The tension in the air seemed to resonate off of every surface, magnifying even the most minute sounds ten-fold.  The clock on Billy’s living room wall had become my particular bane of the moment.  Its incessant ticking burned into my head and mocked my garbled sense of time second by grating second.  Each tick seemed like one eternity after another to me.  I gave it my most scathing glare before turning back to Billy, who was silhouetted against the front window, staring absently into the night.  The darkness obscured his face, but I could imagine the concern that would already be well hidden behind the cold mask of authority he wore in times like these—a mask he’d had to wear too many times since I’d moved to Forks. 

An echo of something shattering in the kitchen blotted out one of the clock’s rhythmic ticks, followed by a low curse that blocked out the tock as well.

“Sorry Billy,” Quil called from the direction of the clamor.  Billy snorted, but his attention remained fixed on the tree line shrouded in mist just past the porch.  There was none of his normal soothing humor in his reaction.  There had, in fact, been no humor at all from any of the wolves since I’d arrived on the reservation less than twenty minutes before—only a series of interrogatory stares and crisp, almost businesslike motions, as if every member of the pack were waiting for the call to arms.  Now that I thought about it, that was probably exactly what they were doing—preparing themselves for battle…again.  And I was left to plant myself on Billy’s couch in front of a television that no one was watching, count the slow, loud seconds, and pretend that I didn’t know exactly how wasted all of their efforts were.   

“You want something to eat, Bella?” Quil called from the kitchen as the thin red second hand passed the six and began its trek upward toward the end of another minute.

“No thanks.” My reply was mechanical. Who could be hungry at one forty-eight in the morning? 

“Bring me one of whatever you’re making!”  Leah.

She was curled into one of the uncomfortable tan loveseats in the corner of the room, occasionally fixing me with the kind of glare that seemed like it should burn away the flesh from my face.  It was one of those napalm glances that she graced me with now as she waited for Quil’s culinary experiment.  I stared back at her vacantly and listened to another minute pass by, wondering if Edward had found Alice by now.  Wondering if either of them had found their prodigal cousin.  I’d received no official news since I’d left Edward at the border.

Quil ambled out of the kitchen carrying two sandwiches, each roughly the size of a dinner plate.  He passed one to Leah and I turned away in disgust, trying to pretend that it was nothing more than the late hour that had stolen my appetite.   That was easier said than done.  The truth of the matter was that hunger had ceased to be an issue for me exactly fifty six minutes ago.  That was when Edward had sent his fist flying through his brand new car stereo.  That was when his eternally exasperating wall of silence had finally crumbled, and that was where my mind wandered now—for the fourth time in the last twenty-two minutes—as I waited for the call that would confirm Irina’s decision and the chilling vision that Edward had not wanted me to know.

*                      *                     *

All of the anger and frustration that had been steadily building inside me since our hurried journey from the meeting in the woods to my bedroom and back into Edward’s car had vanished as I stared, paralyzed, at the small black hole that had only moments ago been an unobtrusive digital reminder that the car stereo was in USB mode.  Edward’s wide, dark eyes reflected his own utter surprise as they shifted unbelievingly from the hole to his own undamaged hand, the shock of his actions painted into his very stillness.  He drew a breath to speak—no doubt to apologize—but no words seemed to come to him.  The night around us was tinged an alternating blue-green and black as the clock just above the jagged hole blinked an almost angry 12:00 back at us both.  His mouth fell closed again and he picked up his cell phone, dialing Alice’s number almost absentmindedly. 

“Edward,” I began with much more trepidation than I had originally intended as 12:00 turned to 12:01 on the demolished dashboard. “What’s going on?”   

His response was a low curse as he’d pressed the cancel button on his cell phone.  It had been the fourth time since we’d left my house that he’d tried to call his sister.  There had been three missed calls from her when he’d retrieved the phone from my jacket pocket, but when he’d tried to return those calls all he got was the autonomous tones of the voicemail operator telling him to leave a message.  He’d left none.  None of the Cullens ever left messages. They were too well versed in the art of leaving no trace.

“What did Alice see?” 

Edward shook his head in frustration.  “I don’t know.”    

“Yes you do.”

