I heard Charlie heave himself off of the sofa. Jacob got to the hall first, and much more quietly, but Charlie was not far behind him. Jacob’s expression was alert and eager.

“I don’t want any fighting, do you understand?” Charlie looked only at Edward when he spoke. “I can go put my badge on if that makes my request more official.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Edward said in a restrained tone.

“Why don’t you arrest me, Dad?” I suggested. “I’m the one throwing punches.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to press charges, Jake?”

“No.” Jacob grinned, incorrigible. “I’ll take the trade any day.”

Edward grimaced.

“Dad, don’t you have a baseball bat somewhere in your room? I want to borrow it for a minute.”

Charlie looked at me evenly. “Enough, Bella.”

“Let’s go have Carlisle look at your hand before you wind up in a jail cell,” Edward said. He put his arm around me and pulled me toward the door.

“Fine,” I said, leaning against him. I wasn’t so angry anymore, now that Edward was with me. I felt comforted, and my hand didn’t bother me as much.

We were walking down the sidewalk when I heard Charlie whispering anxiously behind me.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

“Give me a minute, Charlie,” Jacob answered. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right back.”

I looked back and Jacob was following us, stopping to close the door in Charlie’s surprised and uneasy face.

Edward ignored him at first, leading me to the car. He helped me inside, shut the door, and then turned to face Jacob on the sidewalk.

I leaned anxiously through the open window. Charlie was visible in the house, peeking through the drapes in the front room.

Jacob’s stance was casual, his arms folded across his chest, but the muscles in his jaw were tight.

Edward spoke in a voice so peaceful and gentle that it made the words strangely more threatening. “I’m not going to kill you now, because it would upset Bella.”

“Hmph,” I grumbled.

Edward turned slightly to throw me a quick smile. His face was still calm. “It would bother you in the morning,” he said, brushing his fingers across my cheek.

Then he turned back to Jacob. “But if you ever bring her back damaged again — and I don’t care whose fault it is; I don’t care if she merely trips, or if a meteor falls out of the sky and hits her in the head — if you return her to me in less than the perfect condition that I left her in, you will be running with three legs. Do you understand that, mongrel?”

Jacob rolled his eyes.

“Who’s going back?” I muttered.

Edward continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “And if you ever kiss her again, I will break your jaw for her,” he promised, his voice still gentle and velvet and deadly.

“What if she wants me to?” Jacob drawled, arrogant.

“Hah!” I snorted.

“If that’s what she wants, then I won’t object.” Edward shrugged, untroubled. “You might want to wait for her to say it, rather than trust your interpretation of body language — but it’s your face.”

Jacob grinned.

“You wish,” I grumbled.

“Yes, he does,” Edward murmured.

“Well, if you’re done rummaging through my head,” Jacob said with a thick edge of annoyance, “why don’t you go take care of her hand?”

“One more thing,” Edward said slowly. “I’ll be fighting for her, too. You should know that. I’m not taking anything for granted, and I’ll be fighting twice as hard as you will.”

“Good,” Jacob growled. “It’s no fun beating someone who forfeits.”

“She is mine.” Edward’s low voice was suddenly dark, not as composed as before. “I didn’t say I would fight fair.”

“Neither did I.”

“Best of luck.”

Jacob nodded. “Yes, may the best man win.”

“That sounds about right . . . pup.”

Jacob grimaced briefly, then he composed his face and leaned around Edward to smile at me. I glowered back.

“I hope your hand feels better soon. I’m really sorry you’re hurt.”

Childishly, I turned my face away from him.

I didn’t look up again as Edward walked around the car and climbed into the driver’s side, so I didn’t know if Jacob went back into the house or continued to stand there, watching me.

“How do you feel?” Edward asked as we drove away.

“Irritated.”

He chuckled. “I meant your hand.”

I shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“True,” he agreed, and frowned.

Edward drove around the house to the garage. Emmett and Rosalie were there, Rosalie’s perfect legs, recognizable even sheathed in jeans, were sticking out from under the bottom of Emmett’s huge Jeep. Emmett was sitting beside her, one hand reached under the Jeep toward her. It took me a moment to realize that he was acting as the jack.

Emmett watched curiously as Edward helped me carefully out of the car. His eyes zeroed in on the hand I cradled against my chest.

Emmett grinned. “Fall down again, Bella?”

I glared at him fiercely. “No, Emmett. I punched a werewolf in the face.”

Emmett blinked, and then burst into a roar of laughter.

As Edward led me past them, Rosalie spoke from under the car.

“Jasper’s going to win the bet,” she said smugly.

Emmett’s laughter stopped at once, and he studied me with appraising eyes.

“What bet?” I demanded, pausing.

“Let’s get you to Carlisle,” Edward urged. He was staring at Emmett. His head shook infinitesimally.

“What bet?” I insisted as I turned on him.

“Thanks, Rosalie,” he muttered as he tightened his arm around my waist and pulled me toward the house.

“Edward . . . ,” I grumbled.

