“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?