“No, I don’t, Bella!”  he snapped.  His hand curled too tightly around the steering wheel and his eyes blazed a sudden, dangerous black, directed at me.  I shrunk back in my seat, somehow fascinated and terrified at the same time, unable to look away from him.  A simple unanswered cell phone had caused him to destroy his own car stereo.  I was sure that I didn’t want to push his limits any further tonight. 

Regret appeared in his eyes then, and his hand relaxed, moving to a much less threatening position on my lower thigh.  His next words were calmer, but still laced with deep frustration.  “Alice had already left by the time I returned to the house.  I couldn’t speak with her.  I couldn’t confirm her premonition.”

“But you said she was there.  You said she saw my future disappear.”

“Esme told me that Alice’s visions of you had vanished just before she and Jasper joined the search,” he explained.  “When I saw Alice’s face in Esme’s memory…” 

He trailed off and the cell phone appeared in his hand again.  Before I was able fire off another question from my endless repertoire, he was dialing Jasper’s number.  Frustrated beyond the limits of my common sense, I shot my arm out, reaching for the phone in a vain attempt to pull it from his grasp.  He moved easily out of my reach and watched with what was almost amused incredulity as I settled back, unsatisfied and scowling at him from the passenger seat.

“I’m curious,” he mused, pressing the cancel button yet again.  Jasper wasn’t picking up either.  “Were you really hoping to catch me off my guard?”   

Maybe it was his mocking tone coupled with the tension of Irina’s betrayal, or maybe it was simply the fact that it was one in the morning and there was no promise of sleep in sight.  Whatever it was, the floodgates opened at that point, and my words came out in one rushed furious breath.   “Edward, you’re driving me crazy!  You appear out of nowhere telling us that your wolf-hating, treaty-breaking cousin is gone, and then you reappear after you’d obviously been in a fight telling us that we’re all in danger and we’ve got to wake up Charlie and call back Jacob.  But do I get a decent explanation about why I’m scaring the crap out of my father in the middle of the night?  Do I get to know why I’m stuck with the wolves until God-knows-when?  No!  I get one obscure response after another!” 

My hands were curled into fists and my ears were burning.  I didn’t even want to imagine the shade of red that I’d turned.  Instead, I drew a long breath and stared ahead at the double yellow line disappearing into the darkness beyond the reach of the headlights. 

“Not that I should be surprised,” I continued after moment.  “Life with you has been one giant lack of communication right from the beginning and I’ve just stood around and taken it.  But you promised this time!”

On the edge of my vision, Edward was motionless and silent, frowning at me without even a glance at the road ahead.

“You’re right,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”  The statement was sincere, but he offered nothing more.  I persisted, gentler. 

“What happened in the woods just now?”  Hadn’t that been the turning point anyway? Until his sudden reappearance in the woods outside my house, hadn’t he been convinced that everything could end without conflict?

Edward sighed and turned to stare sullenly out at the passing trees.  “Irina was there,” he admitted.  “She’d already overheard Alice’s…” He trailed off bitterly, not quite ready to tell me about Alice’s part in the tale.  “She’d come to try to reason with me.  She knew that I would gravitate toward you. I always do…and so she came to the forest near your house.  She was listening to your conversation with Seth.” His voice took on a darker tone.  “She heard his mention of what would happen after Jacob’s arrival.”

 I struggled to remember Seth’s words, and then cringed.

It’ll be open season on any leeches that come onto our land, no questions asked.   

Edward’s voice was as rancorous as his expression.  “I saw a decision form in Irina’s mind then—saw that there was no way to convince her otherwise after that, and so I made an impromptu attempt to subdue her…and that’s when she unleashed Alice’s full vision on me.”  He flinched and was very still for a moment.  “Irina knows very well how to use her mind as a weapon against me. She’s had a lot of time to practice.” 

“But what was the vision?” I pushed.  “And how did Irina know about it if Alice hadn’t found her yet to tell her?”

