I wondered what had surprised her most: the light colors, the vast openness of the space, the wall of windows? It was all very carefully designed—by Esme—not to feel like some kind of fortress or asylum.
I could hazard what a normal human would have predicted. “No coffins, no piled skulls in the corners; I don’t even think we have cobwebs… what a disappointment this must be for you.”
She didn’t react to my joke. “It’s so light… so open.”
“It’s the one place we never have to hide.”
While I’d been focused on her, the song I was playing had strayed back to its roots. I found myself in the middle of the bleakest moment—the moment when the obvious truth was unavoidable: Bella was perfect as she was. Any interference from my world was a tragedy.
It was too late to save the song. I let it end as it had before, with that heartbreak.
Sometimes it was so easy to believe that Bella and I were right together. In the moment, when impulsivity led, and everything came so naturally… I could believe. But whenever I looked at it logically, without allowing emotion to trump reason, it was clear that I could only hurt her.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Her eyes were swimming in tears. While I watched, she quickly wiped her fingers across her lower lids, rubbing the moisture away.
This was the second time I’d seen Bella cry. The first time, I’d hurt her. Not intentionally, but still, by implying we could never be together, I’d caused her pain.
Now she cried because the music I’d created for her had touched her. Tears caused by pleasure. I wondered how much of this unspoken language she had understood.
One tear still glistened in the corner of her left eye, shining in the brightness of the room. A tiny, clear piece of her, an ephemeral diamond. Acting on some strange instinct, I reached out to catch it with my fingertip. Round on my skin, it sparkled as my hand moved. I swiftly touched my finger to my tongue, tasting her tear, absorbing this minute particle of her.
Carlisle had spent many years attempting to understand our immortal anatomy; it was a difficult task, based mostly on assumption and observation. Vampire cadavers were not available for study.
His best interpretation of our life systems was that our internal workings must be microscopically porous. Though we could swallow anything, only blood was accepted by our bodies. That blood was absorbed into our muscles and provided fuel. When the fuel was depleted, our thirst intensified to encourage us to replenish our supply. Nothing besides blood seemed to move through us at all.
I swallowed Bella’s tear. Perhaps it would never leave my body. After she left me, after all the lonely years had passed, maybe I would always have this piece of her inside me.
She stared at me curiously, but I had no sane way to explain. Instead, I returned to her earlier curiosity.
“Do you want to see the rest of the house?” I offered.
“No coffins?” she double-checked.
I laughed and stood, pulling her up from the piano bench. “No coffins.”
I led her upstairs to the second floor; she’d seen most of the first, all but the unused kitchen and the dining room were visible from the front door. As we climbed, her interest was evident. She studied everything—the railing, the pale wood floors, the picture-frame paneling that lined the hallway at the top. It was like she was preparing for an exam. I named the owner of each room we passed, and she nodded after each designation, ready for the quiz.
I was about to round the corner and follow the next flight of stairs up, but Bella stopped suddenly. I looked to see what she was staring at so bemusedly. Ah.
“You can laugh,” I said. “It is sort of ironic.”
She didn’t laugh. She stretched out her hand as if she wished to touch the thick oak cross that hung there, dark and somber against the lighter wood behind it, but her fingertips didn’t make contact.
“It must be very old,” Bella murmured.
I shrugged. “Early sixteen thirties, more or less.”
She stared up at me, her head tilted to one side. “Why do you keep this here?”
“Nostalgia. It belonged to Carlisle’s father.”
“He collected antiques?” she suggested, sounding as if she already knew her guess was wrong.
“No,” I answered. “He carved this himself. It hung on the wall above the pulpit in the vicarage where he preached.”
Bella looked up at the cross, her stare intense. She didn’t move for so long that I started to get anxious again.
“Are you all right?” I murmured.
“How old is Carlisle?” she shot back.
I sighed, trying to quell the old panic. Would this story be the one that would be too much? I scrutinized every minute muscle twitch in her face as I explained.
“He just celebrated his three hundred and sixty-second birthday.” Or close enough. Carlisle had chosen a day for Esme’s sake, but it was only his best guess. “Carlisle was born in London, in the sixteen forties, he believes. Time wasn’t marked as accurately then, for the common people anyway. It was just before Cromwell’s rule, though. He was the only son of an Anglican pastor. His mother died giving birth to him. His father was an intolerant man. As the Protestants came into power, he was enthusiastic in his persecution of Roman Catholics and other religions. He also believed very strongly in the reality of evil. He led hunts for witches, werewolves… and vampires.”
She’d been keeping up a good charade for the most part, almost as if she were dissociating from the facts. But when I spoke the word vampires, her shoulders stiffened and she held her breath for an extra second.
