Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga
Shadows of the Past
Nine. That's how many cameras the police found around the house, one of which was hidden in the smoke alarm, of all places. Louisa and Rosalie didn't stay very long after that. Grabbing the overnight bag, she at least had the foresight to pack before Rosalie had picked her up that morning, she kissed her father goodbye before trotting off after her friend. The drive to the Cullen house was much quieter than the drive to the Collins house three hours before, neither of the girls knowing what to say.
The temperature had plummeted, and the morning's rain had turned to snow, falling in large, fluffy flakes. Louisa could see the lights from the Cullen house glowing like a beacon as Rosalie wound up the drive. A large rectangle of light spilt onto the lawn originating from the opened front door. Esme was standing in the open doorway, her arms crossed in front of her body as if she were cold. The moment Rosalie killed the engine of her car, Louisa found herself pulled out of the front seat and into a tight hug. Louisa let herself be comforted for a moment, imagining she was receiving a warm embrace from her mother rather than a hard one from Rosalie's.
Esme pulled back, stroking Louisa's hair, her yellow eyes alight with concern. "I got a hold of Carlisle. They'll be back early in the morning," she said, rubbing a cold thumb across Louisa's cheekbone. "You aren't hurt, are you?"
Louisa shook her head and resisted the urge to lean into Esme's motherly touch. Extracting herself from the hug, Louisa reached into the car and pulled out her overnight bag, slinging it across her shoulder before following the two women into the house. The inside of the Cullen home was as warm and welcoming as ever, and Louisa made quick work of shucking off her shoes and winter coat.
"Where is Alice?" Rosalie asked while they stepped into the lounge.
"In her room," Esme explained in a quiet voice. "She's upset."
Louisa glanced towards the staircase that led to the upper floors of Casa de Cullen, presumably where their bedrooms were located. She half expected to see Alice sliding down the bannister to greet them, and her absence left the room uncomfortably quiet. Esme didn't linger for very long, staying only to inform Louisa that she would be staying in Jasper's room for the night before disappearing into the kitchen where what smelled like chocolate chip cookies were baking.
Despite the many long afternoons that she had spent at the Cullen's, Louisa had never been inside of Jasper's room and wasn't sure what to expect. She trotted behind Rosalie up the stairs to the second floor of the house and down a long hallway panelled with honey-coloured wood. Rose stopped at the last door on the right and opened it, waving Louisa in behind her.
It was a small room, not much larger than her own, though the windows that looked out on the front lawn made it appear bigger than it was. It was sparsely decorated: a double bed taking up most of the room, with a matching wardrobe and desk on opposite sides. A large steamer trunk sat at the foot of the bed, which was barely visible under the numerous blankets that covered it. Textbooks had been lined up by size on the desk, where his laptop was sitting, closed. The room was bordering on Spartan, giving the impression of a soldier rather than a nineteen-year-old boy. In fact, the only personal touches were three framed photographs standing on the bedside table. The rest of the room was reserved and minimalistic, rather like the boy who occupied it. The only thing that actually surprised Louisa was the lack of books in it.
Louisa set her overnight bag on the bed and ran her fingers across the carved headboard. "He made this?" she asked. It was simple, much like the rest of the room, made of light brown wood and sanded down so it was glass-smooth.
Rosalie paused to give her an odd look before nodding slowly. "Yeah, Jasper made a lot of the furniture in the house. Esme does the upholstery. How did you know?" Her friend walked over to the small door next to the wardrobe, opening it up to reveal a massive bathroom which appeared to be shared with Alice.
Louisa opened her mouth to tell her that it felt like Jasper but snapped it shut quickly. That sounded dumb. She settled for what she hoped was a nonchalant shrug and turned away to inspect the pictures on the table.