There was a long pause as he drew a breath through tense, nearly white lips.  “Irina listens.  That’s what she uses her talent for.  It’s the reason that she and her sisters have survived so long without…well…someone like Alice to warn them or me to read suspicions.”  His tone was almost defensive, as if he was trying to justify her behavior.  I sighed, not sure whether to be frustrated or impressed.  After all of the trouble that Irina had caused…continued to cause…he was still trying to justify her actions.  I supposed that was to be expected.  Edward was nothing if not unquestioningly loyal to his family. 

“And she was listening when Alice had the vision?” I prompted.  The trees were becoming thicker as the town disappeared behind us.  I guessed that my window of opportunity was limited to no more than five more minutes before we reached the border.

Edward shook his head.  “She was listening to Alice and Jasper as they tried to track her.”  I watched as the hand that rested on my leg grew tense.  “She’d seen Jasper trying to comfort Alice after the fact, and she’d heard Alice telling him about it.”

“And what was she saying?”  It came out in a cracked whisper.  When it came down to it, I wasn’t sure why exactly I wanted to hear it.  Really, how many more visions of destruction could I take before they began to affect me like they should?  How many before one of them came true? 

Edward’s frown deepened and he appeared to concentrate once again on the road ahead.  “Bella, what I saw was the memory of a memory being replayed inside the mind of a woman whose thoughts have been temporarily marred by extreme prejudice.  Irina has been weighing several options.  Alice was only conveying one of those.  She had to have seen the possible outcomes for more than only that specific one.  That’s why it’s imperative that I talk with…” 

“But Alice doesn’t see the details unless a decision has been made.”  The sense of urgency in my voice created a much more aggressive tone than I intended, but the border was no more than two minutes away now.  He was stalling.  He knew that if we got to the wolves before he could tell me what Alice had seen, I wouldn’t pursue the matter further.  He knew I would not risk a starting another conflict for a piece of information, no matter how vital it was.

“What was the decision?  What did Alice see?”  

Edward fixed the road outside with a death glare.

“She saw a problem with the wolves.”

I frowned, confused.  “Alice can’t see the wolves.” 

His next movements were filled with an unwillingness that I had never seen in him before and his next words were almost inaudible. 

 “Not when they’re alive.”

My breath caught, and suddenly I understood Edward’s reaction completely…was, in fact, fighting with the same panic that I had seen making random appearances on his face all night.  It felt like I was drowning in the air around me.   

“All of them?”  I choked, unable to think of anything more coherent at the moment.

“I haven’t seen the vision, Bella.”

“Sam? Seth?”  I shifted in my seat, trying to meet his eyes, but he was faster and much more experienced at avoiding mine.  

“I don’t know.” 

“Jacob?”  I felt the adrenaline threaten to explode inside me at just the thought.  Edward’s jaw clenched.

“I need to talk to Alice.” Stalling again.  Avoiding the answer.

“Please, just tell me.” I insisted.  “Does Jake die?” 

Surely Edward wouldn’t have called Jacob back if he’d known that he was summoning him to a death sentence, would he?

“Yes.” 

One cold syllable, hissed through clenched teeth as his hand fastened on my arm as if to stop me from leaping out of the car.  I felt the chill it brought through the sleeve of my cotton shirt.  It seemed to creep through my shoulder and into my spine.  It had to have been all of them.  Every wolf.  I knew it just as much as Edward did.  If even one of them was left alive, Alice wouldn’t be able to see them.  They were linked in life…and death. 

His hands were still white, trembling again.  I didn’t like that trembling.  It didn’t belong to Edward…not the untouchable, immortal Edward I knew.  There had to be more to the vision.  More he wasn’t telling me.  Then it hit me. 

We are all in danger tonight.

Of course it wasn’t just the wolves. Seth and Embry wouldn’t be in my house at this very moment waking up the chief of police if it had only been the wolves.  Edward would have wanted them as far away from me and mine as possible if that were the case.  A series of shivers hit me like waves against a rocky shoreline.  Edward’s hand tightened on my shoulder and he looked over, concern wearing through his firm resolve.  Something in my face must have worried him further.  For the first time, the speedometer began to edge slowly down toward the speed limit.

“Bella?”

“I die too.”  It didn’t need to be a question.  “And Charlie.” 