“They burned a lot of innocent people. Of course the real creatures that he sought were not so easy to catch.” This still haunted Carlisle—the innocents his father had murdered. And even more, those murders Carlisle had been unwillingly involved in. I was glad for his sake that the memories were blurred and always fading more.
I knew the stories of Carlisle’s human years as well as I knew my own. As I described his ill-fated discovery of an ancient London coven, I wondered if this would sound real to her at all. This was irrelevant history, set in a country she’d never seen, separated from her own existence by so many years that she had no context for it.
She seemed spellbound, though, as I described the attack that had infected Carlisle and killed his associates, carefully leaving out the details I’d rather she didn’t dwell on. When the vampire, driven by thirst, had wheeled around and fallen on his pursuers, he’d only slashed Carlisle twice with his venom-covered teeth: once across the palm of his outstretched hand, and once through his bicep. It had been a melee, the vampire struggling to quickly subdue four men before the rest of the mob got too close. After the fact, Carlisle had theorized that the vampire was hoping to drain them all, but he chose self-preservation over a more bounteous meal, grabbing the men he could carry and running. It was not self-preservation from the mob, of course; those fifty men with their crude weapons were no more dangerous to him than a kaleidoscope of butterflies. However, the Volturi were less than a thousand miles away. Their laws had been established for a millennium by this point, and their demand that every immortal exercise discretion for the benefit of all was universally accepted. The story of a vampire sighting in London, attested to by fifty witnesses with drained corpses as proof, would not have gone over well in Volterra.
The nature of Carlisle’s wounds was unfortunate. The gash in his hand was far from any major vessels, the slash in his arm had missed both the brachial artery and the basilic vein. This meant a much slower spread of the venom, and a longer transition period. As the conversion from mortal to immortal was the most painful thing any of us had ever experienced, an extended version was not ideal, to say the least.
I’d known the pain of that same extended version. Carlisle had been… unsure when he decided to change me into his first companion. He’d spent a great deal of time with other, more experienced vampires—the Volturi included—and he knew that a better placed bite would result in a quicker conversion. However, he’d never found another vampire like himself. All the others were obsessed with blood and power. No one else craved a kinder, more familial life as he did. He wondered whether his slow conversion and the weak entry points of his infection had been somehow responsible for the difference. So when creating his first son, he chose to imitate his own wounds. He’d always felt bad about that, especially as he later found that the method of conversion actually had no bearing on the personality and desires of the new immortal.
He hadn’t had time to experiment when he found Esme. She was much closer to death than I had been. To save her, it had been imperative to get as much venom into her system as close to her heart as possible. All in all, a much more frenzied effort than it had been with me—and yet Esme was the gentlest of us all.
And Carlisle the strongest. I now told Bella what I could about his extraordinarily disciplined conversion. I found myself editing things that perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t want to dwell on Carlisle’s excruciating pain. Maybe, given her obvious curiosity about the process, it would have been a good thing to describe; perhaps it would have deterred her from wanting to know more.
“It was over then,” I explained, “and he realized what he had become.”
All the while, lost in my own thoughts as I told the familiar tale, I’d been observing her reactions. For the most part, she kept the same expression fixed on her face; I think she meant it to look like attentive interest, totally devoid of any unnecessary emotional recoils. However, she held herself too stiffly for her ploy to be believable. Her curiosity was real, but I wanted to know what she really thought, not what she wanted me to think she thought.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she answered automatically. But her mask slipped a little bit. Still, all I could read on her face was a desire to know more. So this story hadn’t been enough to frighten her away.
“I expect you have a few more questions for me.”
She grinned, totally self-possessed, seemingly fearless. “A few.”
I smiled back. “Come on, then, I’ll show you.”
20. CARLISLE
WE WALKED BACK ALONG THE HALL TO CARLISLE’S OFFICE. I PAUSED AT the door, waiting for his invitation.
“Come in,” Carlisle said.
I led her inside and watched her animatedly examine this new room. It was darker than the rest of the house; the deep mahogany wood reminded him of his earliest home. Her eyes ran across the rows and rows of books. I knew her well enough to see that the sight of so many books in one room was something of a dream to her.
Carlisle marked the page in the one he was reading and then stood to welcome us.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
Of course, he’d heard all our conversation in the hall, and he knew we were here for the next installment. He wasn’t bothered by my sharing his story; he didn’t seem surprised that I would tell her everything.
“I wanted to show Bella some of our history. Well, your history, actually.”
“We didn’t mean to disturb you,” Bella said quietly.
“Not at all,” Carlisle assured her. “Where are you going to start?”
“The Waggoner,” I said.
I put one hand on her shoulder and turned her gently to face the wall behind us. I heard her heartbeat react to my touch, and then Carlisle’s almost silent laugh at her reaction.