One was a black and white photo of Jasper and Alice, taken sometime in the fifties, judging their clothes. They were dancing in it, and whilst Jasper wasn't smiling in it, he clearly looked amused. The second was even older and depicted what could only be a young Jasper and his family. He was probably eight or so in the picture and standing next to his mother, who wore a black dress with a massive skirt. On her lap was a sleeping toddler. His father stood behind them, a hand resting on Jasper's shoulder, his mouth obscured by a large moustache. The final was of her and Jasper in their Halloween costumes at homecoming, her arms looped around his waist and a massive grin on her face. It was like the photo Louisa had at home except in his copy, Jasper's gaze was trained quite obviously on her. His expression was one of surprise and wonder, like he couldn't believe that she was willingly standing so close to him.
She tore her gaze from the small collection of pictures and turned towards Rosalie, only to find herself alone. Rolling her eyes at her friend's abandonment, she crossed the room and started off down the hall. She didn't make it too far before she stopped, her eyes sliding to the door that was next to Jasper's. Louisa hesitated for a moment outside of Alice's bedroom, trying to decide if she should knock or not. Whilst her experiences with distressed siblings were limited to Dottie's fits of melodrama and Laurie's occasional meltdowns, she did consider herself to be somewhat adept at dealing with upset teens, human or not. The question being, of course, was whether Alice wanted comfort. The big sister part of Louisa won out, and she inched forward, lifting her hand to knock on the door.
"Alice?" Louisa said, tapping on the door. She could hear a muffled order to 'go away' from the other side. "Can I come in?" she asked. When there was no response, Louisa reached out and jiggled the doorknob. Finding it unlocked, she nudged open the door and poked her head inside. "Alice?"
The girl in question was lying face down on a violet-tufted fainting couch, her head buried in an accent pillow. Louisa pushed open the door a little more and stepped inside the room, casting a curious glance at the half-completed garments pinned to dress forms and inching towards the obviously distraught vampire. She pushed a pile of fabric to the side so that she could kneel down and placed a hand on the vampire's back. A second later, she had an Alice-shaped necklace hanging off her, the girl's face pressed into the crook of Louisa's neck. Slightly stunned, it took a moment for Louisa to realise that Alice was sobbing.
"It's okay, Alice," Louisa said, raising her arms up and wrapping them around her, rising so she could sit next to Alice on the couch.
Alice shook her head, her short hair tickling Louisa's nose, before pulling back to look at the blonde, her expression a mixture of terror and sorrow. "No, it isn't. I didn't see anything," she said, her voice heartbroken. "You could have been killed, and I wouldn't have seen until it was too late."
"I'm alright, Alice," she repeated. "Nothing happened to me."
"I almost lost you again," Alice replied. "Jasper would be devastated. You don't know him like I do, Louisa. If you died, he wouldn't make it. I can't lose him!"
As dreadful as that did sound, Louisa found herself latching onto one word in particular. "Again?"
Alice went still before becoming fascinated by the buttons on her shirt.
"I've been waiting for you," she began, her voice so quiet that Louisa found herself leaning in to hear better. "For a while."
Unsure of what to do, she lifted a hand and carded it through Alice's short hair like she used to do to Laurie when he was upset. Alice jumped at the sudden contact but didn't pull away. "Define a while."
Alice pulled back even further and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her body, and began to rock back and forth. She was quiet for so long that Louisa was surprised when she finally whispered, "Since 1951."
Louisa's brow furrowed in confusion, and her hand dropped down to grasp Alice's arm. "That's fifty years before I was born," she noted. How powerful were Alice's psychic abilities anyway? And if she could see Louisa before she was even born, then why couldn't she have seen what happened at her house? Louisa wracked her brain, trying to remember how Alice's power worked, only to come up empty-handed. One of the many things she didn't know about Alice, she realised.
Alice reached a hand up and began to tug at her hair in agitation. "The future isn't exactly concrete," she said, still refusing to make eye contact with Louisa. "There are some things that are inevitable, like you and Jazz, but a lot of the smaller details can change."
"Like what?" Louisa asked, leaning forward to still Alice's fingers. "Jasper met me in Tacoma instead of Forks?"
"No," Alice said, drawing out the word. "You have to understand, Jasper was the first thing that I saw when I woke up to this life in 1933. I didn't know my name, where I was, or what I was, but I had a vision of him, and I knew I had to find him. I had a vision of the Cullens not too long after that.