A moment’s hesitation was all I needed—just enough for one small, shaky exhale of cool, sweet breath.  Just enough for Edward the Protector to make one fleeting appearance and betray him.  It was the part of his personality that he was not yet used to hiding…the part that he had only recently discovered.  It told me exactly how much I’d improved at reading his silences. 

“When?”

“It won’t happen, Bella.  I won’t allow it.”

“Where then?”

His eyes flickered to the rear view mirror. The only sound was the engine pushing back up to unsafe speeds but a response was no longer necessary.  I remembered his adverse reaction in the woods when Seth had suggested that Sam meet them there.

“It’s at my house.”  Another question answered on my own.  Edward gave a grimace of disgust.

“Around your house, yes.”

All around it--a battlefield then, full of dead bodies, dead wolves, and…

“Are you there too?”

Another hesitant glance in my direction.  “Bella, I need to talk to…”

“Do you die!?”

“We all die.”  His voice was too calm as his confession confirmed all of my worst fears.  “Alice told Jasper we all die.”

He pulled out his phone again and started to dial.

*                           *                            *

“Your dad’s here.” 

Billy’s voice broke through my trance.  I shivered as Quil joined him at the window and let out a short barking laugh.

“Man, he looks pissed!” 

“It’s almost two in the morning,” Leah said, straining to see the three new arrivals without having to surrender her position of semi-comfort.  “Wouldn’t you be a little peeved?”

I shook my head to clear away Edward’s last words and rose to join the boys at the window just in time to see Embry, already in wolf form, disappearing into the trees—joining his brothers on patrol duty.  A second pair of lupine eyes reflected the porch light in the distance, and I thought I saw a third dark body moving away with them into the night, too quickly and gracefully to be anything but supernatural.  Seth killed the Guardian’s engine and Charlie stepped out of the passenger side looking every bit as angry as Quil had warned.  He followed Embry’s progress until he lost all three wolves in the woods.  I watched as a shiver passed over him  We were surrounded, obviously, and that fact did not bring him nearly as much comfort as it should have—as it would have brought me if I had not known the fate that each and every one of them were headed towards. 

Charlie was already yelling before he was even fully inside the house.  “Dammit, Billy, what the hell is this?  What’s my daughter’s boyfriend’s car doing out here at this time of…” 

But that was as far as he got before he saw me standing in the hallway and lost his train of thought.  I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to be sound asleep in my bed at home.  That particular fact had fallen into the depths of an alternate reality at this point in time…one where vampires and werewolves stayed tucked nicely into Stephen King novels.   

“Husband dad,” I corrected with a slight blush.  “You should start getting used to that.”

Charlie stood frozen in the open doorway for a long time, gauging the expressions on each new face as if waiting for one of us to suddenly shout “Surprise!” and break out the birthday presents.  Finally, his shoulders sagged.

“I suppose there was no actual break-in, then?”

“ Nope.”  Billy’s tone hadn’t changed. 

 My father’s glare fell accusingly on the youngest werewolf in the pack.  Seth shrugged.  “How else was I gonna get you out of the house in the middle of the night?”  His hand darted out and stole a piece of meat from Quil’s half eaten sandwich.  “Tell you the truth? You’d have told me to go pee on a tree.”

“Well somebody better tell me the truth,” Charlie warned, turning expectantly toward me with an angry, sleep deprived cop expression that would have effectively rivaled any police chief cliché in any detective movie ever made.  “And I’m thinking that it had better be you doing the telling, Bells.”   

 Every eye fell anxiously on me.  Charlie had just effectively put a voice to the desires of everyone in the room.  I owed each one of them some form of explanation on any one of thirty different levels, and Charlie was only the next one in a long line to be blown off with a vapid, barely believable excuse.   The autopilot that my mind had been running on hit overload, stalled, and then spluttered to a complete halt and I stared back with my mouth half open and not even the slightest idea of what was supposed to be coming out.

“Uh…Alice…” I began, my defenses veering subconsciously toward the truth.  Then instinct kicked in—a newly discovered and way too well practiced part of me that began a constant mental slide show of the psych ward I would spend the rest of my waking hours in if full disclosure ever became an issue—and my mind made a 180 degree turn. 

