"It frightened me. She looked at me with those piercing eyes, and, for one instant, I felt certain that she knew my secret. Then the fever overwhelmed her, and she never regained consciousness. She died within an hour of making her demand.
"I'd spent decades considering the idea of creating a companion for myself. Just one other creature who could really know me, rather than what I pretended to be. But I could never justify it to myself-doing what had been done to me.
"There Edward lay, dying. It was clear that he had only hours left. Beside him, his mother, her face somehow not yet peaceful, not even in death."
Carlisle saw it all again, his memory unblurred by the intervening century. I could see it clearly, too, as he spoke-the despair of the hospital, the overwhelming atmosphere of death. Edward burning with fever, his life slipping away with each tick of the clock . . . I shuddered again, and forced the picture from my mind.
"Elizabeth's words echoed in my head. How could she guess what I could do? Could anyone really want that for her son?
"I looked at Edward. Sick as he was, he was still beautiful. There was something pure and good about his face. The kind of face I would have wanted my son to have.
"After all those years of indecision, I simply acted on a whim. I wheeled his mother to the morgue first, and then I came back for him. No one noticed that he was still breathing. There weren't enough hands, enough eyes, to keep track of half of what the patients needed. The morgue was empty-of the living, at least. I stole him out the back door, and carried him across the rooftops back to my home.
"I wasn't sure what had to be done. I settled for recreating the wounds I'd received myself, so many centuries earlier in London. I felt bad about that later. It was more painful and lingering than necessary.
"I wasn't sorry, though. I've never been sorry that I saved Edward." He shook his head, coming back to the present. He smiled at me. "I suppose I should take you home now."
"I'll do that," Edward said. He came through the shadowy dining room, walking slowly for him. His face was smooth, unreadable, but there was something wrong with his eyes-something he was trying very hard to hide. I felt a spasm of unease in my stomach.
"Carlisle can take me," I said. I looked down at my shirt; the light blue cotton was soaked and spotted with my blood. My right shoulder was covered in thick pink frosting.
"I'm fine." Edward's voice was unemotional. "You'll need to change anyway. You'd give Charlie a heart attack the way you look. I'll have Alice get you something." He strode out the kitchen door again.
I looked at Carlisle anxiously. "He's very upset."
"Yes," Carlisle agreed. "Tonight is exactly the kind of thing that he fears the most. You being put in danger, because of what we are."
"It's not his fault."
"It's not yours, either."
I looked away from his wise, beautiful eyes. I couldn't agree with that.
Carlisle offered me his hand and helped me up from the table. I followed him out into the main room. Esme had come back; she was mopping the floor where I'd fallen-with straight bleach from the smell of it.
"Esme, let me do that." I could feel that my face was bright red again.
"I'm already done." She smiled up at me. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine," I assured her. "Carlisle sews faster than any other doctor I've had."
They both chuckled.
Alice and Edward came in the back doors. Alice hurried to my side, but Edward hung back, his face indecipherable.
"C'mon," Alice said. "I'll get you something less macabre to wear."
She found me a shirt of Esme's that was close to the same color mine had been. Charlie wouldn't notice, I was sure. The long white bandage on my arm didn't look nearly as serious when I was no longer spattered in gore. Charlie was never surprised to see me bandaged.
"Alice," I whispered as she headed back to the door.
"Yes?" She kept her voice low, too, and looked at me curiously, her head cocked to the side.
"How bad is it?" I couldn't be sure if my whispering was a wasted effort. Even though we were upstairs, with the door closed, perhaps he could hear me.
Her face tensed. "I'm not sure yet."
"How's Jasper?"
She sighed. "He's very unhappy with himself. It's all so much more of a challenge for him, and he hates feeling weak."
"It's not his fault. You'll tell him that I'm not mad at him, not at all, won't you?"
"Of course."
Edward was waiting for me by the front door. As I got to the bottom of the staircase, he held it open without a word.
"Take your things!" Alice cried as I walked warily toward Edward. She scooped up the two packages, one half-opened, and my camera from under the piano, and pressed them into my good arm. "You can thank me later, when you've opened them."