I didn’t realize Alice had come to stand behind me again.

“And you ducked your head, like a good Southern gentleman, and said, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’” Alice laughed at the memory.

Jasper smiled down at her. “You held out your hand, and I took it without stopping to make sense of what I was doing. For the first time in almost a century, I felt hope.”

Jasper took Alice’s hand as he spoke.

Alice grinned. “I was just relieved. I thought you were never going to show up.”

They smiled at each other for a long moment, and then Jasper looked back to me, the soft expression lingering.

“Alice told me what she’d seen of Carlisle and his family. I could hardly believe that such an existence was possible. But Alice made me optimistic. So we went to find them.”

“Scared the hell out of them, too,” Edward said, rolling his eyes at Jasper before turning to me to explain. “Emmett and I were away hunting. Jasper shows up, covered in battle scars, towing this little freak” — he nudged Alice playfully — “who greets them all by name, knows everything about them, and wants to know which room she can move into.”

Alice and Jasper laughed in harmony, soprano and bass.

“When I got home, all my things were in the garage,” Edward continued.

Alice shrugged. “Your room had the best view.”

They all laughed together now.

“That’s a nice story,” I said.

Three pairs of eyes questioned my sanity.

“I mean the last part,” I defended myself. “The happy ending with Alice.”

“Alice has made all the difference,” Jasper agreed. “This is a climate I enjoy.”

But the momentary pause in the stress couldn’t last.

“An army,” Alice whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The others were intent again, their eyes locked on Jasper’s face.

“I thought I must be interpreting the signs incorrectly. Because where is the motive? Why would someone create an army in Seattle? There is no history there, no vendetta. It makes no sense from a conquest standpoint, either; no one claims it. Nomads pass through, but there’s no one to fight for it. No one to defend it from.

“But I’ve seen this before, and there’s no other explanation. There is an army of newborn vampires in Seattle. Fewer than twenty, I’d guess. The difficult part is that they are totally untrained. Whoever made them just set them loose. It will only get worse, and it won’t be much longer till the Volturi step in. Actually, I’m surprised they’ve let this go on so long.”

“What can we do?” Carlisle asked.

“If we want to avoid the Volturi’s involvement, we will have to destroy the newborns, and we will have to do it very soon.” Jasper’s face was hard. Knowing his story now, I could guess how this evaluation must disturb him. “I can teach you how. It won’t be easy in the city. The young ones aren’t concerned about secrecy, but we will have to be. It will limit us in ways that they are not. Maybe we can lure them out.”

“Maybe we won’t have to.” Edward’s voice was bleak. “Does it occur to anyone else that the only possible threat in the area that would call for the creation of an army is . . . us?”

Jasper’s eyes narrowed; Carlisle’s widened, shocked.

“Tanya’s family is also near,” Esme said slowly, unwilling to accept Edward’s words.

“The newborns aren’t ravaging Anchorage, Esme. I think we have to consider the idea that we are the targets.”

“They’re not coming after us,” Alice insisted, and then paused. “Or . . . they don’t know that they are. Not yet.”

“What is that?” Edward asked, curious and tense. “What are you remembering?”

“Flickers,” Alice said. “I can’t see a clear picture when I try to see what’s going on, nothing concrete. But I’ve been getting these strange flashes. Not enough to make sense of. It’s as if someone’s changing their mind, moving from one course of action to another so quickly that I can’t get a good view. . . .”

“Indecision?” Jasper asked in disbelief.

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Not indecision,” Edward growled. “Knowledge. Someone who knows you can’t see anything until the decision is made. Someone who is hiding from us. Playing with the holes in your vision.”

“Who would know that?” Alice whispered.

Edward’s eyes were hard as ice. “Aro knows you as well as you know yourself.”

“But I would see if they’d decided to come. . . .”

“Unless they didn’t want to get their hands dirty.”

“A favor,” Rosalie suggested, speaking for the first time. “Someone in the South . . . someone who already had trouble with the rules. Someone who should have been destroyed is offered a second chance — if they take care of this one small problem. . . . That would explain the Volturi’s sluggish response.”