"It was April 1948. I was sitting in a diner in Philadelphia, and it was raining something awful. He walked in to get out of the weather and ordered a cup of coffee at the counter. His hair was plastered to his face, and his eyes were dark— he hadn't fed in a while. I invited him over to my table and scolded him for making me wait. He was so confused," she said with a laugh. "But he bowed his head and apologised anyway. We stayed there for hours, and I explained to him that he would come with me and we didn't have to feed off humans. It took a while, but I was able to convince him to come with me, and together, we went searching for the Cullens. We tracked them down in Syracuse, New York in 1950. But we weren't complete. I knew that. That's when I saw you."
Alice's eyelids fluttered closed, her voice growing more distant with each word she spoke. "I knew that you would be born in March of 2001. Your parents named you after their favourite authors: Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen. You were an easy baby who became a rambunctious toddler. When you spoke your first words, you were eleven months old, and your sister had just been born. You told her to 'no cry'. Your parents were so proud of you because all the books they read on parenting told them that you wouldn't be able to speak simple sentences for at least another year." Her eyes snapped open, and her gaze landed on Louisa, watching her with curiosity and no small amount of amusement. "Your maternal grandmother, on the other hand, was convinced you were possessed by the devil."
Louisa's lips twitched in an odd mixture of humour and annoyance. "My parents had me before they were married," Louisa explained. "Gran has always hated me." Louisa was positive that her father was unaware that she knew this tidbit of information, but you didn't have to be a psychometric sleuth to know how to count.
"I saw you fall," Alice whispered. "Your family was having a picnic on Puget Sound. Your brother was getting fussy, so you all stopped at the top of an outlook." Alice stared at her hands in silence for a long time, contemplating her next words. "You and Dottie had walked too close to the edge of the cliff, and part of it gave way. You managed to push her out of the way right before it happened."
Louisa could almost see herself, seven years old, standing on the cliff with her sister, hearing the cry of a bald eagle, the scent of decaying bull kelp on the warm summer air. She felt the ground give a tiny shudder when she stepped closer to the edge, buckling under her added weight. Laurie, only three, was having a meltdown of epic proportions, requiring the attention of both her mother and father. Dottie stumbled towards her, her shoes crunching over twigs as she darted about, picking wildflowers. The ground beneath her feet shuddered again, a little stronger this time, pebbles clattering as they fell far below. She knew something was wrong, like a deer that heard rustling in the forest. She lurched forward and shoved her sister with all her strength a split second before the earth dropped out from beneath her. She was falling, dust filling her nose, a rock clipping her shoulder. She flipped once, twice, spinning faster and faster, the sound of her sister's screams inaudible over the roaring of the wind in her ears. Something black and white crashing into her was the last thing she could remember before it all went dark.
Louisa wasn't sure if the memories of the event were hers or if she had plucked them out of Alice's head, but in the end, perhaps it didn't matter. They sat in silence for a long time as the pieces of Louisa's past, the parts that never had made sense to her, finally fell into place. The memories that had always lurked out of reach solidified, no longer shadowy and vague, but a solid and real moment.
"You caught me," Louisa breathed, too stunned to move.
"Barely," Alice replied. "I was moving too fast, I think. Your head hit my shoulder when I caught you, and it knocked you out. With our combined momentum, we landed wrong, and your wrist broke when we hit the ground." More silence followed at this proclamation. Louisa realised that she had begun to pick at her cuticles at some point and forced herself to stop before she made them bleed.
"I don't just see the future. The future is constantly changing, shifting with every decision someone makes." Alice said at last. "If it was only the future, I wouldn't have seen your parents stop at the cliff in time to catch you when you fell. You fell that day because you had to. If not that day, then another. Just like happened in Seattle."
"You saw Seattle?" Louisa asked in astonishment. And if Alice had seen what had happened, why hadn't she stopped it?
"Who do you think called the police? I couldn't stop you from going, Louisa. It had to happen. If you hadn't gone into that warehouse, Lambe would have sought you out. It would have been a lot worse," she said, responding to Louisa's unasked question. "Fate is beyond anyone's control."
