though Louisa knew it was only a matter of time before her father found the perfect 'hypoallergenic' recipe. Stephen Collins was nothing if not stubborn.

Jasper, for his part, didn't seem to be all that bothered by Louisa's preoccupation with the case. He would usually sit in the dining room with the two girls, sometimes helping them, sometimes reading quietly. She wondered if she should ask him out on a date since they were technically dating, but the only activity she think of that they could do together was breaking and entering locations she wanted to investigate more thoroughly, which didn't seem like it would make for a very romantic evening.

But even still, despite her wishes, life didn't stop just because she had a case. It hadn't when her parents had tolerated her snooping and it certainly didn't when she was sneaking behind her father's back. She had a history paper due Friday and naturally, she didn't start it until Thursday night. After excusing herself from an evening of theorising at the Cullen's house, she had stationed herself on the sofa in the lounge, laptop perched on her knees, ready to crank out the six-page paper that was due in twelve hours.

At two in the morning and four pages into the essay, she heard her father moving around upstairs. She didn't think too much of it, too focused on the probable causes of the Salem Witch trials and the role of women in Colonial American society. That was, she didn't pay it any attention until she realised his movements were coming from too far away from his room. It sounded almost like it was coming from her own room.

Louisa's fingers stilled over her keyboard, her ears straining, attempting to identify the slight squeaks emanating from the floorboards above. Yes, that was definitely coming from her bedroom, and it was definitely her father—the footsteps were too heavy to belong to her sister. He must be checking to see if she was in bed, Louisa decided, turning her attention back to her computer screen. She shook her head to gather her thoughts and refocus on her paper, trying to ignore her father's movements as he walked towards Dottie's room.

A blood-curdling scream destroyed what little was left of Louisa's concentration. She was up and out of her seat before she knew what she was doing, her laptop dumped unceremoniously on the floor, and sprinted towards the sound. She ran into her father in the upstairs hallway, his eyes wide behind his glasses and wearing nothing but a pair of flannel lounge pants, and she followed after him towards Dottie's room. Her door was open, and by the time the two of them burst into the room, the screaming had ceased, though the terrified sobs that had replaced it was not much better. Louisa hung back, turning on the overhead light while her father crossed the room and pulled a distressed Dottie into a hug.

Mr Collins pushed Dottie's mane of hair out of her face and sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing soothing circles it his daughter's back. He could feel her heart beating madly and he shifted so that she could crawl into his lap. Out of his three children, Dorothy had always been the most sensitive and the most likely to positively receive physical contact. Even as a baby, she had been the most likely to cuddle, though it wasn't a difficult title to win when she was compared to the rambunctious Louisa and later, the aloof Laurence. It wasn't that uncommon for Dot to have nightmares either, especially after Clara had died. So, for what must have been the thousandth time since the accident, he rubbed her back and whispered comforting words into her hair, gently rocking her back and forth.

"It wasn't a dream," Dottie managed to say in between her gasping sobs. "It was real."

"It wasn't real, Dot," he replied gently. "You know this."

"No!" she said firmly, pushing away from him a little so that she could look him dead in the eye. "No, this wasn't a dream. There was someone at my door."

This obviously piqued Louisa's interest, who stepped farther into the room. "What did she look like?"

Dottie shook her head, her blonde hair flying. "No, it was a man. Not a woman."

Louisa pursed her lips. It couldn't be her father, obviously, he had been in his room when the screaming started. Suddenly, those footsteps that Louisa had heard were a lot more worrying than she had originally thought. She took a deep breath and tried to think clearly. Maybe it was Jasper? He had been to her house a few times, but why would he not see her in the lounge? Why go to Dottie's room? "How tall was he?"

"He was shorter than Daddy," she said, glancing back up towards her father and scrubbing at her face.

That ruled out any of the Cullen boys. They were all the height of the average moose.

"It wasn't a dream," Dottie continued. "I saw someone standing there. I was so scared I couldn't even move. He ran when I was able to scream."

Louisa released a sigh of relief. "It sounds like sleep paralysis, Dottie."

