Luminosity (Book One)

Chapter 23: Sue

Gianna teaching Maggie Italian was very cute.

"How do I say, "I love you", in Italian?" Maggie asked Gianna, trying to sound innocent. Gianna was sitting on a sofa with her feet tucked under herself, using one of my textbooks to give structure to the lesson. Maggie was lounging on the floor in front of the couch, gazing up adoringly at an increasingly pink-cheeked Gianna.

Ilario, standing relatively unobtrusive guard in the corner of the room, furrowed his brow uncomfortably while Gianna stammered through the sentence. Maggie ignored him. She just grinned at Gianna and repeated the words.

Maggie was trying to get Gianna to say "you're beautiful" in Italian when I heard Carlisle's phone ringing in his office, and him answering it. Tanya's voice was on the other end. "Carlisle," she said, "Harry's gone."

I was up the stairs in a flash to listen to this conversation. "Gone?" asked Carlisle. "How did that happen?"

"We've been trusting him to hunt on his own, ever since he ran into some human's trail while he was hunting with Eleazar and managed to hold his breath and run," she said. "He's been going on his own most of the time. But he's been gone for almost three days now and isn't answering his phone. We don't know what the matter is - if he's hurt someone and is ashamed to come home, or if he just decided to leave, or - what. Can Alice see?" Tanya asked.

"I'll ask her," Carlisle said, and he brushed past me in the hall to find Alice. She was located in short order, with me following, and he summarized the situation for her.

"I can see him... but not far," murmured Alice. "He's... I guess he hasn't decided something very significant about what he's going to do when he gets into Washington again. He's going south, though."

I went to the room with the computers and e-mailed Rachel.

Rachel took an hour to answer my e-mail. "If you're right about what blanks out your sister's vision, then we have to expect that he's coming here," she agreed in her reply. "I've warned Sue, and the pack. I'm not sure how well he'll do with not attacking us, even if he's been okay with humans, but we're sticking to groups of four and five for the time being and think we can probably pin him if he's hostile. Please come out here as soon as you can to help keep things under control, though. We have to sleep and if we wind up pinning him we run a risk every time we need to change guards."

I wrote back, asking if Sue had appeared to know anything about his approach; the answer was quick: "I couldn't tell, but it's possible. She refused to be accompanied by wolves as a precautionary measure and wants to go about her business normally."

I sent her another message: "I'm going to buy tickets and I'll get there by tomorrow, but Harry might arrive before me. However, he's been demonstrated safe around humans. I don't think you need to worry about Sue - it's wolves who might be a problem."

I bought tickets. During that process, there was no further substantive content from Rachel, just "see you soon". I logged off, found Edward, dragged him to our cottage, used up the hour and a half that I didn't need to make my flight on time, and then told him, "I need to leave again."

He sighed. "All right."

"Can I ask you to pretend we're going to explore Scandinavia together? I'll be the one to tell Maggie. I tested her earlier; unless she's got an amazing poker face and doesn't care as much about the truth as you say she does, I'm immune to her. I should be back in a few days, and then we can really explore Scandinavia for a little while and I'll have all the right stories to tell. And I'll be able to keep in touch by phone. So you know I'm all right."