"I don't know if I believe in Fate," Louisa said.
It was like a switch had been flipped: Alice's face split into a grin, and she uncurled her body, turning to face Louisa properly. "Neither does Jasper. He believes in the supreme free will of man. He says that it is experimentally verifiable that our behaviour affects the environment and what happens to us and that no rational person believes in fatalism," she explained with a giggle. "He's silly like that."
Louisa was stunned into silence at the abrupt change in topic, but Alice didn't seem to mind. She crawled into the blonde's lap and threaded her arms around her neck. She rested her head on Louisa's collarbone, content to sit and listen to the human's beating heart. "You can't tell him, okay?" Alice said.
"Jasper?"
Alice nodded. "He'd never let you out of his sight, and you are far too independent for that. You'd try to kill him before the end of the first week. Not that you'd be all that successful, but it's the principle of the matter."
The affection that Alice held for Jasper was laced through her words, and it brought a smile to Louisa's face. "You love him," Louisa stated.
Alice hummed in agreement, a little grin flitting across her lips. "He's my Rosalie," she explained. "He's been my constant companion for over fifty years now, and I have never seen him as happy as he is now."
Whilst Jasper was far from the cheeriest of vampires, Louisa couldn't imagine him ever being unhappy. She assumed he must have been at some point (if the stories about his past were any indication), but she had trouble comprehending just how miserable he might have been. To her, Jasper was always the soft-spoken and sassy boy who preferred to use his gift of pathokinesis to communicate before his voice. It brought a sharp pain in her chest to think about how he might have suffered, and she could not comfort him, even if it had happened years before her birth.
Alice took advantage of Louisa's distractedness and slid off the blonde's lap, flitting over to a bookcase where she lifted an ornate wooden box off one of the shelves. She wandered back to sit next to Louisa, flipping the box open and placing it on the couch between them. Inside, Louisa could see dozens of photographs, bundles of faded letters, yellowing newspaper clippings, and, oddly enough, pressed flowers. Alice dug around the contents of her collection for a minute before extracting a picture of a grim-faced Jasper and handing it to her. He wasn't looking at the camera, too focused on the piece of wood in his hand that he was whittling with a pocket knife. He was sitting on a log in a forest somewhere, bare-chested save for a pair of stays that hugged his broad shoulders.
"He didn't smile much in those days," she explained. "Not like he does now. You bring him peace." In the picture, he wasn't as peaceful as his posture appeared. Tension coiled in his muscles like a rattlesnake ready to strike, his body ready to flee at a moment's notice. They were deep within the woods where he didn't have to worry about a human stumbling across him, which was just as well, considering how the sun periodically broke through the leaves, light diffracting off the surface of his heavily scarred skin. He knew that she was there, but he didn't turn around or look up as she approached. He must have taken their conversation on trusting each other to heart. That was progress. Two months ago, he wouldn't have dared turn his back on her.
She raised the camera up to her face and gently pressed the button. Jasper jumped at the soft click and spun around with a hiss. She peeked over the edge of the camera and gave him a chagrined smile. He was still so skittish. They would need to work on that. Their new family would be uneasy around him if he jumped at random sounds— it wouldn't do to have them think him unstable. He was rough around the edges, that's all.
"Louisa?"
She looked up, blinking rapidly. The room felt oppressively quiet in the absence of the hum of cicadas.
A woman with long brown hair was kneeling in front of her, a crease forming between her delicate eyebrows. Esme. "Are you alright, Louisa?"
Alice was standing a few feet away, rocking back and forth on her heels, tugging at her hair again. Rosalie hovered in the doorway, her face impassive. Louisa turned her gaze back to Esme, who had one hand placed on her cheek, the other gently removing the photograph from her hands. Louisa loosened her grip, her face screwing up in confusion. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"You've been unresponsive for a few minutes, sweetheart," Esme explained. "Do you feel ill?"