Dottie's blue eyes flashed angrily. "It wasn't! I know what I saw. There was a—"

"Your mother also suffered from sleep paralysis," Mr Collins said finally, not wanting to have to mediate a fight between the girls in the middle of the night. "Louisa is right, you just described the same thing she used to see. It's distressing, but nothing you see is real, baby."

Louisa listened to her father comfort her sister for a moment before backing quietly out of the room. She was overreacting. It wasn't footsteps that she had heard. It was probably just the house settling. She turned around and made her way down the hallway, towards the stairs, trying to calm her own heart rate down. Thanks to the little interruption, it would take her at least thirty minutes to refocus on her paper. She really should have started it earlier.

"Stop it, that tickles," a girlish voice giggled.

Louisa stopped dead in her tracks, hand on the bannister and foot raised mid-air. That wasn't her sister's voice. It hadn't even come from the direction from her sister's room… it almost sounded like it had come from her own room. Louisa's heart accelerated and a weird tingling sensation ran over her scalp. Very slowly, she twisted, eyeing her bedroom door cautiously. Thinking back, she was almost positive that she had closed her door earlier, just in case someone decided to snoop and stumbled across her case notes. So why was it wide open?

She glanced back to her sister's room, trying to hear her sister and father's conversation over the ringing in her ears. Surely they must have heard that too? Unless, she realised with horror, they couldn't hear it. Louisa turned her attention back to her own bedroom. She tried to swallow, but her throat had gone dry and her mouth burned as if her saliva had been replaced with battery acid. Either this was one of the psychometric episodes Dr Cullen had described to her or Dottie was right and the house haunted. Neither sounded very appealing.

When asked later, Louisa wouldn't be able to say why she walked towards her room that night. In fact, she barely remembered even doing it. It was almost like a dream, she would say. It felt like she was floating towards her bedroom door, rather than walking. She couldn't feel the cool hardwood beneath her feet, nor could she recall placing her hand on the door frame, which had tiny little nicks in it, remnants of what had once been a child's growth chart but had long since been painted over. It was a surreal experience— it was like she had stepped out of her own body for a moment and if she were to turn around, she would see it standing, frozen, in the hallway.

Then Louisa's foot crossed the threshold to her bedroom, and the spell was broken. She gagged. A second later, she dropped to her knees, her legs giving out the moment she registered the blinding headache. A wave of nausea hit her and she slapped a hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to stop herself from puking all over her bedroom floor. The hand on her mouth doubly served to stop herself from crying out loud. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and bit down on it so hard she tasted blood.

Her consciousness took a moment to catch up with her body. A scent was surrounding her, overwhelming her, choking her. She knew that scent from somewhere: it was spicy, burning her nostrils with each shakily inhaled breath, yet musky, heavy, pooling in the bottom of her lungs and making it hard to exhale fully. She knew she knew it, but she was pretty sure her brain was melting and running out of her nose, making rational thought nearly impossible. In fact, the wetness she was feeling on her fingers was probably brain matter. She pulled her hand away and tried to focus on it, though her vision was fuzzy and dark around the edges, making it rather difficult to identify what coated her fingers.

Focus, she tried to command herself. She imagined one of those cages that her father put in the attic to catch the squirrels that were eating the insulation, and shoved as much pain as she could into it, which wasn't the most effective mental imagery, seeing as it was full of holes, but it was the best she could come up with. She began cataloguing the sensations she was experiencing: Feeling, her brain was possibly melting, she had bit into her lip, and she felt like driving her cranium into the hardwood floor; Scent, spicy and musky. A man's cologne that she had smelled from somewhere; Hearing, a girl giggling. All very unhelpful.

Focus.

The giggling girl, possibly Anna. Cologne man, her boyfriend. Psychic or paranormal?

Louisa's eyelids fluttered shut on their own accord. A girl giggling. Had she been tickled? She was chastising someone. The man with the cologne? But what was real, or had been real? All of it, she supposed. Or maybe none of it. Either way, how the hell was she supposed to tell the difference? She could hardly call her father or her sister for a second opinion.

Focus.

Louisa nearly jumped out of her skin when she felt fingers ghost over her rib cage. Her eyes snapped open and she spun around, moving so quickly that her limbs tangled together, causing her to land on her bum. Her heart was beating a tattoo in her chest as she surveyed her dark and empty room. Tears began to gather in the corner of her eyes and panic began to bleed through her pain. Was that real or had she imagined it? She realised with horror, that she couldn't tell the difference.