 “Alice!” This time, my words were tainted with artificial confidence.  “She had this feeling that something was going to go wrong tonight.”  Billy and the wolves leaned in, sensing the proximity to the unspoken truths that they were searching for.  They all knew that Alice had seen something.  Edward had admitted as much to Sam in their meeting.

“In our house,” I added quickly.  There was a sigh of frustration from somewhere behind me.  “It really freaked me out, and I didn’t want you to get hurt so I asked Seth to go get you and make you spend the night here.”  Seth flinched.  It was the worst lie ever and everyone around me knew it.  I was ashamed that it had come from my mouth the second I was finished saying it, but considering the alternative—incarceration in a mental institution, or at the very least, a heavy suspicion of hallucinogen abuse—it was the best I could do.

 “I know it’s late dad.  I’m really sorry,” I concluded weakly, as if an apology would make any piece of the story more believable.   

Charlie stared at me, expressionless and unmoving for a minute, the way that I imagined a detective doing with a suspect in the little room with one mirrored wall.  The moment of contemplation was enough to make even Billy shift uncomfortably.  After a while, Charlie gave a long, slow sigh and began his inevitable interrogation.

“So why didn’t you just wake me up and tell me about it?  Last I saw, you were headed for your bedroom with a headache.”

 Crap.  I’d forgotten about that…again.

“Um…Because she was already here,” Leah cut in.  She took up an uncertain position by my side.  From the corner of my eye, I saw Quil slip into her spot in the armchair.  “Girl’s night out…me, Bella, and Alice.”  I hoped that Charlie hadn’t noticed the amount of work it had taken Leah not to snarl when she said the words me and Alice in the same sentence.  “We made her sneak out her window. It’s good to sneak out once in a while.” 

I looked at her in amazed confusion—relatively the same confusion that was all too evident on everyone else’s face as well.  Leah frowned.

 “What?”  She threw a nervous shoulder punch at her younger brother, who dodged her easily.  “She’s going to college in a couple days.  A girl’s night out is perfectly normal.”  She glared around the room, daring any one of the boys to challenge her.  When no one did, she turned back to Charlie eagerly.  “You’re not gonna punish her for sneaking out, are you?” 

Leah looked like a good old fashioned grounding from Chief Charlie would have been just fine in her book.  Charlie looked as if his argument had just flown out the window…on rickety, horribly falsified wings, but gone just the same.  

“A hunch?” he repeated.

“Yup.”

It was meant to sound confident, but the doubt that was drawn into every one of the wrinkles on Charlie’s forehead was not exactly encouraging. 

 “During a girls’ night out with two girls who hate each other?” 

My breath caught.  I heard Leah’s falter as well.  We had not counted on Charlie’s magic police chief powers.  I hadn’t realized just how observant of my friends that he’d been in the past few months.      

Leah picked up my slack.  “Well, it couldn’t just be me and Bella. That would have been a little weird.  And I don’t know any of her hu…uh…high school friends.”  I grimaced, certain that Leah had almost said the word “human.”  I didn’t think that we could have recovered from that large of a Freudian slip at this point.   

“Uh-huh.” 

Charlie still wasn’t buying it, but he was moving cautiously into the living room.  That was a good sign. “So where’s Alice now?”

I would give my right arm for that kind of information, I thought.

 “She went home.”

“Without seeing if everything was OK with the house?”  Charlie was circling the living room like a crime scene.  “That seems pretty strange after such a strong hunch. You’d think she’d stay to see if I was safe.”

He was showering me with hard, suspicious cop-glances.  I felt like a freshly caught fugitive.  “She drove by the house on the way home to see if you were on your way.”

“In what car?  The Volvo’s still in the driveway.”

“In mine,” Quil interjected, his mouth full of turkey sandwich.  “Alice left Bella the Volvo to…”

“Don’t bother Quil, I saw the Chevy in your yard driving over.” 

Quil’s mouth snapped closed and the last of his sandwich went down hard.  He turned toward me with a shrug of his shoulders and a look that confirmed that I was on my own from here.  For my part, I adapted what I could have only imagined was the perfect deer-in-the-headlight eyes as whatever part of my brain that did the lying left the building.  No two weeks’ notice.  No resignation letter.  Just one horribly awkward mental void.