Interesting, he thought.
I watched Bella’s eyes widen as she took in the gallery wall of Carlisle’s office. I could imagine the way it might disorient a person seeing it for the first time. There were seventy-three works, in all sizes, mediums, and colors, crammed together like a wall-sized puzzle with only rectangular pieces. Her gaze couldn’t find anywhere to settle.
I took her hand and led her to the beginning. Carlisle followed. As on the page of a book, the story began at the far left. It was not a showy piece, monochromatic and maplike. In fact, it was part of a map, hand-painted by an amateur cartographer, one of the very few originals that had survived the centuries.
Her brows furrowed.
“London in the sixteen fifties,” I explained.
“The London of my youth,” Carlisle added from a few feet behind us. Bella flinched, surprised by his closeness. Of course she wouldn’t have heard his movements. I squeezed her hand, trying to reassure her. This house was a strange place for her to be, but nothing here would hurt her.
“Will you tell the story?” I asked him, and Bella turned to see what he would say.
I’m sorry, I wish I could.
He smiled at Bella and spoke aloud to her. “I would, but I’m actually running a bit late. The hospital called this morning—Dr. Snow is taking a sick day. Besides”—he looked to me—“you know the stories as well as I do.”
Carlisle smiled warmly at Bella as he exited. Once he had gone, she turned back to examine the small painting again.
“What happened then?” she asked after a moment. “When he realized what had happened to him?”
Automatically, I looked to a larger painting, one column over and one row down. It wasn’t a cheerful image: a gloomy, deserted landscape, a sky thick with oppressive clouds, colors that seemed to suggest the sun would never return. Carlisle had seen this piece through the window of a minor castle in Scotland. It so perfectly reminded him of his life at its darkest point that he’d wanted to keep it, though the old memory was painful. To him, the existence of this devastated landscape meant that someone else had once understood.
“When he knew what he had become, he rebelled against it. He tried to destroy himself. But that’s not easily done.”
“How?” she gasped.
I kept my eyes on the evocative emptiness of the painting as I described Carlisle’s suicide attempts.
“He jumped from great heights. He tried to drown himself in the ocean… but he was young to the new life, and very strong. It is amazing that he was able to resist… feeding”—I glanced quickly at her but she was staring at the painting—“while he was still so new. The instinct is more powerful then, it takes over everything. But he was so repelled by himself that he had the strength to try to kill himself with starvation.”
“Is that possible?” she whispered.
“No, there are very few ways we can be killed.”
She opened her mouth to ask the most obvious follow-up, but I spoke quickly to distract her.
“So he grew very hungry, and eventually weak. He strayed as far as he could from the human populace, recognizing that his willpower was weakening, too. For months he wandered by night, seeking the loneliest places, loathing himself.…”
I described the night he found another way to live, the compromise of animal blood, and his recovery to a rational creature. Then leaving for the continent—
“He swam to France?” she interrupted, disbelieving.
“People swim the Channel all the time, Bella,” I pointed out.
“That’s true, I guess. It just sounded funny in that context. Go on.”
“Swimming is easy for us—”
“Everything is easy for you,” she complained.
I smiled at her, waiting to be sure she was done.
She frowned. “I won’t interrupt again, I promise.”
My smile widened, knowing what her reaction would be to the next bit.
“Because, technically, we don’t need to breathe.”
“You—”
I laughed and put one finger against her lips. “No, no, you promised. Do you want to hear the story or not?”
Her lips moved against my touch. “You can’t spring something like that on me, and then expect me not to say anything.”
I let my hand fall to rest against the side of her neck.
“You don’t have to breathe?”
I shrugged. “No, it’s not necessary. Just a habit.”
“How long can you go… without breathing?”
“Indefinitely, I suppose; I don’t know.” The longest I’d ever gone was a few days, all of it underwater. “It gets a bit uncomfortable—being without a sense of smell.”
“A bit uncomfortable,” she repeated in a fragile voice, barely over a whisper.
Her eyebrows were drawn together, her eyes narrowed, her shoulders rigid. The exchange, which had been funny to me a moment before, was abruptly humorless.
We were so different. Though we’d once belonged to the same species, we shared only a few superficial traits now. She must finally feel the weight of the distortion, the distance between us. I lifted my hand from her skin and dropped it to my side. My alien touch would only make that gap more obvious.
I stared at her troubled expression, waiting to see if this would be one truth too many. After a few long seconds, the stress in her features eased. Her eyes focused on my face, and a different kind of unease marked hers.
She reached up with no hesitation to press her fingers against my cheek. “What is it?”
Concern for me again. So apparently this wasn’t the too much I’d been fearing.