She had to get out. Stumbling to her feet and using the walls for support, she managed to walk to the bathroom down the hall. After locking the door behind her, she walked over to the sink, hands gripping the edge so hard that her knuckles turned white. She barely recognised her reflection in the mirror: her skin had taken on a translucent, paper quality and was bleached of any colour; blonde hair falling out of its messy bun, pieces plastered to her sweaty face; her grey eyes wild and shifting as if looking for a threat; and blood dripping steadily out of her nostrils and covering the lower half of her face. She looked like something out of a horror movie. Bloody Louisa could be the title. Co-starring the Cullen family.

She turned on the tap and lowered her face into the water, washing off some of the blood, while she considered her next move. The easiest thing to do would be to call her dad, who she could hear walking back to his room. But how on earth could she even begin to explain what was going on in her head? Besides, he'd take one look at her and take her right to the ER, which would be a waste of everybody's time. Petya was out— he would have no clue what to do. The only option, it seemed, was the Cullen family. Louisa turned off the tap and straightened up, watching her reflection in the mirror while she dried her face. In a way, it made sense: they knew lots of things about the supernatural and would probably be able to tell her if her current problem was internal or not. They also had the added benefit of no sleep, which meant they would most definitely be awake if she were to contact them. But even if she did contact them, what would they be able to do for her?

Nothing, she realised.

Her situation sucked, but what else could they do besides listen to her fears? Perhaps Dr Cullen could offer her a painkiller. But if it was her house that was haunted, unless they had a Proton Pack lying around, there was little they could do to fix it. And if it was her head that was haunted, well, that was really just a problem of her own.

She opened the medicine cabinet, pulled out a pot of acetaminophen, and measured out an appropriate dose. Too exhausted to turn the tap back on, she popped the pills in her mouth and swallowed then dry, watching blood continue to trickle out of her nose in the reflection of the mirror. Louisa leaned over and grabbed a handful of toilet tissue and tried to stem the bleeding, realising with frustration that she would need to change her shirt in order to avoid awkward questions from her father. She opened the door, turned off the bathroom light, and walked towards the stairs, eyes avoiding her bedroom door which was still standing ajar.

Focus.

Women in Colonial America were often described as witches if they did not fit into social norms. Women who were different religions, mentally ill, or sexually deviant were often targets for local gossip. Would Anna have been considered a witch if she had lived back then?

Push away. Focus.

Louisa descended the staircase and walked through the dark kitchen and into the lounge. Her laptop had gone to the save screen and she ran her finger over the mouse pad. Her essay appeared back on the screen and Louisa settled down into the couch cushions and began to type again.

In 1976, Linnda R. Caporael hypothesised a biological explanation behind the strange symptoms of the girls: ergotism, caused by the ingestion of rye bread infected by the fungus Claviceps purpurea, a natural substance from which LSD is derived. This, however, is not widely accepted by historians and public health professionals, who claim that there would have been an infection seen on a grander scale. Modern historians focus more on the psychological causes of the event: human emotions.

Louisa wondered what Jasper's take would have been on the event, had he been alive at the time. She deliberately didn't think about what Jasper would think if he found out about her little episode tonight.

She rolled her neck and shoulders out.

Concentrate.

It was going to be a long night.

No Stone Left Unturned

She shouldn't have been surprised when she woke up with a migraine. Louisa printed out her essay and gave it to her sister with the instructions to turn it into her history teacher before informing her father that she wasn't going to school. He rolled his eyes at her explanation, believing that she was faking illness to catch up on sleep. Louisa may or may not have vomited in the kitchen sink to prove her point. Then she trudged back into the den and fell face first onto the sofa. She told her father she would sleep on the sofa because she was too dizzy to make it up the stairs, which was easier to explain than being too afraid to sleep in her room.

She also shouldn't have been surprised when she was awoken around lunchtime by a cold hand rubbing against her face. It took a moment for her eyes to focus on the person in front of her, and when they did, she scrambled back, pulling her blanket closer to her. Jasper was sitting on the edge of the sofa, hand still outstretched, and watching her with a pensive expression.