“He…I…” I stuttered.  Charlie cut me off.

“Does this have something to do with werewolf stuff?”

“No!” I answered too quickly, and then the full power of Charlie’s glare fell upon me.  “OK, maybe a little.”

He let out a knowing half-laugh.  “I knew it!” he exclaimed.  “You live twenty years in a place not knowing a thing about the werewolves on the reservation, and then the second you find out, that’s when the trouble starts.” 

There was a silence as everyone in the room but Charlie suddenly found a different place to stare at on the floor or ceiling.  The movement was so simultaneous it could have been choreographed.  Trouble had started long before Charlie got here.  Trouble had been brewing on this particular reservation since the Great Depression.  Luckily, my father seemed to be too busy contemplating something outside the window to notice the sudden mood change. 

“Did Alice really have a hunch?”

I sighed miserably. “Yeah, she did.”  If he only knew exactly how big of one. 

“Is anyone going to get hurt?”

Six heads turned toward Charlie, stunned.   Was he about to take Alice’s hunch seriously?  Most of the wolves couldn’t admit to having done that and they knew what power her “hunches” carried behind them.  Perhaps my father had noticed a little more about his new in-laws in the past few months than I had given him credit for.  

“No.”  I answered solemnly, praying that I was telling the truth, at least for tonight, and knowing that I probably wasn’t.  Charlie sat down in front of the television, where a man in an eighties style jean jacket was pushing a women’s head into a tub full of water.  As I watched, the woman sprouted fangs and began to scream.  Holy water.  I flinched and motioned for Quil to turn the channel focusing my attention on the task at hand.  I could not let Charlie go back home.  It had already been decided.  My father was supposed to outlive me, and I would not allow my stubborn stupid meddling in a centuries old feud to change that fact.

“I’m really sorry about this, dad,” I began, plopping down next to him and fixing him with my most subservient grin.  “You can sleep in Jacob’s room, though.  Billy just changed the sheets for you.  And I promise we can still go to dinner tomorrow.” 

There was a moment’s pause as Charlie weighed his options.  I let my eyes wander to the clock once more and hoped upon hope that all of the empty promises I was making tonight would come true when the sun rose in the morning.    

“Where are you sleeping then?”  Charlie grumbled.

“Uh…on the couch?”  My response took the form of an astonished question as I realized I hadn’t exactly planned to sleep at all tonight.  It occurred to me that I had expected a much larger argument from Charlie and the much greater responsibility of keeping everything around him under wraps as he spent the night trying to figure out why he was being held captive at his best friend’s house.  I must have seriously underestimated his aversion to the abnormal.  

The house fell silent again as the gears turned over in Charlie’s head.  Finally, he seemed to arrive at a hard decision.  Nodding to himself, he turned back toward Seth. 

“Well all right then, get me a beer.”

 No one moved.  No one believed it could be that easy. 

Charlie looked around at the others with a bemused expression.  “What?  I’m a cop.  You don’t expect me to believe a word of that damn terrible lie without a beer in me, do you?”

 A grin finally broke through Billy’s stern mask.  Seth stepped forward so quickly, I couldn’t tell if he had tripped.

 “Charlie, I’m really sorry….” He choked, but my dad put a hand out to stop him.

“That’s enough,” he ordered.  “I told you I don’t want to hear it.  All I need to know is that no one is getting hurt tonight, that my daughter’s moving away from all of this the day after tomorrow…and that those blankets I’m sleeping in don’t have fleas.  Now how about that beer?”

“I’ll get it,” Billy snorted. 

It was heading toward four in the morning by the time Charlie called it a night for the second time.  Billy had disappeared into his bedroom fifteen minutes earlier, but I was certain he wasn’t sleeping.  He was waiting for his son.  Jared had come back from his patrol with the news that Jake was hoofing it full speed from Vancouver.  From where he’d been, Sam was guessing, Jacob would make it here in about three hours.  That had been two hours ago. About half an hour after Charlie had shown up.  Seth had taken Jared’s place on patrol.

“You should get some sleep, Bella,” Quil mumbled from beside her through a mouthful of Doritos.  “I’ll wake you up if there’s any news.” 

