She walked a few steps forward deliberately this time and asked a few brief questions, which he responded to tensely. Then he became the questioner—one quick query. She hesitated and then slowly shook her head. When he spoke again, his voice was so agonized that I looked up at him in shock. His face was drawn with pain.

In answer, she walked slowly forward until she was close enough to lay her small hand on top of mine, over my stomach. She spoke one word in Portuguese.

“Morte,” she sighed quietly. Then she turned, her shoulders bent as if the conversation had aged her, and left the room.

I knew enough Spanish for that one.

Edward was frozen again, staring after her with the tortured expression fixed on his face. A few moments later, I heard a boat’s engine putter to life and then fade into the distance.

Edward did not move until I started for the bathroom. Then his hand caught my shoulder.

“Where are you going?” His voice was a whisper of pain.

“To brush my teeth again.”

“Don’t worry about what she said. It’s nothing but legends, old lies for the sake of entertainment.”

“I didn’t understand anything,” I told him, though it wasn’t entirely true. As if I could discount something because it was a legend. My life was circled by legend on every side. They were all true.

“I packed your toothbrush. I’ll get it for you.”

He walked ahead of me to the bedroom.

“Are we leaving soon?” I called after him.

“As soon as you’re done.”

He waited for my toothbrush to repack it, pacing silently around the bedroom. I handed it to him when I was finished.

“I’ll get the bags into the boat.”

“Edward—”

He turned back. “Yes?”

I hesitated, trying to think of some way to get a few seconds alone. “Could you… pack some of the food? You know, in case I get hungry again.”

“Of course,” he said, his eyes suddenly soft. “Don’t worry about anything. We’ll get to Carlisle in just a few hours, really. This will all be over soon.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

He turned and left the room, one big suitcase in each hand.

I whirled and scooped up the phone he’d left on the counter. It was very unlike him to forget things—to forget that Gustavo was coming, to leave his phone lying here. He was so stressed he was barely himself.

I flipped it open and scrolled through the preprogrammed numbers. I was glad he had the sound turned off, afraid that he would catch me. Would he be at the boat now? Or back already? Would he hear me from the kitchen if I whispered?

I found the number I wanted, one I had never called before in my life. I pressed the “send” button and crossed my fingers.

“Hello?” the voice like golden wind chimes answered.

“Rosalie?” I whispered. “It’s Bella. Please. You have to help me.

Life sucks, and then you die.

Yeah, I should be so lucky.

“Jeez, Paul, don’t you freaking have a home of your own?”

Paul, lounging across my whole couch, watching some stupid baseball game on my crappy TV, just grinned at me and then—real slow—he lifted one Dorito from the bag in his lap and wedged it into his mouth in one piece.

“You better’ve brought those with you.”

Crunch. “Nope,” he said while chewing. “Your sister said to go ahead and help myself to anything I wanted.”

I tried to make my voice sound like I wasn’t about to punch him. “Is Rachel here now?”

It didn’t work. He heard where I was going and shoved the bag behind his back. The bag crackled as he smashed it into the cushion. The chips crunched into pieces. Paul’s hands came up in fists, close to his face like a boxer.

“Bring it, kid. I don’t need Rachel to protect me.”

I snorted. “Right. Like you wouldn’t go crying to her first chance.”

He laughed and relaxed into the sofa, dropping his hands. “I’m not going to go tattle to a girl. If you got in a lucky hit, that would be just between the two of us. And vice versa, right?”

Nice of him to give me an invitation. I made my body slump like I’d given up. “Right.”

His eyes shifted to the TV.

I lunged.

His nose made a very satisfying crunching sound of its own when my fist connected. He tried to grab me, but I danced out of the way before he could find a hold, the ruined bag of Doritos in my left hand.

“You broke my nose, idiot.”

“Just between us, right, Paul?”

I went to put the chips away. When I turned around, Paul was repositioning his nose before it could set crooked. The blood had already stopped; it looked like it had no source as it trickled down his lips and off his chin. He cussed, wincing as he pulled at the cartilage.

“You are such a pain, Jacob. I swear, I’d rather hang out with Leah.”

“Ouch. Wow, I bet Leah’s really going to love to hear that you want to spend some quality time with her. It’ll just warm the cockles of her heart.”

“You’re going to forget I said that.”

“Of course. I’m sure it won’t slip out.”

“Ugh,” he grunted, and then settled back into the couch, wiping the leftover blood on the collar of his t-shirt. “You’re fast, kid. I’ll give you that.” He turned his attention back to the fuzzy game.

I stood there for a second, and then I stalked off to my room, muttering about alien abductions.

Back in the day, you could count on Paul for a fight pretty much whenever. You didn’t have to hit him then—any mild insult would do. It didn’t take a lot to flip him out of control. Now, of course, when I really wanted a good snarling, ripping, break-the-trees-down match, he had to be all mellow.

Wasn’t it bad enough that yet another member of the pack had imprinted—because, really, that made four of ten now! When would it stop? Stupid myth was supposed to be rare, for crying out loud! All this mandatory love-at-first-sight was completely sickening!

Did it have to be my sister? Did it have to be Paul?

When Rachel’d come home from Washington State at the end of the summer semester—graduated early, the nerd—my biggest worry’d been that it would be hard keeping the secret around her. I wasn’t used to covering things up in my own home. It made me real sympathetic to kids like Embry and Collin, whose parents didn’t know they were werewolves. Embry’s mom thought he was going through some kind of rebellious stage. He was permanently grounded for constantly sneaking out, but, of course, there wasn’t much he could do about that. She’d check his room every night, and every night it would be empty again. She’d yell and he’d take it in silence, and then go through it all again the next day. We’d tried to talk Sam into giving Embry a break and letting his mom in on the gig, but Embry’d said he didn’t mind. The secret was too important.

So I’d been all geared up to be keeping that secret. And then, two days after Rachel got home, Paul ran into her on the beach. Bada bing, bada boom—true love! No secrets necessary when you found your other half, and all that imprinting werewolf garbage.

Rachel got the whole story. And I got Paul as a brother-in-law someday. I knew Billy wasn’t much thrilled about it, either. But he handled it better than I did. ’Course, he did escape to the Clearwaters’ more often than usual these days. I didn’t see where that was so much better. No Paul, but plenty of Leah.

I wondered—would a bullet through my temple actually kill me or just leave a really big mess for me to clean up?