Louisa shook her head, and the room seemed to spin as she did so, pain beginning to radiate from somewhere behind her left ear. She reached up and swiped at her nose, her hand clean of blood when she pulled it away. Small victories, she supposed. "I'm fine."
Esme gave her a look that said that she didn't believe her. Must be a mum thing. "Why don't you come downstairs? I made dinner for you." She grabbed Louisa by the elbows and helped her stand, something Louisa appreciated when her knees almost gave out.
"Wait," Louisa said, her voice sounding faint even to her own ears. "I think… wasn't I doing something before?" Alice looked like she might cry, and had it not been for the vice grip Esme had on her elbow, Louisa would have jumped forward to comfort her. But why did she need comforting? Her head swivelled between the three vampires in the room. "What happened?" And when did they get there?
"What do you remember?" Rosalie asked, her eyes narrowed like a cat watching an insect.
Louisa opened her mouth to respond that she had been in the woods but hesitated. No, that wasn't right. How could she have moved there and back? Her heart began to pound in her chest, the room spinning in earnest. She really wished that Esme would release her so that she could at least sit down. "We were taking pictures." She knew immediately this was the wrong thing to say. "Talking about pictures. We were in the forest talking about pictures." No, that didn't make sense! She tried to stutter out a coherent sentence, but her mouth might as well have been filled with rocks.
Panic blossomed in her chest, and she found herself choking for air. Breathe, she tried to remind herself. Slow down and breathe! Tears pricked at the corner of her eyes, and she screwed them shut. She wouldn't allow herself to cry, or at least not to be seen crying. She tried to focus on Esme's hands that were gripping her own, how, in her panic, the vampire's skin didn't feel all that cold. Though she was shivering violently enough for her teeth to chatter, and gooseflesh covered her skin, she felt like she was burning up on the inside. Breathe!
Something large and black was shoved in her face, and it took a moment to realise that it was a hoodie. Hands shaking, Louisa accepted it and slipped it over her head, the scent of cinnamon and apples filling her nose. Jasper. He would know what to do. The intense desire to rest her head on his chest, to feel his arms wrap securely around her, overwhelmed her, and for a moment, she thought she might throw up. She took another deep breath, not even trying to hide that she was sniffing Jasper's hoodie like a bloodhound. Louisa tried to focus on how Esme stroked her hair though she couldn't help but think that the fingers were too thin, too dainty, and not his.
Louisa pulled away from Esme with a shuddering breath, refusing to meet anyone's eyes. Her skin felt too tight, and it twitched like an electric current had been passed through. "I was having a conversation with Alice," Louisa said in a detached sort of voice. "She was showing me a picture of Jasper."
Jasper, whose hands she would much rather have stroking her hair instead of Esme's. Jasper, whose jumper she wore, smelled like him but wasn't as good as the real thing. She wanted to feel his presence wash over her, his emotions bumping up against her own, and for him to ease the knot in her chest. Never in her life had Louisa wanted to see, to feel, to breathe someone who wasn't there— not even her own mother. There was an aching sort of emptiness in her that she knew, almost instinctively, that could only be filled by one person. Just thinking about the distance between them made Louisa's heart feel heavy. Jesus, what was wrong with her?
Esme gave her a sympathetic smile as if she knew exactly what Louisa was going through. And she probably did. The woman helped her stand up once more, careful not to touch any of Louisa's exposed skin and led her out of Alice's room. She found herself in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar, a plate of steamed vegetables and rice in front of her and only a vague recollection of how she actually got there. Though her stomach was in knots, Louisa still managed to choke down the dinner Esme had been kind enough to prepare. It was almost a relief when Rosalie pulled her away towards the lounge. She let her friend pick a film on Netflix, paying enough attention to the plot to gain the general idea of it. It was a rom-com, and while some part of her recognised that she should make an effort to laugh at the jokes, she couldn't muster the energy to. She felt weary, right down to her bones, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up in Jasper's arms and fall asleep. Perhaps this was what Rosalie had meant when she said that she would want him once the shock wore off.