 I shook my head apologetically and wiped the crumbs from the couch between us.  Just as I’d predicted, sleep was not going to be an option tonight.  My hand slipped absentmindedly into my pocket for perhaps the fiftieth time that night, searching for a cell phone that wasn’t there. 

We passed the time as best we could.  Staring out the windows waiting for a flash of fur was pure torture and the television held none of our interest for more than the length of a commercial break, so we settled on a half- hearted game of cards.  Leah was celebrating her third win when Embry, Collin, and Paul came shuffling through the front door, calling the game to a permanent end.  Embry and Collin headed into the kitchen without a word.  I heard the fridge opening as Paul pulled Quil up off the couch and plopped down next to me, exhausted. 

“Sam’s with the mind-reader on the south ridge,” he said to Leah with a candid effort to avoid my eyes.  “We were patrolling the north bend.  Sam will show you where we left off when you phase.  It’s a lot easier now that the two of them are together.”

Leah nodded, suddenly professional.  On guard.

“Wait,” I stammered.  “Who’s together?”

Both of them stared back at me like I was stupid, and I would have felt exactly that way if the frustration, black as an ink cloud, hadn’t overwhelmed me at that moment.  Who else could it be?  The bonds of sisterhood were inevitably bound to triumph at the end of this chase.  It had only been a matter of time.  Tanya had joined her sister, and, as usual, I was one of the last to find out.  My head filled with more questions that I couldn’t ask.

Leah didn’t seem surprised at all. “Any sign of them?”  she asked.

“Naw.  Not yet, but the soldier leech found signs that they’d crossed over.  Sam’s letting him and the mind reader on our side to look for them.”  He glanced poignantly in my direction.  “And none of them are talking about what the little one saw to get us all up in arms.”

I held his gaze with some effort, but I couldn’t risk a comeback for fear that the tremble in my voice would only give rise to more doubt.  Instead, I turned to catch Leah and Quil on their way out the door. 

“Hey Leah,” I called, managing to keep my voice steady.  “Thanks for backing me up with Charlie tonight.  I guess I still have a lot to learn about cover-ups.”

It was meant to be light-hearted, but Leah snarled bitterly.  

“You’ve got a lot to learn about the family you married into,” she snapped.  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but no one around here has ever had to have a personal body guard to protect them from their own in-laws.”  She pulled off the long-sleeved t-shirt that she’d been wearing to reveal a thin cotton jogging tee underneath—the simpler the better when you were destined to spend the night as a six foot wolf.  “And I didn’t do it for you.  I did it for Charlie.  He doesn’t deserve to have his whole life upturned just because his daughter is a selfish leech lover…and no one deserves to find out about the existence of werewolves and vampires all in the same two week period.” Her face was dark as she and Quil strode out into the darkness.  That was exactly how it had happened for her…and for every wolf in her pack.

Embry appeared in the kitchen doorway, his hand buried in a bag of potato chips.  I contemplated the hint of a smirk on his face.  “How are you holding up, Bella?”

 “Not so good,” I admitted dejectedly.  “It looks like I’m the only one in the house without any idea what’s going on.”

Embry’s smirk grew wise—too wise for a seventeen year old.  “Now I don’t believe that for a second…and neither do you,” he said, digging into his pocket and tossing something small and dark in my direction.  “Maybe this will help.” 

I grabbed for it, but it flew right through my arms, bounced off my chest and fell to the floor in front of me with a thud.   I stared down at it stupidly.  It was a cell phone.  I bent down and picked it up, examining it with as much love and concern as a jeweler who had just been handed the Hope Diamond.

“He told me to tell you that it’s Esme’s…whichever vamp chick that is.  He said not to panic if he doesn’t answer.  He’s out with Sam and that scary brother of his.”

I beamed at him.   “Embry, you just became my favorite wolf of the pack.”

“I know,” he said, popping a chip into his mouth and disappearing into the kitchen again.  “I get that a lot.” 

I dialed Edward’s number by memory, slipping into the hallway for privacy even though I knew that there was no place in the house where I would be free from unnaturally sensitive prying ears.  I expected it to go straight to voicemail, considering the night I was having, but Edward picked up on the first ring.

