The emotions had been as clear on her face as if they were spelled out in words: surprise, as she unknowingly absorbed the signs of the subtle differences between her kind and mine; curiosity, as she listened to Jessica’s tale; and something more… Fascination? It wouldn’t be the first time. We were beautiful to them, our intended prey. Then, finally, the embarrassment.

And yet, though her thoughts had been so clear in her odd eyes—odd because of the depth to them—I could hear only silence from the place she was sitting. Just… silence.

I felt a moment of unease.

This was nothing I’d ever encountered. Was there something wrong with me? I felt exactly the same as I always did. Worried, I listened harder.

All the voices I’d been blocking were suddenly shouting in my head.

… wonder what music she likes… maybe I could mention my new CD…, Mike Newton was thinking, two tables away—focused on Bella Swan.

Look at him staring at her. Isn’t it enough that he has half the girls in school waiting for him to… Eric Yorkie’s thoughts were caustic, and also revolving around the girl.

… so disgusting. You’d think she was famous or something.… Even Edward Cullen staring.… Lauren Mallory was so jealous that her face, by all rights, should be dark jade in color. And Jessica, flaunting her new best friend. What a joke… Vitriol continued to spew from the girl’s thoughts.

… I bet everyone has asked her that. But I’d like to talk to her. What’s something more original? Ashley Dowling mused.

… maybe she’ll be in my Spanish…, June Richardson hoped.

… tons left to do tonight! Trig, and the English test. I hope my mom… Angela Weber, a quiet girl whose thoughts were unusually kind, was the only one at the table who wasn’t obsessed with this Bella.

I could hear them all, hear every insignificant thing they were thinking as it passed through their minds. But nothing at all from the new student with the deceptively communicative eyes.

And of course, I could hear what the girl said when she spoke to Jessica. I didn’t have to read minds to be able to hear her low, clear voice on the far side of the long room.

“Which one is the boy with the reddish-brown hair?” I heard her ask, sneaking another look at me from the corner of her eye, only to glance quickly away when she saw that I was still staring.

If I’d had time to hope that hearing the sound of her voice would help me pinpoint the tone of her thoughts, I was instantly disappointed. Usually, people’s thoughts came to them in a similar pitch to their physical voices. But this quiet, shy voice was unfamiliar, not one of the hundreds of thoughts bouncing around the room, I was sure of that. Entirely new.

Oh, good luck, idiot! Jessica thought before answering the girl’s question. “That’s Edward. He’s gorgeous, of course, but don’t waste your time. He doesn’t date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him.” She snorted quietly.

I turned my head away to hide my smile. Jessica and her classmates had no idea how lucky they were that none of them particularly appealed to me.

Beneath the transient humor, I felt a strange impulse, one I did not clearly understand. It had something to do with the vicious edge to Jessica’s thoughts that the new girl was unaware of.… I felt the strangest urge to step in between them, to shield Bella Swan from the darker workings of Jessica’s mind. What an odd thing to feel. Trying to ferret out the motivations behind the impulse, I examined the new girl one more time, through Jessica’s eyes now. My staring had attracted too much attention.

Perhaps it was just some long-buried protective instinct—the strong for the weak. Somehow, this girl looked more fragile than her new classmates. Her skin was so translucent it was hard to believe it offered her much defense from the outside world. I could see the rhythmic pulse of blood through her veins under the clear, pale membrane.… But I should not concentrate on that. I was good at this life I’d chosen, but I was just as thirsty as Jasper and there was no point in inviting temptation.

There was a faint crease between her eyebrows that she seemed unaware of.

It was unbelievably frustrating! I could easily see that it was a strain for her to sit there, to make conversation with strangers, to be the center of attention. I could sense her shyness from the way she held her frail-looking shoulders, slightly hunched, as if she was expecting a rebuff at any moment. And yet I could only see, could only sense, could only imagine. There was nothing but silence from the very unexceptional human girl. I could hear nothing. Why?

“Shall we?” Rosalie murmured, interrupting my focus.

I turned my mind away from the girl with a sense of relief. I didn’t want to continue to fail at this—failure was a rare thing for me, and even more irritating than it was uncommon. I didn’t want to develop any interest in her hidden thoughts simply because they were hidden. No doubt when I did decipher them—and I would find a way to do so—they would be just as petty and trivial as any human’s. Not worth the effort I would expend to reach them.

“So, is the new one afraid of us yet?” Emmett asked, still waiting for my response to his earlier question.

I shrugged. He wasn’t interested enough to press for more information.

We got up from the table and walked out of the cafeteria.

Emmett, Rosalie, and Jasper were pretending to be seniors; they left for their classes. I was playing a younger role than they. I headed off for my junior-level Biology lesson, preparing my mind for the tedium. It was doubtful Mr. Banner, a man of no more than average intellect, would manage to pull out anything in his lecture that would surprise someone holding two medical degrees.

