At three months, Renesmee could have been a big one-year-old, or a small two-yearold. She wasn’t shaped exactly like a toddler; she was leaner and more graceful, her proportions were more even, like an adult’s. Her bronze ringlets hung to her waist; I couldn’t bear to cut them, even if Alice would have allowed it. Renesmee could speak with flawless grammar and articulation, but she rarely bothered, preferring to simply
show
people what she wanted. She could not only walk but run and dance. She could even read.
I’d been reading Tennyson to her one night, because the flow and rhythm of his poetry seemed restful. (I had to search constantly for new material; Renesmee didn’t like repetition in her bedtime stories as other children supposedly did, and she had no patience for picture books.) She reached up to touch my cheek, the image in her mind one of us, only with
her
holding the book. I gave it to her, smiling.
“ ‘There is sweet music here,’” she read without hesitation, “‘that softer falls than petals from blown roses on the grass, or night-dews on still waters between walls of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass—’ ”
My hand was robotic as I took the book back.
“If you read, how will you fall asleep?” I asked in a voice that had barely escaped shaking.
By Carlisle’s calculations, the growth of her body was gradually slowing; her mind continued to race on ahead. Even if the rate of decrease held steady, she’d still be an adult in no more than four years.
Four years. And an old woman by fifteen.
Just fifteen years of life.
But she was so
healthy
. Vital, bright, glowing, and happy. Her conspicuous well-being made it easy for me to be happy with her in the moment and leave the future for tomorrow.
Carlisle and Edward discussed our options for the future from every angle in low voices that I tried not to hear. They never had these discussions when Jacob was around, because there
was
one sure way to halt aging, and that wasn’t something Jacob was likely to be excited about. I wasn’t.
Too dangerous!
my instincts screamed at me. Jacob and Renesmee seemed alike in so many ways, both half-and-half beings, two things at the same time. And all the werewolf lore insisted that vampire venom was a death sentence rather than a course to immortality. . . .
Carlisle and Edward had exhausted the research they could do from a distance, and now we were preparing to follow old legends at their source. We were going back to Brazil, starting there. The Ticunas had legends about children like Renesmee.… If other children like her had ever existed, perhaps some tale of the life span of half-mortal children still lingered. . . .
The only real question left was exactly when we would go.
I was the holdup. A small part of it was that I wanted to stay near Forks until after the holidays, for Charlie’s sake. But more than that, there was a different journey that I knew had to come first—that was the clear priority. Also, it had to be a solo trip.
This was the only argument that Edward and I had gotten in since I’d become a vampire. The main point of contention was the “solo” part. But the facts were what they were, and my plan was the only one that made rational sense. I had to go see the Volturi, and I had to do it absolutely alone.
Even freed from old nightmares, from any dreams at all, it was impossible to forget the Volturi. Nor did they leave us without reminders.
Until the day that Aro’s present showed up, I didn’t know that Alice had sent a wedding announcement to the Volturi leaders; we’d been far away on Esme’s island when she’d seen a vision of Volturi soldiers—Jane and Alec, the devastatingly powerful twins, among them. Caius was planning to send a hunting party to see if I was still human, against their edict (because I knew about the secret vampire world, I either must join it or be silenced… permanently). So Alice had mailed the announcement, seeing that this would delay them as they deciphered the meaning behind it. But they would come eventually. That was certain.
The present itself was not overtly threatening. Extravagant, yes, almost frightening in that very extravagance. The threat was in the parting line of Aro’s congratulatory note, written in black ink on a square of heavy, plain white paper in Aro’s own hand:
I so look forward to seeing the new Mrs. Cullen in person.
The gift was presented in an ornately carved, ancient wooden box inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, ornamented with a rainbow of gemstones. Alice said the box itself was a priceless treasure, that it would have outshone just about any piece of jewelry besides the one inside it.
“I always wondered where the crown jewels disappeared to after John of England pawned them in the thirteenth century,” Carlisle said. “I suppose it doesn’t surprise me that the Volturi have their share.”