It was odd, she thought. Louisa had had similar episodes, and she had never craved Jasper's comfort so acutely before. She worried the cuff of his hoodie, mentally recounting the hours that they had spent together and trying to pinpoint when their relationship had changed. They hadn't even kissed yet, aside from the occasional peck on the cheek or lips to the forehead, which seemed a bit silly, all things considered. He did share her bed, after all. Louisa made a mental note to rectify that as soon as possible.
She attempted to stifle a snort at that thought. Kissing your boyfriend wasn't something you pencilled into your day planner. He might even think she was a lunatic if she announced her plans to kiss him. It was something that just sort of… happened. Or at least, that's the impression Louisa got from reading books, watching movies, or listening to her classmates. She herself had never been in a relationship before Jasper, and kissing Michael Lee in drama camp's production of Much Ado About Nothing hardly counted as a real kiss. Jasper was almost two-hundred-years-old, he would have had a lot more experience than her— would he think she was a naïve little schoolgirl?
She dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred to her. This was Jasper; he wouldn't care that she was clueless when it came to boys. He probably already guessed as much. Still, a part of Louisa wished that there was someone she could ask about these sorts of things. Her dad was a possibility, of course, but there was something attractive about being able to talk to a woman about these sorts of things. She excluded Rosalie right away, being Jasper's sister, and while Esme might be an option, she was Jasper's mum. And not her mum. That was the heart of the matter.
What she really wanted was to talk to her mum.
No. She wasn't here to wallow in self-pity. She was here to have an enjoyable evening with her best friend. She tucked her thumbs inside of her closed fists so she couldn't pick at her cuticles and focused on the film she was watching, laughing at the appropriate parts, crying when applicable, and ignoring the side looks that Rose kept shooting her every few minutes. When that film ended, they selected another— a thriller that looked stupid— and by the end of it, the empty hole in her chest didn't feel like a crater, and she could almost breathe.
Esme sent Louisa to bed at what she considered to be a sensible time for humans, and perhaps under different circumstances, she might have been correct. But as it were, two hours after her imposed bedtime, Louisa was staring up at the ceiling of her boyfriend's bedroom, her mind reeling from the events of the day. At least downstairs with Rosalie, Louisa had the benefit of a distraction. Instead, she was left to her own thoughts, obsessively recounting what had occurred at her house, her conversation with Alice, her little foray into Alice's past and her subsequent meltdown. She tried to organise her mental library, but the moment she breached the cardboard box labelled 'Cullen', a new wave of panic filled her, and she backed away and resolved to deal with it another time.
The distraction that she wanted finally came around three in the morning, in the form of Jasper, ripping the door off of the hinges. His blond curls were windswept and filled with twigs. The right sleeve of his jumper was torn and hanging off, exposing a pale and scared forearm, muscles twitching. He didn't seem to notice the doorknob still clutched in his hands when he crossed the room and perched on the edge of the bed. Even in the darkness, she could see Jasper's iris darken to black.
Louisa sat up to give him more room. "You're back early," she noted, for lack of a better thing to say. "How was your hunt?"
Jasper shot her an unamused look. He reached to take her face in his hands, dropping a dented and gnarled piece of metal in her lap in the process, like a cat presenting its owner with a dead bird. Louisa repressed the urge to thank him for the doorknob, figuring her facetiousness wouldn't be appreciated at the moment.
"I'm alright, Jasper," she said instead. "Rose wouldn't let me get hurt." At least in this circumstance. Louisa could easily imagine Rosalie tripping her down a flight of stairs in retaliation for something or another.
Jasper still didn't respond. He leaned forward, rubbing his nose against her jaw for a moment before burying his face in her neck. Louisa wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, letting out a sigh of relief that she didn't know she had been holding. She lifted a hand to his head and massaged his scalp, working out the foreign objects stuck in his hair. In an instant, all the tension she had been carrying in her body melted away, and she took a moment to rest in the feeling. It wasn't like she could forget about the day's troubles, but for a few seconds, it was like they were somewhere far away, and they couldn't touch them.