"How did you get in here?" Louisa asked after a beat of stunned silence.

"You weren't at school this morning," Jasper stated in lieu of an answer. "Are you ill?"

"It's just a migraine," Louisa insisted.

"And the nosebleed?" Jasper asked, an eyebrow arching. At her confused look, he hooked an index finger around the collar of her oversized shirt and gently pulled it down, revealing streaks of dried blood. "You missed a spot."

Louisa pursed her lips. "That happened last night."

"Did it happen to have anything to do with the Shadow Man your sister saw last night?"

She sighed in annoyance and flopped back down onto the cushions. Louisa was willing to bet the entire contents of her bank account that Edward had tattled on her. "I don't know," she admitted finally, staring up at the ceiling to avoid looking him in the eyes, even when his hand began to rub her leg.

"What do you mean that you don't know?" Jasper asked.

Louisa let out a heavy breath and tilted her head so she could look at him. His face was blank and his eyes were darker than she was used to. She was tempted to ask, but she knew he would see through her attempts at distraction. So instead, she proceeded to fill him in on the events from the night before.

He didn't seem impressed that she hadn't called him and told her as much.

"What would have been the point of it, Jasper?" Louisa asked, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. She appreciated his concern, she truly did, but she couldn't understand why it mattered that she hadn't called him. He would have been no more helpful hovering over her shoulder than he would have been sitting at his house.

Jasper's brow furrowed at this and he watched her in silence for a few minutes. Louisa fidgeted under the intensity of his gaze. He wasn't angry, per se, but he wasn't entirely pleased with her either. "The point," he said finally, his voice slow and his words heavy. "Is that you wouldn't have to be alone."

"I'm fine on my own, Jasper," she replied, lifting an arm to cover her face. "I've always been in the past. This time isn't any different."

Jasper let out a bizarre sound that was the cross between a sigh and growl, making the hairs on the back of her arms stand on end. Her eyes snapped open and she pulled her arm away from her face to watch the boy in front of her. His expression had darkened, though she couldn't tell if it was angry or hurt. Frustration hit her like she had run headlong into a brick wall and it took her a moment to realise that this wasn't a feeling of her own.

"Jasper," she said, sitting up, ignoring the light-headedness that overtook her. She leaned forward and reached out a hand to touch his face. "What is it?"

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, leaning into her palm. "Please excuse my language, ma'am, but that's fucking bullshit." Louisa's eyes widened in surprise and she tried to withdraw her hand, but Jasper was too quick for her, snatching it up and keeping it pressed against his cheek. "I'm right here, Louisa, and I want to be here. Please don't push me away." He rubbed his nose over the inside of her wrist, inhaling deeply as he chose his next words. "I understand that you are human and you don't feel the mating bond as acutely as I do, but please don't say things like that. To a vampire, it sounds close to a rejection."

Guilt flooded through her veins, making it almost impossible to breathe. "I'm not trying to," she managed to stutter out. She knew that her intentions hadn't been to upset him, but seeing him react to her words in such a way caused an inexplicable feeling of distress. It came from somewhere deep within her, sort of behind her sternum yet at the same time nowhere close. The knowledge stirred up feelings that were almost… old? No, not old. Primal. Louisa scrambled to her knees, a feat made difficult by the soft cushions underneath her. She placed her free hand on his bicep and tried to pull herself closer to him until she was on her knees. Before she knew it, she straddling his hips, their faces centimetres apart. It was a reflex, like spitting out bitter food or running from a venomous snake. She didn't make the conscious decision to act— she just did. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you."

It was a peculiar experience: She could hear the words coming out of her mouth, but it was like she had no control over them. Her brain was whirling at a million meters a second, yet the only thoughts that crossed it were that she had hurt him and that she needed to reassure him, to comfort him. It felt like she was merely a passenger, rather than the driver, as she felt her body take control. She could vaguely recognise that she didn't like the feeling, but her brain pushed the thought away before she had the chance to dwell on it. She leaned her head forward so that her forehead was resting on his temple, and when he turned his head towards her, their noses bumped against each other. Jasper's lips pursed in thought before slipping his hand into her hair and gently massaging her scalp.

