The Twilight Saga Collection part 2(17)

He explained about my missing things, but from the side I was hearing, it sounded like Carlisle had no insights for us.

“Maybe I’ll go . . . ,” Edward said, trailing off as his eyes drifted toward me. “Maybe not. Don’t let Emmett go alone, you know how he gets. At least ask Alice keep an eye on things. We’ll figure this out later.”

He snapped the phone shut. “Where’s the paper?” he asked me.

“Um, I’m not sure. Why?”

“I need to see something. Did Charlie already throw it out?”

“Maybe. . . .”

Edward disappeared.

He was back in half a second, new diamonds in his hair, a wet newspaper in his hands. He spread it out on the table, his eyes scanning quickly across the headlines. He leaned in, intent on something he was reading, one finger tracing passages that interested him most.

“Carlisle’s right . . . yes . . . very sloppy. Young and crazed? Or a death wish?” he muttered to himself.

I went to peek over his shoulder.

The headline of the Seattle Times read: “Murder Epidemic Continues — Police Have No New Leads.”

It was almost the same story Charlie had been complaining about a few weeks ago — the big-city violence that was pushing Seattle up the national murder hot-spot list. It wasn’t exactly the same story, though. The numbers were a lot higher.

“It’s getting worse,” I murmured.

He frowned. “Altogether out of control. This can’t be the work of just one newborn vampire. What’s going on? It’s as if they’ve never heard of the Volturi. Which is possible, I guess. No one has explained the rules to them . . . so who is creating them, then?”

“The Volturi?” I repeated, shuddering.

“This is exactly the kind of thing they routinely wipe out — immortals who threaten to expose us. They just cleaned up a mess like this a few years ago in Atlanta, and it hadn’t gotten nearly this bad. They will intervene soon, very soon, unless we can find some way to calm the situation. I’d really rather they didn’t come to Seattle just now. As long as they’re this close . . . they might decide to check on you.”

I shuddered again. “What can we do?”

“We need to know more before we can decide that. Perhaps if we can talk to these young ones, explain the rules, it can be resolved peacefully.” He frowned, like he didn’t think the chances of that were good. “We’ll wait until Alice has an idea of what’s going on. . . . We don’t want to step in until it’s absolutely necessary. After all, it’s not our responsibility. But it’s good we have Jasper,” he added, almost to himself. “If we are dealing with newborns, he’ll be helpful.”

“Jasper? Why?”

Edward smiled darkly. “Jasper is sort of an expert on young vampires.”

“What do you mean, an expert?”

“You’ll have to ask him — the story is involved.”

“What a mess,” I mumbled.

“It does feel that way, doesn’t it? Like it’s coming at us from all sides these days.” He sighed. “Do you ever think that your life might be easier if you weren’t in love with me?”

“Maybe. It wouldn’t be much of a life, though.”

“For me,” he amended quietly. “And now, I suppose,” he continued with a wry smile, “you have something you want to ask me?”

I stared at him blankly. “I do?”

“Or maybe not.” He grinned. “I was rather under the impression that you’d promised to ask my permission to go to some kind of werewolf soirée tonight.”

“Eavesdropping again?”

He grinned. “Just a bit, at the very end.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to ask you anyway. I figured you had enough to stress about.”

He put his hand under my chin, and held my face so that he could read my eyes. “Would you like to go?”

“It’s no big thing. Don’t worry about it.”

“You don’t have to ask my permission, Bella. I’m not your father — thank heaven for that. Perhaps you should ask Charlie, though.”

“But you know Charlie will say yes.”

“I do have a bit more insight into his probable answer than most people would, it’s true.”

I just stared at him, trying to understand what he wanted, and trying to put out of my mind the yearning I felt to go to La Push so that I wouldn’t be swayed by my own wishes. It was stupid to want to go hang out with a bunch of big idiot wolf-boys right now when there was so much that was frightening and unexplained going on. Of course, that was exactly why I wanted to go. I wanted to escape the death threats, for just a few hours . . . to be the less-mature, more-reckless Bella who could laugh it off with Jacob, if only briefly. But that didn’t matter.