“Bella.”  He sounded too relieved.  “Are you alright?”

“Of course I am,” I grumbled, puzzled.  I was stuck in LaPush with a canine guard and no idea of what was happening until further notice.  He’d made sure of that.  “What’s happening out there?  Paul told me that Tanya’s with Irina now.”

There was a nervous pause.  “Bella, we’re coming to you now,” he said finally. 

“You’re coming here?”

“We’ll be there soon.  Please promise me you’ll stay with Embry and Paul until we arrive?”

I shivered.  The treaty was already all but destroyed—the peace between two volatile neighbors already on too shaky a ground to test.  For Edward to simply stroll up to Billy’s house—the equivalent of the wolf command center—and with Sam’s explicit permission, something had to have gone very wrong.

“What happened?” I demanded in a whisper, acutely aware of both Paul and Embry lurking in the living room and hanging on every anxious word.

“There are…extenuating circumstances,” he replied furtively. I heard the wind pick up around him and imagined him speeding effortlessly past the ageless Douglas firs toward me led by a lone black wolf.  “Sam knows about Alice’s vision.  He’s called a meeting.  He wants me and Alice there.”

 “Why here?  Why not at the border?”

Edward hesitated.  “I wouldn’t allow them to leave you and Charlie unguarded. Sam understood.  He’s called all of the wolves back.” 

As if on cue, the front door burst open and Seth rushed into the hallway, nearly knocking me over in the process.  He looked anxious.  He looked downright panicked.

“Is that Edward?”  he asked.  I nodded.

“Tell him that me and Quil caught the red-head’s scent right outside the tree line when we were changing back into clothes.  Quil phased back to keep watch.  We think they might be here.”

But there was no need to relay the news.  Edward had heard it, whether over the phone or through Sam’s thoughts as the information arrived via wolfgram from Quil, I was not sure.  I heard someone curse beside him and the wind increased in volume. 

“Stay with Seth,” he growled.  “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

The phone went dead.   

“Was that Jake?”

I turned to see Billy wheeling his way into the hallway.  He was wearing a hopeful expression and the same clothes he’d had on when he’d excused himself a few hours ago.  I had the sneaking suspicion that I’d find his bed completely untouched too.

“No,” Seth said.  He looked pale and terrified in the moonlight. I thought I knew why.  “It was Edward.  Sam’s on his way back.”

 “Did they find her?”  I watched an impossible optimism blossom.

Seth frowned, shaking his head.  “He’s bringing Edward and Alice.”

That knocked every last trace of smile from Billy’s face.  “Here? To the house?”  He looked around like he was hoping to find signs of the joke everyone was trying to pull on him, but all of the faces surrounding him were deadly serious.  None more than Seth’s.

“Alice had one of her visions,” Seth said. His voice was shaking.  “It’s…it’s not good.”  For a moment, I saw the hint of the scared little boy that he must have been before all of this chaos of transformations and mythical battles had started. 

It was as I had suspected, then.  Everyone who had been in wolf form when Edward had made his final confession to Sam knew exactly why Alice was about to make her first appearance ever on Quileute lands.

 Billy’s eyes shifted from his youngest pack member to my own inevitably guilty expression.

“What did she see?”

Seth opened his mouth to respond, then his breath stopped and his teeth snapped closed again.  He shook his head painfully.  It took me only a second longer than Billy to understand.  Seth was under alpha orders.  Sam had forbidden any disclosure until he arrived with his guests.  I pondered the idea of my husband and my tiny sister in the center of a circle of angry wolves, revealing the details of an impending extinction and wondered if Sam had thought this order through properly.

Billy scowled down at the floor.  “Jacob should be here for this,” he mused.  “How far away is he?”  He looked around expectantly at blank faces.

“I don’t know,” Seth confessed.  “I guess my mind wasn’t really…”

He was interrupted by Leah and Brady’s abrupt appearance. Leah was human, and still pulling on her clothes as she leaped across the porch toward Billy. She was the exact same color as Seth.  

“The doctor and the soldier are with them,” she hissed. “They’re all coming here.”