“I keep waiting for it to happen.”
She was confused. “For what to happen?”
I took a deep breath. “I know that at some point, something I tell you or something you see is going to be too much. And then you’ll run away from me, screaming as you go.” I tried to smile at her, but I didn’t do a very good job. “I won’t stop you. I want this to happen, because I want you to be safe. And yet, I want to be with you. The two desires are impossible to reconcile.…”
She squared her shoulders, her chin jutted out. “I’m not running anywhere,” she promised.
I had to smile at her brave façade. “We’ll see.”
“So, go on,” she insisted, scowling a little at my doubtful response. “Carlisle was swimming to France.”
I measured her mood for one more second, then turned back to the gallery. This time I pointed her toward the most ostentatious of all the paintings, the brightest, the most garish. It was meant to be a portrayal of the final judgment, but half the thrashing figures seemed to be involved in some kind of orgy, the other half in a violent, bloody combat. Only the judges, suspended above the pandemonium on marble balustrades, were serene.
This one had been a gift. It wasn’t something Carlisle would have ever picked out for himself. But when the Volturi had pressed upon him the souvenir of their time together, it wasn’t as if he could have said no.
He had some affection for the gaudy piece—and for the distant vampire overlords depicted in it—so he kept it with his other favorites. They had been very kind to him in many ways, after all. And Esme liked the small portrait of Carlisle hidden in the midst of the mayhem.
While I explained Carlisle’s first few years in Europe, Bella stared at the painting, trying to make sense of all the figures and swirling colors. I found my voice becoming less casual. It was hard to think of Carlisle’s quest to subdue his nature, to become a blessing to mankind rather than a parasite, without feeling again all the awe his journey deserved.
I’d always envied Carlisle’s perfect control but, at the same time, believed it was impossible for me to duplicate. I realized now that I’d chosen the lazy way, the path of least resistance, admiring him greatly, but never putting in the effort to become more like him. This crash course in restraint that Bella was teaching me might have been less fraught if I’d worked harder to improve in the last seven decades.
Bella was staring at me now. I tapped the relevant scene in front of us to refocus her attention on the story.
“He was studying in Italy when he discovered the others there. They were much more civilized and educated than the wraiths of the London sewers.”
She concentrated on the tableau I indicated, and then laughed suddenly, a little shocked. She’d recognized Carlisle despite the robe-like costume he was painted in.
“Solimena was greatly inspired by Carlisle’s friends. He often painted them as gods. Aro, Marcus, Caius.” I gestured to each as I said their names. “Nighttime patrons of the arts.”
Her finger hesitated just above the canvas. “What happened to them?”
“They’re still there. As they have been for who knows how many millennia. Carlisle stayed with them only for a short time, just a few decades. He greatly admired their civility, their refinement, but they persisted in trying to cure his aversion to ‘his natural food source,’ as they called it. They tried to persuade him, and he tried to persuade them, to no avail. At that point, Carlisle decided to try the New World. He dreamed of finding others like himself. He was very lonely, you see.”
I touched only lightly on the following decades, as Carlisle struggled with his isolation and finally began to consider a course of action. The story turned more personal, and also more repetitive. She’d heard some of this before: Carlisle finding me on my deathbed and making the decision that had changed my destiny. And now, that decision was affecting Bella’s destiny, too.
“And so we’ve come full circle,” I concluded.
“Have you always stayed with Carlisle, then?” she asked.
With unerring instinct, she’d found the one question I least wanted to answer.
“Almost always,” I answered.
I placed my hand on her waist to guide her out of Carlisle’s office, wishing I could also guide her away from this train of thought. But I knew she was not going to let that stand. Sure enough…
“Almost?”
I sighed, unwilling. But honesty must take precedence over shame. “Well,” I confessed, “I had a typical bout of rebellious adolescence—about ten years after I was born, created, whatever you want to call it. I wasn’t sold on his life of abstinence, and I resented him for curbing my appetite. So I went off on my own for a time.”
“Really?” Her intonation was not what I expected. Rather than being disgusted, she sounded eager to hear more. This didn’t match her reaction in the meadow, when she’d seemed so surprised that I was guilty of murder, as though that truth had never occurred to her. Perhaps she’d grown used to the idea.
We started up the stairs. Now she seemed indifferent to her surroundings; she only watched me.
“That doesn’t repulse you?” I asked.
She considered that for half a second. “No.”
I found her answer upsetting. “Why not?” I nearly demanded.
“I guess… it sounds reasonable?” Her explanation ended on a higher pitch, like a question.
Reasonable.I laughed, the sound too harsh.
But instead of telling her all the ways it was neither reasonable nor forgivable, I found myself giving a defense.