“It’s infantile,” he shrugged. “Emmett and Jasper like to gamble.”

“Emmett will tell me.” I tried to turn, but his arm was like iron around me.

He sighed. “They’re betting on how many times you . . . slip up in the first year.”

“Oh.” I grimaced, trying to hide my sudden horror as I realized what he meant. “They have a bet about how many people I’ll kill?”

“Yes,” he admitted unwillingly. “Rosalie thinks your temper will turn the odds in Jasper’s favor.”

I felt a little high. “Jasper’s betting high.”

“It will make him feel better if you have a hard time adjusting. He’s tired of being the weakest link.”

“Sure. Of course it will. I guess I could throw in a few extra homicides, if it makes Jasper happy. Why not?” I was babbling, my voice a blank monotone. In my head, I was seeing newspaper headlines, lists of names. . . .

He squeezed me. “You don’t need to worry about it now. In fact, you don’t have to worry about it ever, if you don’t want to.”

I groaned, and Edward, thinking it was the pain in my hand that bothered me, pulled me faster toward the house.

My hand was broken, but there wasn’t any serious damage, just a tiny fissure in one knuckle. I didn’t want a cast, and Carlisle said I’d be fine in a brace if I promised to keep it on. I promised.

Edward could tell I was out of it as Carlisle worked to fit a brace carefully to my hand. He worried aloud a few times that I was in pain, but I assured him that that wasn’t it.

As if I needed — or even had room for — one more thing to worry about.

All of Jasper’s stories about newly created vampires had been percolating in my head since he’d explained his past. Now those stories jumped into sharp focus with the news of his and Emmett’s wager. I wondered randomly what they were betting. What was a motivating prize when you had everything?

I’d always known that I would be different. I hoped that I would be as strong as Edward said I would be. Strong and fast and, most of all, beautiful. Someone who could stand next to Edward and feel like she belonged there.

I’d been trying not to think too much about the other things that I would be. Wild. Bloodthirsty. Maybe I would not be able to stop myself from killing people. Strangers, people who had never harmed me. People like the growing number of victims in Seattle, who’d had families and friends and futures. People who’d had lives. And I could be the monster who took that away from them.

But, in truth, I could handle that part — because I trusted Edward, trusted him absolutely, to keep me from doing anything I would regret. I knew he’d take me to Antarctica and hunt penguins if I asked him to. And I would do whatever it took to be a good person. A good vampire. That thought would have made me giggle, if not for this new worry.

Because, if I really were somehow like that — like the nightmarish images of newborns that Jasper had painted in my head — could I possibly be me? And if all I wanted was to kill people, what would happen to the things I wanted now?

Edward was so obsessed with me not missing anything while I was human. Usually, it seemed kind of silly. There weren’t many human experiences that I worried about missing. As long as I got to be with Edward, what else could I ask for?

I stared at his face while he watched Carlisle fix my hand. There was nothing in this world that I wanted more than him. Would that, could that, change?

Was there a human experience that I was not willing to give up?

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

16. EPOCH

“I HAVE NOTHING TO WEAR!” I MOANED TO MYSELF.

Every item of clothing I owned was strewn across my bed; my drawers and closets were bare. I stared into the empty recesses, willing something suitable to appear.

My khaki skirt lay over the back of the rocking chair, waiting for me to discover something that went with it just exactly right. Something that would make me look beautiful and grown up. Something that said special occasion. I was coming up empty.

It was almost time to go, and I was still wearing my favorite old sweats. Unless I could find something better here — and the odds weren’t looking good at this point — I was going to graduate in them.

I scowled at the pile of clothes on my bed.

The kicker was that I knew exactly what I would have worn if it were still available — my kidnapped red blouse. I punched the wall with my good hand.

“Stupid, thieving, annoying vampire!” I growled.

“What did I do?” Alice demanded.

She was leaning casually beside the open window as if she’d been there the whole time.

“Knock, knock,” she added with a grin.

“Is it really so hard to wait for me to get the door?”

She threw a flat, white box onto my bed. “I’m just passing through. I thought you might need something to wear.”

I looked at the big package lying on top of my unsatisfying wardrobe and grimaced.

“Admit it,” Alice said. “I’m a lifesaver.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” I muttered. “Thanks.”

“Well, it’s nice to get something right for a change. You don’t know how irritating it is — missing things the way I have been. I feel so useless. So . . . normal.” She cringed in horror of the word.

“I can’t imagine how awful that must feel. Being normal? Ugh.”

She laughed. “Well, at least this makes up for missing your annoying thief — now I just have to figure out what I’m not seeing in Seattle.”

When she said the words that way — putting the two situations together in one sentence — right then it clicked. The elusive something that had been bothering me for days, the important connection that I couldn’t quite put together, suddenly became clear. I stared at her, my face frozen with whatever expression was already in place.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” she asked. She sighed when I didn’t move immediately, and tugged the top of the box off herself. She pulled something out and held it up, but I couldn’t concentrate on what it was. “Pretty, don’t you think? I picked blue, because I know it’s Edward’s favorite on you.”