Sometimes There Is No Brightside [Edward Masen-Cullen]

Chapter Nine

"Beatrice?" The young woman at the reception desk frowned. "I don’t know anybody by that name."

Edward sighed and, to make matters easier for him, read the girl’s mind. Eventually he found a thought there that would help him, after he’d sorted through those all too vividly picturing what the girl wanted to do with him. "She goes by the name Joyce."

Joyce, he thought to himself contemptuously. Why on earth should Bea change her name?

"Oh, her!"

"Yes, her." Edward was getting impatient. He was glad that this girl’s limited intelligence and wit luckily hadn’t worn off onto Bea.

"She doesn’t work here anymore. Left two days ago, and nobody knows where she went." She shrugged. "But I’m sure I can..."

Edward didn’t hear the rest of what she said as he was already outside. So the Avalon Hotel was a dead end.

He didn’t know what prevailed: Relief at that she had found the strength to quit her job or despair at losing the only trail he had. Seeing that he really had no idea what to do next and where to look, maybe despair did.

Beatrice’s P.O.V.

The rhythmic sounds of the train as it drove into the night soothed me, and I smiled at my reflection in the glass.

"You’ve made it, Bea." I whispered to myself. You’ve left it behind you.

So maybe I didn’t have the slightest idea as to what I would do next, all I knew was that I had to leave Chicago behind me, the city where so many memories lay. I hoped to leave them behind me as I did the city.

Mostly I managed to. But one person refused to leave my mind: Edward.

By leaving Chicago, I was leaving him, too, for good. It hurt me more than I had expected, especially since I had thought I had felt all pain I could for him when he had died ten years ago.

Everything had come differently, though; he hadn’t died. I didn’t know how I should feel about the vampire issue; in certain moments, he had definitely scared me, even if I had refused to let it show. On the other hand, I just knew that his soul was still the same, that it had not been altered by the Change...

And the way he had talked about the blood lust... it was a part of him that I had never known, and I didn’t mean the blood drinking part. Looking back, I really didn’t like the despair and defeat that had swung in his voice and in what he had said... That wasn’t my Edward.

My Edward - I smiled grimly at that title, but nonetheless liked the sound of it.

I sighed. My priority now should be what I would do next. I had enough money saved, despite my prior drug consume, to last me a while until I had found something else.

Something else. What else was there, though?

If I stayed in a city, I would soon be where I had once been. So I would have to try the countryside... I don’t know why, but that thought repelled me. I wanted to change things. Since when did things start to change in the countryside?

And what things I wanted to change and how, about that I hadn’t thought yet, either.

I let out a sigh. I needed a guiding hand, as I had had in my early childhood days...

What would have happened had Edward not come?

I admitted unwillingly to myself that I would have never managed to end that life I had led. I would have stayed there forever, for a lack of caring. The drugs - at that word my insides cringed, longing for the next dose - would have probably killed me before I reached my thirties. I had already come perilously close.

It annoyed me to realize it needed somebody else to push me back onto the right track and at the same time it filled me with relief that somebody had.

Somebody. Edward wasn’t just somebody, he was everybody, at least, to me.

While I reached into my bag and pulled out a cigarette and lighter, I wondered why this encounter with Edward affected me so much. Yes, of course, I met my childhood brother after believing him dead for ten years, and he was now a vampire, a creature I had believed to be a part of fairytales.

But that was not what bothered me.