“Why?” Carlisle asked, still shocked. “There’s no reason for the Volturi —”

“It was there,” Edward disagreed quietly. “I’m surprised it’s come to this so soon, because the other thoughts were stronger. In Aro’s head he saw me at his one side and Alice at his other. The present and the future, virtual omniscience. The power of the idea intoxicated him. I would have thought it would take him much longer to give up on that plan — he wanted it too much. But there was also the thought of you, Carlisle, of our family, growing stronger and larger. The jealousy and the fear: you having . . . not more than he had, but still, things that he wanted. He tried not to think about it, but he couldn’t hide it completely. The idea of rooting out the competition was there; besides their own, ours is the largest coven they’ve ever found. . . .”

I stared at his face in horror. He’d never told me this, but I guessed I knew why. I could see it in my head now, Aro’s dream. Edward and Alice in black, flowing robes, drifting along at Aro’s side with their eyes cold and blood-red. . . .

Carlisle interrupted my waking nightmare. “They’re too committed to their mission. They would never break the rules themselves. It goes against everything they’ve worked for.”

“They’ll clean up afterward. A double betrayal,” Edward said in a grim voice. “No harm done.”

Jasper leaned forward, shaking his head. “No, Carlisle is right. The Volturi do not break rules. Besides, it’s much too sloppy. This . . . person, this threat — they have no idea what they’re doing. A first-timer, I’d swear to it. I cannot believe the Volturi are involved. But they will be.”

They all stared at each other, frozen with stress.

“Then let’s go,” Emmett almost roared. “What are we waiting for?”

Carlisle and Edward exchanged a long glance. Edward nodded once.

“We’ll need you to teach us, Jasper,” Carlisle finally said. “How to destroy them.” Carlisle’s jaw was hard, but I could see the pain in his eyes as he said the words. No one hated violence more than Carlisle.

There was something bothering me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was numb, horrified, deathly afraid. And yet, under that, I could feel that I was missing something important. Something that would make some sense out of the chaos. That would explain it.

“We’re going to need help,” Jasper said. “Do you think Tanya’s family would be willing . . . ? Another five mature vampires would make an enormous difference. And then Kate and Eleazar would be especially advantageous on our side. It would be almost easy, with their aid.”

“We’ll ask,” Carlisle answered.

Jasper held out a cell phone. “We need to hurry.”

I’d never seen Carlisle’s innate calm so shaken. He took the phone, and paced toward the windows. He dialed a number, held the phone to his ear, and laid the other hand against the glass. He stared out into the foggy morning with a pained and ambivalent expression.

Edward took my hand and pulled me to the white loveseat. I sat beside him, staring at his face while he stared at Carlisle.

Carlisle’s voice was low and quick, difficult to hear. I heard him greet Tanya, and then he raced through the situation too fast for me to understand much, though I could tell that the Alaskan vampires were not ignorant of what was going on in Seattle.

Then something changed in Carlisle’s voice.

“Oh,” he said, his voice sharper in surprise. “We didn’t realize . . . that Irina felt that way.”

Edward groaned at my side and closed his eyes. “Damn it. Damn Laurent to the deepest pit of hell where he belongs.”

“Laurent?” I whispered, the blood emptying from my face, but Edward didn’t respond, focused on Carlisle’s thoughts.

My short encounter with Laurent early this spring was not something that had faded or dimmed in my mind. I still remembered every word he’d said before Jacob and his pack had interrupted.

I actually came here as a favor to her. . . .

Victoria. Laurent had been her first maneuver — she’d sent him to observe, to see how hard it might be to get to me. He hadn’t survived the wolves to report back.

Though he’d kept up his old ties with Victoria after James’s death, he’d also formed new ties and new relationships. He’d gone to live with Tanya’s family in Alaska — Tanya the strawberry blonde — the closest friends the Cullens had in the vampire world, practically extended family. Laurent had been with them for almost a year previous to his death.

Carlisle was still talking, his voice not quite pleading. Persuasive, but with an edge. Then the edge abruptly won out over the persuasion.

“There’s no question of that,” Carlisle said in a stern voice. “We have a truce. They haven’t broken it, and neither will we. I’m sorry to hear that. . . . Of course. We’ll just have to do our best alone.”

Carlisle shut the phone without waiting for an answer. He continued to stare out into the fog.

“What’s the problem?” Emmett murmured to Edward.

