The peas could not touch the corn. The square of mystery meat, sweating a pale grease, had to maintain a strict perimeter. I nudged a single pea back into formation with the tip of my plastic fork. Control. It was the only thing that made the noise bearable. Not the audible noise—the clatter of trays and adolescent shrieking was simple enough to filter—but the other noise. The sticky, frantic, needy thoughts of two hundred human teenagers. It was a swamp of insecurity and cheap lust.
Cafeteria food was an insult to the concept of sustenance. My father would have wept. He believed even the simplest meal was a sacrament. But I ate it. I chewed the cardboard pizza crust and swallowed the watery milk, and with every bite, I tethered myself to the scent of humanity. A necessary deception.
Bella didn’t see me yet. She was at her usual table, picking at a salad. A new group surrounded her. Pale, still, impossibly beautiful. The Cullens. I didn’t need to be told their names; I had plucked them from the buzzing minds of every other student in this building for the past week. From my seat in the far corner, I could feel the low thrum of their existence, a harmony distinct from the human static. They were stone and ice and latent violence.
My skin prickled, a familiar heat flushing just beneath the surface. I pressed my fingers to the back of my own hand. Hot, always hot. But firm, unyielding as granite beneath. A paradox wrapped in a hoodie.
Time to stop observing.
I stood, my tray forgotten. Each step was silent. I navigated the maze of tables, my gaze locked on the back of Bella’s head. The scent of her—freesia and the clean, bookish smell of her home—was a beacon in the olfactory chaos. She was hunched over, talking to the bronze-haired boy, Edward. Her thoughts were a nervous flutter, guarded and hoping.
I stopped directly behind her.
“Figured you’d be sitting with the pretty people, Bells.”
She froze. The fork in her hand clattered onto her plate. She turned so fast her long brown hair whipped across her shoulder. Her eyes, wide and chocolate brown, flew to my face. A decade of shared history flashed between us. Summers in Volterra before my father got too sick, whispered secrets over crackling long-distance phone lines, the unspoken grief that now hung between us.
“Shania?” Her voice was a breath. “Oh my god.” Then her expression collapsed, joy warring with sudden, sharp sorrow. “No. That means… Marco.”
She didn’t need to say more. I gave a single, sharp nod. Her bottom lip trembled, and she launched herself out of her seat and into my arms. I held her tight, the heat of my body a stark contrast to the cool Forks air clinging to her clothes. Around me, the world had gone quiet. The human chatter faded into a dull roar. The only thing I could hear was the sudden, sharp unison of five silent minds.
Over Bella’s shoulder, I met their eyes. Golden, all of them. Except they weren’t looking at my eyes. Not yet. They were looking at the point of contact, where Bella’s normal, fragile human body was pressed against mine.
Jasper, the blond one who looked like he was in constant pain, flinched.
*Wrong. The temperature is all wrong for a human.* His mental voice was a tightly coiled whip of analysis. *But there’s no… feeling. It’s like a wall. A blank spot in the room.*
He was right. He couldn’t feel my emotions. I didn’t have them in a way he’d recognize. I let him strain, a fisherman casting his net into an empty sea.
Bella pulled back, wiping her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Shani. I can’t believe it. When?”
“A month ago. It was fast,” I said, my voice low. It was the truth. For a human, anyway. “Found your letters. Figured I still had to graduate.” I forced a small, wry smile. “Charlie’s letting me stay. He owes my dad a few decades’ worth of favors.”
It was then that Bella moved aside, and they all saw me clearly. And all five minds snapped to my eyes.
*Red. Like a newborn’s.* Rosalie, the blonde goddess, was first. Her thought was pure, undiluted revulsion. Her stunning face became a mask of aristocratic contempt. *What is this? What is she doing with the human?*
*Nothing. I can’t hear a thing.* Edward’s frustration was a physical force, a dam about to burst. He was staring at me, his golden eyes narrowed, trying to punch through the silence in my head. *It’s not like Bella’s shield. That’s a barrier. This is a void. And those eyes… but she smells…* He trailed off, sniffing the air with an almost imperceptible movement. *She smells of rain and cheap food and… human blood. Faintly. Like she lives with one.*
Emmett, the big one, broke the tension with a booming, stupid thought that was so loud it was almost a relief. *Whoa, check out the vampire eyes! Did you get those off the internet? Seriously cool, Red.*
He grinned at me. I didn’t smile back.