The spell was broken when her skin began to tingle, and a restless feeling settled over her like she needed to get up and run. A second later, that's what he was doing. Jasper scooped her up, blankets and all, and did his not-quite-teleportation thing, the air whistling in her ears. She squeezed her eyes shut. Then, just as soon as it started, he stopped moving. Louisa dared to open her eyes, and she realised that he was standing by the front door of the house. Alice was blocking the front door (to the best of her abilities, at least), an annoyed expression on her face.
"Put her down, Jazz," she commanded.
A vibration rumbled through Jasper's chest, and it took Louisa a second to realise that he was growling. Not growling like a dog, though. A deeper sound, more feral, like a mountain lion or a bear. Like a vampire.
Alice's lips pulled back, baring her teeth, and growled in return.
"Were you raised in a barn?" Esme, ever the peacekeeper, snapped, materialising between her two children. "Jasper, if you aren't going to let Louisa sleep, then at least set her down."
Jasper ignored this, his eyes flicking around, looking for an escape route.
"You can't take her," Alice said, her voice stern as if she were berating a child. "You know you can't." She must have seen Jasper's reply because she rolled her eyes. "Well, we do."
Unable to tolerate their once-sided conversation any longer, Louisa cleared her throat. "Into the microphone for the jury, please?"
Her comment got a strained chuckle from Rose, but Louisa was otherwise ignored. She could feel Jasper's body shifting with minuscule movements, ready to run the second the opportunity presented itself. He was frustrated with Alice and her refusal to move. Didn't she know that Louisa wasn't safe? That something was threatening his mate? Another growl ripped through his chest.
"She's safe right now, Jasper," Alice said firmly. "If you take her, she won't be."
There was a pause in his growling, and his eyes narrowed in confusion. How could she not be safe if he was protecting her?
"If you run away, the FBI will get involved. They'll think that whoever broke into her house kidnapped her, and if you are missing, they'll think you were somehow involved. They'll start asking questions about us, poking around in our lives. The Volturi will get involved."
Louisa didn't understand why everyone froze at Alice's announcement, but her announcement clearly held some significance to the others. She filed away their odd reactions for further analysis (preferably at a time when her boyfriend of two months wasn't planning on committing a felony) and focused her gaze on her boyfriend's face, which was set in frustration. In terror. In helplessness. She reached up and stroked the furrow between his brows. He glanced down at her.
"You'll get wrinkles," she explained, knowing full well that it was impossible for him to do so. "We can't have you showing your age." His face didn't soften, but his eyes lightened, if only slightly. "Seriously, what would my father think if he knew I was dating someone who was old enough to be my great-great-great grandfather?"
Her quip elicited an eye roll from him, but she considered it a victory when his arms loosened around her. She wiggled around and managed to extract a leg from her cocoon of blankets. "Will you please let go of me? This is quite disconcerting."
Jasper's lips pursed in annoyance, but he complied nonetheless, gently placing her on the nearby couch, and sat next to her, his closed fists resting on his knees. She reached out and tried to massage some of the tension out of his body, only for him to snatch up her hand and tug her closer so that she was cradled in his arms once more. She tuned Rosalie and Alice out, content to relax whilst they recounted the events of the day to Jasper, who remained silent throughout the exchange.
"How is it," Jasper said at long last, "that I leave you for two days, and you somehow manage to find trouble?"
"What can I say?" she replied, her voice growing faint. Her eyelids were slowly becoming heavier, far too heavy for her to keep them open. She buried her nose in Jasper's shoulder and took a slow and steady breath, the coolness of his body soothing her pounding head. "I have a talent."
If Jasper said anything in response, she must have missed it. The last thing she was aware of was his cold lips pressing into her temple before she finally drifted off to sleep.
"For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible." –Stuart Chase
A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who has followed/favourited/reviewed my story. I'm still in shock that people actually want to read what I write. My English teachers always told me I was too morbid and hated it whenever I submitted creative writing assignments. Side note: I had to move Alice's birth year back by about ten years. Stephenie Meyers claims that Alice received ECT as a human for her visions, and in canon, Alice was changed into a vampire in 1920. ECT, however, wasn't invented until 1927.