I realized why her eyes begged for my understanding. She was protecting Jasper, at our expense, and maybe at Edward's, too. I understood, and I did not think badly of her. I nodded.

"Actually, if you're going to make it out of this, it might be better if we don't come," Jasper said thoughtfully.

"Why?" Emmett asked pouting – he really would have loved to been there for this.

"Because if we were all there, we would appear to be more of a threat...if the Volturi saw us together, they might decide it was too much of a risk to let us go and it would be better just to get rid of us," Jasper said.

"Couldn't Edward hear you, though?" I asked. "Wouldn't he know, as soon as he heard your thoughts, that I was alive, that there was no point to this?"

"I would never believe that," Edward smirked and sighed.

"Yeah... we would be thinking that no matter what," Alice said.

"Right now, it would be really nice if I could hear her," Edward said.

"And every other moment for that matter," Emmett smirked.

"Yeah," Edward smiled.

Not that there was any justification, either way. I still couldn't believe that he was capable of reacting like this. It made no sense! I remembered with painful clarity his words that day on the sofa, while we watched Romeo and Juliet kill themselves, one after the other. I wasn't going to live without you, he'd said, as if it should be such an obvious conclusion. But the words he had spoken in the forest as he'd left me had canceled all that out –forcefully.

"Why does she have to believe the lie so much easier than the truth?" Edward groaned.

"If he were listening," she explained. "But believe it or not, it's possible to lie with your thoughts. If you had died, I would still try to stop him. And I would be thinking 'she's alive, she's alive' as hard as I could. He knows that."

I ground my teeth in mute frustration.

"If there were any way to do this without you, Bella, I wouldn't be endangering you like this. It's very wrong of me."

"Don't be stupid. I'm the last thing you should be worrying about." I shook my head impatiently. "Tell me what you meant, about hating to lie to Jasper."

She smiled a grim smile. "I promised him I would get out before they killed me, too. It's not something I can guarantee – not by a long shot."

Jasper sat frozen, looking quite angry, but didn't say anything.

She raised her eyebrows, as if willing me to take the danger more seriously.

"Who are these Volturi?" I demanded in a whisper. "What makes them so much more dangerous than Emmett, Jasper, Rosalie, and you?" It was hard to imagine something scarier than that.

"Well, she has a point there," Emmett said smugly.

"But the Volturi are," Jasper said. "We wouldn't stand a chance."

"I'm just saying...there's no one else out there who could take us," Emmett pouted.

"That's true...though I wouldn't want to face the Southerners," Jasper said. "They would be no match, of course, but their numbers would be a problem."

She took a deep breath, and then abruptly leveled a dark glance over my shoulder. I turned in time to see the man in the aisle seat looking away as if he wasn't listening to us. He appeared to be a businessman, in a dark suit with a power tie and a laptop on his knees. While I stared at him with irritation, he opened the computer and very conspicuously put headphones on.