The necklace was simple—gold woven into a thick rope of a chain, almost scaled, like a smooth snake that would curl close around the throat. One jewel hung suspended from the rope: a white diamond the size of a golf ball.
The unsubtle reminder in Aro’s note interested me more than the jewel. The Volturi needed to see that I was immortal, that the Cullens had been obedient to the Volturi’s orders, and they needed to see this
soon
. They could not be allowed near Forks. There was only one way to keep our life here safe.
“You’re not going alone,” Edward had insisted through his teeth, his hands clenching into fists.
“They won’t hurt me,” I’d said as soothingly as I could manage, forcing my voice to sound sure. “They have no reason to. I’m a vampire. Case closed.”
“No. Absolutely no.”
“Edward, it’s the only way to protect her.”
And he hadn’t been able to argue with that. My logic was watertight.
Even in the short time I’d known Aro, I’d been able to see that he was a collector—and his most prized treasures were his
living
pieces. He coveted beauty, talent, and rarity in his immortal followers more than any jewel locked in his vaults. It was unfortunate enough that he’d begun to covet Alice’s and Edward’s abilities. I would give him no more reason to be jealous of Carlisle’s family. Renesmee was beautiful and gifted and unique—she was one of a kind. He could not be allowed to see her, not even through someone’s thoughts.
And I was the only one whose thoughts he could not hear. Of course I would go alone.
Alice did not see any trouble with my trip, but she was worried by the indistinct quality of her visions. She said they were sometimes similarly hazy when there were outside decisions that
might
conflict but that had not been solidly resolved. This uncertainty made Edward, already hesitant, extremely opposed to what I had to do. He wanted to come with me as far as my connection in London, but I wouldn’t leave Renesmee without
both
her parents. Carlisle was coming instead. It made both Edward and me a little more relaxed, knowing that Carlisle would be only a few hours away from me.
Alice kept searching for the future, but the things she found were unrelated to what she was looking for. A new trend in the stock market; a possible visit of reconciliation from Irina, though her decision was not firm; a snowstorm that wouldn’t hit for another six weeks; a call from Renée (I was practicing my “rough” voice, and getting better at it every day—to Renée’s knowledge, I was still sick, but mending).
We bought the tickets for Italy the day after Renesmee turned three months. I planned for it to be a very short trip, so I hadn’t told Charlie about it. Jacob knew, and he took Edward’s view on things. However, today the argument was about Brazil. Jacob was determined to come with us.
The three of us, Jacob, Renesmee, and I, were hunting together. The diet of animal blood wasn’t Renesmee’s favorite thing—and that was why Jacob was allowed to come along. Jacob had made it a contest between them, and that made her more willing than anything else.
Renesmee was quite clear on the whole good vs. bad as it applied to hunting humans; she just thought that donated blood made a nice compromise. Human food filled her and it seemed compatible with her system, but she reacted to all varieties of solid food with the same martyred endurance I had once given cauliflower and lima beans. Animal blood was better than
that
, at least. She had a competitive nature, and the challenge of beating Jacob made her excited to hunt.
“Jacob,” I said, trying to reason with him again while Renesmee danced ahead of us into the long clearing, searching for a scent she liked. “You’ve got obligations here. Seth, Leah—”
He snorted. “I’m not my pack’s nanny. They’ve all got responsibilities in La Push anyway.”
“Sort of like you? Are you officially dropping out of high school, then? If you’re going to keep up with Renesmee, you’re going to have to study a lot harder.”
“It’s just a sabbatical. I’ll get back to school when things… slow down.”
I lost my concentration on my side of the disagreement when he said that, and we both automatically looked at Renesmee. She was staring at the snowflakes fluttering high above her head, melting before they could stick to the yellowed grass in the long arrowhead-shaped meadow that we were standing in. Her ruffled ivory dress was just a shade darker than the snow, and her reddish-brown curls managed to shimmer, though the sun was buried deeply behind the clouds.
As we watched, she crouched for an instant and then sprang fifteen feet up into the air. Her little hands closed around a flake, and she dropped lightly to her feet. She turned to us with her shocking smile—truly, it wasn’t something you could get used to—and opened her hands to show us the perfectly formed eight-pointed ice star in her palm before it melted.
