Eclipse (Twilight #3)(71)

"Hey, Edward. Ditching, Bella?" He grinned at me.

"We both are," Edward reminded him.

Emmett laughed. "Yes, but it's her first time through high school. She might miss something."

Edward rolled his eyes, but otherwise ignored his favorite brother. He tossed the paper to Carlisle.

"Did you see that they're considering a serial killer now?" he asked.

Carlisle sighed. "They've had two specialists debating that possibility on CNN all morning."

"We can't let this go on."

"Let's go now," Emmett said with sudden enthusiasm. "I'm dead bored."

A hiss echoed down the stairway from upstairs.

"She's such a pessimist," Emmett muttered to himself.

Edward agreed with Emmett. "We'll have to go sometime."

Rosalie appeared at the top of the stairs and descended slowly. Her face was smooth, expressionless.

Carlisle was shaking his head. "I'm concerned. We've never involved ourselves in this kind of thing before. It's not our business. We aren't the Volturi."

"I don't want the Volturi to have to come here," Edward said. "It gives us so much less reaction time."

"And all those innocent humans in Seattle," Esme murmured. "It's not right to let them die this way."

"I know," Carlisle sighed.

"Oh," Edward said sharply, turning his head slightly to look at Jasper. "I didn't think of that. I see. You're right, that has to be it. Well, that changes everything."

I wasn't the only one who stared at him in confusion, but I might have been the only one who didn't look slightly annoyed.

"I think you'd better explain to the others," Edward said to Jasper. "What could be the purpose of this?" Edward started to pace, staring at the floor, lost in thought.

I hadn't seen her get up, but Alice was there beside me. "What is he rambling about?" she asked Jasper. "What are you thinking?"

Jasper didn't seem to enjoy the spotlight. He hesitated, reading every face in the circle - for everyone had moved in to hear what he would say - and then his eyes paused on my face.

"You're confused," he said to me, his deep voice very quiet.

There was no question in his assumption. Jasper knew what I was feeling, what everyone was feeling.

"We're all confused," Emmett grumbled.

"You can afford the time to be patient," Jasper told him. "Bella should understand this, too. She's one of us now."

His words took me by surprise. As little as I'd had to do with Jasper, especially since my last birthday when he'd tried to kill me, I hadn't realize that he thought of me that way.

"How much do you know about me, Bella?" Jasper asked.

Emmett sighed theatrically, and plopped down on the couch to wait with exaggerated impatience.

"Not much," I admitted.

Jasper stared at Edward, who looked up to meet his gaze.

"No," Edward answered his thought. "I'm sure you can understand why I haven't told her that story. But I suppose she needs to hear it now."

Jasper nodded thoughtfully, and then started to roll up the arm of his ivory sweater.

I watched, curious and confused, trying to figure out what he was doing. He held his wrist under the edge of the lampshade beside him, close to the light of the naked bulb, and traced his finger across a raised crescent mark on the pale skin.

It took me a minute to understand why the shape looked strangely familiar.

"Oh," I breathed as realization hit. "Jasper, you have a scar exactly like mine."

I held out my hand, the silvery crescent more prominent against my cream skin than against his alabaster.

Jasper smiled faintly. "I have a lot of scars like yours, Bella."

Jasper's face was unreadable as he pushed the sleeve of his thin sweater higher up his arm. At first my eyes could not make sense of the texture that was layered thickly across the skin. Curved half-moons crisscrossed in a feathery pattern that was only visible, white on white as it was, because the bright glow of the lamp beside him threw the slightly raised design into relief, with shallow shadows outlining the shapes. And then I grasped that the pattern was made of individual crescents like the one on his wrist . . . the one on my hand.

I looked back at my own small, solitary scar - and remembered how I'd received it. I stared at the shape of James's teeth, embossed forever on my skin.

And then I gasped, staring up at him. "Jasper, what happened to you?"

Chapter 13. NEWBORN

"THE SAME THING THAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HAND," Jasper answered in a quiet voice. "Repeated a thousand times." He laughed a little ruefully and brushed at his arm. "Our venom is the only thing that leaves a scar."

"Why?" I breathed in horror, feeling rude but unable to stop staring at his subtly ravaged skin.

"I didn't have quite the same . . . upbringing as my adopted siblings here. My beginning was something else entirely." His voice turned hard as he finished.

I gaped at him, appalled.

"Before I tell you my story," Jasper said, "you must understand that there are places in our world, Bella, where the life span of the never-aging is measured in weeks, and not centuries."