“Irina was more involved with our friend Laurent than we knew. She’s holding a grudge against the wolves for destroying him to save Bella. She wants —” He paused, looking down at me.

“Go on,” I said as evenly as I could.

His eyes tightened. “She wants revenge. To take down the pack. They would trade their help for our permission.”

“No!” I gasped.

“Don’t worry,” he told me in a flat voice. “Carlisle would never agree to it.” He hesitated, then sighed. “Nor would I. Laurent had it coming” — this was almost a growl — “and I still owe the wolves for that.”

“This isn’t good,” Jasper said. “It’s too even a fight. We’d have the upper hand in skill, but not numbers. We’d win, but at what price?” His tense eyes flashed to Alice’s face and away.

I wanted to scream out loud as I grasped what Jasper meant.

We would win, but we would lose. Some wouldn’t survive.

I looked around the room at their faces — Jasper, Alice, Emmett, Rose, Esme, Carlisle . . . Edward — the faces of my family.

===========================================================================

14. DECLARATION

“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS,” I SAID WEDNESDAY AFTERnoon. “You’ve completely lost your mind!”

“Say whatever you like about me,” Alice answered. “The party is still on.”

I stared at her, my eyes so wide with disbelief it felt like they might fall out and land on my lunch tray.

“Oh, calm down, Bella! There’s no reason not to go through with it. Besides, the invitations are already sent.”

“But . . . the . . . you . . . I . . . insane!” I spluttered.

“You’ve already bought my present,” she reminded me. “You don’t have to do anything but show up.”

I made an effort to calm myself. “With everything that is going on right now, a party is hardly appropriate.”

“Graduation is what’s going on right now, and a party is so appropriate it’s almost passй.”

“Alice!”

She sighed, and tried to be serious. “There are a few things we need to get in order now, and that’s going to take a little time. As long as we’re sitting here waiting, we might as well commemorate the good stuff. You’re only going to graduate from high school — for the first time — once. You don’t get to be human again, Bella. This is a once-in-a-lifetime shot.”

Edward, silent through our little argument, flashed her a warning look. She stuck out her tongue at him. She was right — her soft voice would never carry over the babble of the cafeteria. And no one would understand the meaning behind her words in any case.

“What few things do we need to get in order?” I asked, refusing to be sidetracked.

Edward answered in a low voice. “Jasper thinks we could use some help. Tanya’s family isn’t the only choice we have. Carlisle’s trying to track down a few old friends, and Jasper is looking up Peter and Charlotte. He’s considering talking to Maria . . . but no one really wants to involve the southerners.”

Alice shuddered delicately.

“It shouldn’t be too hard to convince them to help,” he continued. “Nobody wants a visit from Italy.”

“But these friends — they’re not going to be . . . vegetarians, right?” I protested, using the Cullens’ tongue-in-cheek nickname for themselves.

“No,” Edward answered, suddenly expressionless.

“Here? In Forks?”

“They’re friends,” Alice reassured me. “Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry. And then, Jasper has to teach us a few courses on newborn elimination. . . .”

Edward’s eyes brightened at that, and a brief smile flashed across his face. My stomach suddenly felt like it was full of sharp little splinters of ice.

“When are you going?” I asked in a hollow voice. I couldn’t stand this — the idea that someone might not come back. What if it was Emmett, so brave and thoughtless that he was never the least bit cautious? Or Esme, so sweet and motherly that I couldn’t even imagine her in a fight? Or Alice, so tiny, so fragile-looking? Or . . . but I couldn’t even think the name, consider the possibility.

“A week,” Edward said casually. “That ought to give us enough time.”

The icy splinters twisted uncomfortably in my stomach. I was suddenly nauseated.

“You look kind of green, Bella,” Alice commented.

Edward put his arm around me and pulled me tightly against his side. “It’s going to be fine, Bella. Trust me.”

Sure, I thought to myself. Trust him. He wasn’t the one who was going to have to sit behind and wonder whether or not the core of his existence was going to come home.

And then it occurred to me. Maybe I didn’t need to sit behind. A week was more than enough time.

“You’re looking for help,” I said slowly.

“Yes.” Alice’s head cocked to the side as she processed the change in my tone.