Alice, the pixie, was the most disorienting. Her mind wasn’t on me at all. It flickered. *A vision… Bella, talking to Edward in the parking lot tomorrow… but the girl isn’t there. I can’t see HER. Why can’t I see her? She’s standing right in front of me, but she doesn’t exist in the future.* Her internal panic was a frantic hummingbird heartbeat. Funny. I could see her vision perfectly. A hazy, rain-slicked parking lot. Bella, flustered. Edward, intense. I tucked it away.
I let my gaze settle on him. Edward. He was still trying to get in, his mental voice a low growl of effort. On pure instinct, I broadened my shield, letting it flow over to cover Bella, snuffing out her nervous thoughts before he could get a read on her reaction to me. His eyes widened slightly. He felt that. A door slamming shut where before there had only been static.
“Shania, this is Edward, Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett,” Bella said, her voice still thick.
“I know,” I said. They didn’t need to know how.
The bell shrieked, a mercy. The Cullens rose as one, a fluid, synchronized movement that was deeply unsettling.
*Carlisle. Now.* Edward’s thought was a command to his siblings. They moved away without a backward glance, a silent, predatory tide receding. All except Rosalie. She looked back at me, her lip curled in a silent snarl, her thought a poisoned dart. *Monster.*
I almost laughed. If she only knew.
***
My range was good. Miles, if I focused. And I was focusing. I sat on my bed in Charlie’s spare room, the scent of pine and old fishing gear a strange comfort, and I listened.
They had convened in their sterile, perfect house in the woods. Carlisle and Esme were there.
*“…red. Not gold, not black. The color of a recent feeding. On human blood.”* It was Edward, his voice tight with controlled urgency.
*“But the scent, Edward? I was a foot away from her. She smells unequivocally human,”* Alice countered. *“More human than Bella, even. There’s no trace of that sweet, cloying smell. None.”*
*“And Jasper couldn’t get a read on her emotions,”* Emmett added, the humor gone from his voice. *“Said it was like trying to read a rock.”*
There was a pause. Then a new voice, calm and sonorous and deeply weary. Carlisle. *“I’ve met her.”*
A wave of shock from the five of them.
*“When?”* Esme’s thought was soft, concerned.
*“Two nights ago. On the trail near the treaty line. She was walking with Chief Swan. We spoke for several minutes.”* Carlisle’s mental tone was placid, the voice of a doctor delivering a routine diagnosis. It was the most dangerous voice I had ever heard. *“Her name is Shania Alighieri. Her father, an old friend of Charlie’s from Italy, just passed. She’s here to finish school.”*
*“The eyes, Carlisle,”* Rosalie pressed, her thought sharp as glass. *“Explain the eyes.”*
*“I asked. It’s a genetic condition. Ocular albinism coupled with a severe pigmentation anomaly. It results in an almost total lack of iris pigment, causing the blood vessels at the back of the eye to be visible. Making them appear red. It’s exceptionally rare. Her father had it as well, according to Charlie.”*
The lie was so smooth, so perfectly constructed. It was a masterpiece of misdirection. He was using their own logic against them. They wanted a scientific explanation for the impossible, and he gave them one. A brilliant, plausible, human explanation.
*But he knows,* I thought, a cold certainty settling in my gut. He had smelled me. He had looked into my eyes. A three-hundred-year-old vampire does not make that kind of mistake. He was lying. To his own family. Protecting me. Or… containing me.
*“So she’s… human?”* Emmett sounded profoundly disappointed.
*“One hundred percent,”* Carlisle said, and the finality in his mind was absolute. *“She is to be treated as such. She is Bella’s friend, and she is grieving. Be welcoming. Edward, that is a particular instruction for you.”*
A week passed. A week of being the freak with the weird eyes. A week of shared lunches where the Cullens made a pained effort at small talk while their minds screamed with unanswered questions. I let them wonder.
On Friday, the rain came down in sheets. I was leaning against the wall near the school’s main entrance, waiting for Bella. Through the crowd, I saw Edward approaching her. His stride was deliberate, predatory. His mind was a mess of resolve and self-loathing. *Just talk to her. It’s just a conversation. Ignore the girl with the void in her head. Just Bella.*
Bella saw him coming. Her heart hammered, a frantic bird in her chest. She glanced at me, a question in her eyes. *Should I?*
I watched Edward’s face, the perfect, sculpted lines of a predator trying to pretend it was a lamb. I saw the vision Alice had seen: the parking lot, the tension, the beginning of something unstoppable. My father had always told me to starve a fire of its fuel.
But my mother had taught me to light the match and enjoy the blaze.
I gave Bella a slow, deliberate nod. I leaned my head back against the cold brick, a silent observer no more. I was a participant. And I had just let the first piece fall.
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