Chapter Twelve
Standard Disclaimer of the sort you normally see inserted here. I'd like to thank Lady Sybs for being a Grade A loon and her failure to understand she has become a long standing fandom joke at this point. Oy vey.

<--Chapter Eleven




The Volvo rolled over several times and sustained a lot of damage--you could say it was squashed like a bug, even though it was a Volvo and not a Volkswagon--even thought the both begin with V. Edward and Clove were fine, because they are very nearly indestructible. Though no one knows what happens to vampires in the blast radius of nuclear explosions. Chances are they vaporize at a slower rate than carbon based life forms and wow that must really be horrible and painful.

They'd been hit by a bus, a large black bus with tinted windows. It didn't have a scratch on it. Edward stood protectively in front of his daughter. No one was going to hurt her. He was stunned. He felt all fatherly and protective and quite like his old self! He just had to get Bella back and everything would be OK!

The door slid open and an army of fir trees climbed out of the bus and gathered round the two vampires. Edward decided not to wait around and find out who the hell they were. He grabbed NessieClove and ran. At top speed Edward could sprint close to a hundred miles an hour. He went to the hospital in Forks, which is a really silly name for a town.

Carlisle was hard to track down. He wasn't in his office. He didn't respond to any pages. Edward finally found him in the cafeteria pretending to have coffee with Esmee. It looked like they were having a staring contest. Edward couldn't get either one of them to respond. He looked at Nessie who rolled her eyes.

"Clove," she said. I can hear your thoughts, duh. I'm fine. Can we go home now?

"I'm not sure we should leave them here like this? Don't you think people will get suspicious?" Edward looked around and everyone in the cafeteria was staring.

"Right, because I'm sure no one has ever noticed that Dr. Cullen doesn't eat or drink anything. That he doesn't ever get tired. That he lives with his never aging family who are all supernaturally gorgeous and that his granddaughter somehow aged 12 years in a single day. Who would anyone suspect anything was amiss?" Clove was speaking loudly and clearly. So Edward hurried her outside.

"I'll race you home?" Edward took off.

"Whatever." Clove decided to take a walk through town. She was feeling a little hungry.


* * *

Clove lay on her bedroom floor smoking and trying to blow smoke rings. There hadn't been any town to wander through. This town was lame. She'd stayed up all night experimenting with liquid eyeliner and watching complicated French films. Her father had spent his time replacing the carpets downstairs and carefully bleaching away any possible forensic evidence. When he was satisfied he went upstairs and law on the floor and listened to music with his daughter. It was weird. It was almost like having a sister. He glanced at her and she looked a lot like his mother, until she opened her eyes and was pure Bella.

"I miss your mother," he said.

"Well, go find her." Clove hoped he'd get up and go away because it was weird to have a father who was over a hundred years old, but looked the same age as you and everyone at the mall had thought he was her gay brother who knew his fabrics and also how to coordinate.

"No," Edward sighed from somewhere down so deep it wasn't even in his body--but somewhere near the center of our galaxy. "If she wanted to be with me. She'd come back. I can't force her."

"Edward, I've been watching French films all night and it seems that all women really want men to come after them and beg them to come home. Except when the men are serial killers or lame. So are you lame or a serial killer?" Clove gave Edward his best raised eyebrow I'm arrogant and making fun of you look and it was really weird--like looking in a mirror that reflects you back as a goth chick.

"Did you just call me Edward?" Edward stood up and with his hands on his hips he smirked at his daughter. "Get up and clean up this filthy room. Now. I'm going to find your mother and when I get back I want you to have your normal hair color back and you better not be smoking anymore."

He snapped up her cigarettes and crushed them into powder with his diamond hard fist of crushing things into powder because Vampires are awesomely strong like that. He rushed off in a blur and Clove waited until she heard him race down the driveway. Then she turned up the recording of Rimbaud's poems she found set to the sounds of dentist's drills and pulled a new pack of cloves out from under the sofa.

* * *

In order to find Bella Edward knew he'd need to find Jacob and Alice. But he couldn't have them in the same place or Alice wouldn't be able to see the future because the shape shifters knocked her connection offline. And maybe Bella had just gone to LaPush like in the old days before she was a vampire. Before he'd turned her after the most horrific birth every in the history of being born--yes, even worse than Alien or any kind of larvae.

Edward parked his car outside the Black's place and listened and smelled the air. Bella had been here, but the scent was old--almost completely faded. He flipped through all the nearby minds--sex, 69, sex, 42, sports, dishes, money, Bingo! There was a Bingo game going on at the Community Center. Jacob was somewhere nearby, but Edward couldn't pin him down.

Edward got out of the car and moved silently and swiftly toward the garage. He could sense what was going in there and he flung open the wide doors and there was Jacob and whoa, not Bella.

"Do you mind?" Jacob looked over his shoulder and away from the girl, uh, Edward looked again--woman, Jacob was er... tinkering with.

"I thought you imprinted on Nessie. I thought there was no one else in the world for you--except maybe my wife?" Edward really wasn't sure what he was most upset about in this whole situation.

"Can you give us a few minutes?" Jacob turned back to his companion and she started to moan something incoherent. Edward noticed that Jacob wasn't wearing any pants. Huh, you'd think he would have noticed Jacob's ass sooner, but he'd been too busy worrying the woman on the hood of the car was Bella, which of course it wouldn't be. Bella would never... would she?

Edward could see that Jacob wasn't going to be useful in this endeavor. He did actually think the word endeavor--because Edward does stuff like that and also very rarely uses contractions. And he had a plan now. Find Alice. Or send Alice a brainwave so that she came to find him. He headed for Seattle and the airport. Bella was his love, his life, his raison d'etre, his north, his south, his east, his west, his one and only true love. He would get her back even if it took a hundred years. He'd also never been to the top of the Space Needle...