Was this the mating bond? If this was what she felt as a human, how horrible must it be for Jasper? At least he had the benefit of not having a pulse— Louisa felt that her heart was about to explode in her chest. The compulsion to comfort him was terrifying and she could honestly say that she didn't like the feeling. To lose control of herself so completely, even if it was for a relatively benign reason, made her stomach clench with anxiety.

Jasper slid his free hand around her waist, fingers splayed out across her spine and rubbed her hip with his thumb. They sat on the couch for a few minutes, her heavy breaths the only sound to fill the silence, as she considered how to voice her thoughts. She wanted to tell him that if her actions had been influenced by their bond, she thought the bond straight up sucked, though she didn't think it would be received well. But facetiousness aside, what she truly felt, and what he most likely knew without her having to say so, was that she was scared.

Now, Louisa didn't wake up each morning thinking of how to hurt someone's feelings, of course, but she rarely went out of her way to make someone happy, especially someone not in her family and definitely not someone who she had met four months ago. And true, Jasper was her friend and her boyfriend, which placed him pretty high on the list for people she cared about, but her reaction was something she had never experienced. When she fought with Dottie or Laurie or her parents, she had never felt the overwhelming urge to comfort them when they got upset. Yet, here she was, straddling Jasper Whitlock's hips, practically begging for forgiveness, and absolutely petrified that she might hurt him.

"This is so confusing for me," she admitted at last because it was true and like a felt safe confession.

When Jasper next spoke, his breath fanned across her face, cool and apple pie scented. It caused her heart to contract painfully and she had the overwhelming urge to do something she couldn't quite identify but felt she desperately wanted. "I imagine our powers don't help any," he said, still massaging her scalp and hip. "You can read strong emotions left behind and I can project emotions."

"An emotional rollercoaster," Louisa quipped.

"Coming from the human-sized tornado that leaves a trail of confusion and chaos in her wake," he replied dryly. "I think I'm just along for the ride."

"Careful," Louisa replied, sitting back and raising an eyebrow, giving him a look of reproach. "There's already a Dorothy living in this house. We don't need another."

"Then who am I?" he asked, his head tilting and the corner of his lips quivering in amusement.

"The Wicked Witch of the West," Louisa declared without a moment of hesitation.

"So you want me to melt in the end?" Jasper asked.

"You know, I really need to introduce you to the musical Wicked," Louisa said.

He gave her a smile, the one that was toothy and boyish and was quickly becoming one of her favourite sights (not that she would tell anyone that), and gave her hip a light squeeze. He must have sent her some sort of emotion because she found herself sagging down into his lap. She wondered idly if her bones turned into jelly, but found that she was to content to care, and she laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder. Gooseflesh erupted across her arms as Jasper's fingers lazily ghosted over them. "As you wish," he said, his accent strong but his voice soft.

Louisa chuckled at his words. "You've seen The Princess Bride?"

She couldn't see his face but she could feel his confusion poking at her. "No, Rosalie is the one that prefers to watch chick-flicks."

She threw back her head and laughed. "Well, you'll like this kissing movie," she said while she hopped off his lap. She stumbled a bit, her vision going black for a few seconds, and a wave of nausea reminded her just why she had stayed home from school that day.

Jasper caught her before her knees hit the floor and helped her lie back on the couch. She instructed him to where the movies were kept, and when he sat back down, she hesitantly rested her head on his lap. He didn't comment, shifting instead to cover her with a blanket before his fingers started to run through her hair. By the time Buttercup arrived at the Fire Swamp, Louisa was fast asleep.

"I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real." ―Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

A/N: This chapter was particularly fiddly. I just couldn't get the tone... write. Puns aside, I had to rewrite the chapter almost completely, and doing so took a lot longer than usual. I'm not very good at writing romance, and one of the whole points of this story is to help me develop my skill set in this genre. Essentially, my whole rationale behind this chapter was to show that Louisa isn't totally on board with the whole mating bond thing. One of the weirdest things about fanfiction is that a lot of authors have their characters just... accept the mating bond, which never really made sense to me. But I'm asexual, so what do I know, lol. Anywho, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Leave a review and let me know what you thought! Lots of love, CheckAlexa