“Pretty,” Jacob called to her appreciatively. “But I think you’re stalling, Nessie.”
She bounded back to Jacob; he held his arms out at exactly the moment she leaped into them. They had the move perfectly synchronized. She did this when she had something to say. She still preferred not to speak aloud.
Renesmee touched his face, scowling adorably as we all listened to the sound of a small herd of elk moving farther into the wood.
“
Suuuure
you’re not thirsty, Nessie,” Jacob answered a little sarcastically, but more indulgently than anything else. “You’re just afraid I’ll catch the biggest one again!”
She flipped backward out of Jacob’s arms, landing lightly on her feet, and rolled her eyes—she looked so much like Edward when she did that. Then she darted off toward the trees.
“Got it,” Jacob said when I leaned as if to follow. He yanked his t-shirt off as he charged after her into the forest, already trembling. “It doesn’t count if you cheat,” he called to Renesmee.
I smiled at the leaves they left fluttering behind them, shaking my head. Jacob was more a child than Renesmee sometimes.
I paused, giving my hunters a few minutes’ head start. It would be beyond simple to track them, and Renesmee would love to surprise me with the size of her prey. I smiled again.
The narrow meadow was very still, very empty. The fluttering snow was thinning above me, almost gone. Alice had seen that it wouldn’t stick for many weeks.
Usually Edward and I came together on these hunting trips. But Edward was with Carlisle today, planning the trip to Rio, talking behind Jacob’s back.… I frowned. When I returned, I would take Jacob’s side. He
should
come with us. He had as big a stake in this as any of us—his entire life was at stake, just like mine.
While my thoughts were lost in the near future, my eyes swept the mountainside routinely, searching for prey, searching for danger. I didn’t think about it; the urge was an automatic thing.
Or perhaps there
was
a reason for my scanning, some tiny trigger that my razor-sharp senses had caught before I realized it consciously.
As my eyes flitted across the edge of a distant cliff, standing out starkly blue-gray against the green-black forest, a glint of silver—or was it gold?—gripped my attention. My gaze zeroed in on the color that shouldn’t have been there, so far away in the haze that an eagle wouldn’t have been able to make it out. I stared.
She stared back.
That she was a vampire was obvious. Her skin was marble white, the texture a million times smoother than human skin. Even under the clouds, she glistened ever so slightly. If her skin had not given her away, her stillness would have. Only vampires and statues could be so perfectly motionless.
Her hair was pale, pale blond, almost silver. This was the gleam that had caught my eye. It hung straight as a ruler to a blunt edge at her chin, parted evenly down the center.
She was a stranger to me. I was absolutely certain I’d never seen her before, even as a human. None of the faces in my muddy memory were the same as this one. But I knew her at once from her dark golden eyes.
Irina had decided to come after all.
For one moment I stared at her, and she stared back. I wondered if she would guess immediately who I was as well. I half-raised my hand, about to wave, but her lip twisted the tiniest bit, making her face suddenly hostile.
I heard Renesmee’s cry of victory from the forest, heard Jacob’s echoing howl, and saw Irina’s face jerk reflexively to the sound when it echoed to her a few seconds later. Her gaze cut slightly to the right, and I knew what she was seeing. An enormous russet werewolf, perhaps the very one who had killed her Laurent. How long had she been watching us? Long enough to see our affectionate exchange before, I was sure.
Her face spasmed in pain.
Instinctually, I opened my hands in front of me in an apologetic gesture. She turned back to me, and her lip curled back over her teeth. Her jaw unlocked as she growled.
When the faint sound reached me, she had already turned and disappeared into the forest.
“Crap!” I groaned.
I sprinted into the forest after Renesmee and Jacob, unwilling to have them out of my sight. I didn’t know which direction Irina had taken, or exactly how furious she was right now. Vengeance was a common obsession for vampires, one that was not easy to suppress.
Running at full speed, it only took me two seconds to reach them.