In the classroom, I settled into my chair and let my books—props, again; they held nothing I didn’t already know—spill across the table. I was the only student who had a table to himself. The humans weren’t smart enough to know that they feared me, but their innate survival instincts were enough to keep them away.

The room slowly filled as they trickled in from lunch. I leaned back in my chair and waited for the time to pass. Again, I wished I were able to sleep.

Because I’d been thinking about the new girl, when Angela Weber escorted her through the door, her name intruded on my attention.

Bella seems just as shy as me. I’ll bet today is really hard for her. I wish I could say something… but it would probably just sound stupid.

Yes! Mike Newton thought, turning in his seat to watch the girls enter.

Still, from the place where Bella Swan stood, nothing. The empty space where her thoughts should be vexed and unnerved me.

What if it all went away? What if this was just the first symptom of some kind of mental decline?

I’d often wished that I could escape the cacophony. That I could be normal—as far as that was possible for me. But now I felt panicked at the thought. Who would I be without what I could do? I’d never heard of such a thing. I would see if Carlisle had.

The girl walked down the aisle beside me, headed to the teacher’s desk. Poor girl; the seat next to me was the only one available. Automatically, I cleared what would be her side of the table, shoving my books into a pile. I doubted she would feel very comfortable there. She was in for a long semester—in this class, at least. Perhaps, though, sitting beside her, I’d be able to flush out her thoughts’ hiding place… not that I’d ever needed close proximity before. Not that I would find anything worth listening to.

Bella Swan walked into the flow of heated air that blew toward me from the vent.

Her scent hit me like a battering ram, like an exploding grenade. There was no image violent enough to encompass the force of what happened to me in that moment.

Instantly, I was transformed. I was nothing close to the human I’d once been. No trace of the shreds of humanity I’d managed to cloak myself in over the years remained.

I was a predator. She was my prey. There was nothing else in the whole world but that truth.

There was no room full of witnesses—they were already collateral damage in my mind. The mystery of her thoughts was forgotten. Her thoughts meant nothing, for she would not go on thinking them much longer.

I was a vampire, and she had the sweetest blood I’d smelled in more than eighty years.

I hadn’t imagined that such a scent could exist. If I’d known it did, I would have gone searching for it long ago. I would have scoured the planet for her. I could imagine the taste.…

Thirst burned through my throat like fire. My mouth felt baked and desiccated, and the fresh flow of venom did nothing to dispel that sensation. My stomach twisted with the hunger that was an echo of the thirst. My muscles coiled to spring.

Not a full second had passed. She was still taking the same step that had put her downwind from me.

As her foot touched the ground, her eyes slid toward me, a movement she clearly meant to be stealthy. Her gaze met mine, and I saw myself reflected in the mirror of her eyes.

The shock of the face I saw there saved her life for a few thorny moments.

She didn’t make it easier. When she processed the expression on my face, blood flooded her cheeks again, turning her skin the most delicious color I’d ever seen. The scent was a thick haze in my brain. I could barely think through it. My instincts raged, resisting control, incoherent.

She walked more quickly now, as if she understood the need to escape. Her haste made her clumsy—she tripped and stumbled forward, almost falling into the girl seated in front of me. Vulnerable, weak. Even more than usual for a human.

I tried to focus on the face I’d seen in her eyes, a face I recognized with revulsion. The face of the monster inside me—the face I’d beaten back with decades of effort and uncompromising discipline. How easily it sprang to the surface now!

The scent swirled around me again, scattering my thoughts and nearly propelling me out of my seat.

No.

My hand gripped under the edge of the table as I tried to hold myself in my chair. The wood was not up to the task. My hand crushed through the strut and came away with a palmful of splintered pulp, leaving the shape of my fingers carved into the remaining wood.

Destroy evidence. That was a fundamental rule. I quickly pulverized the edges of the shape with my fingertips, leaving nothing but a ragged hole and a pile of shavings on the floor, which I scattered with my foot.

Destroy evidence. Collateral damage…

I knew what had to happen now. The girl would have to come sit beside me, and I would have to kill her.

The innocent bystanders in this classroom, eighteen other children and one man, could not be allowed to leave, having seen what they would soon see.

I flinched at the thought of what I must do. Even at my very worst, I had never committed this kind of atrocity. I had never killed innocents. And now I planned to slaughter twenty of them at once.

The face of the monster in my reflection mocked me.

Even as part of me shuddered away from him, another part was planning what would happen next.

If I killed the girl first, I would have only fifteen or twenty seconds with her before the humans in the room reacted. Maybe a little longer if at first they did not realize what I was doing. She would not have time to scream or feel pain; I would not kill her cruelly. That much I could give this stranger with her horribly desirable blood.

But then I would have to stop them from escaping. I wouldn’t have to worry about the windows, too high up and small to provide an escape for anyone. Just the door—block that and they were trapped.

It would be slower and more difficult, trying to take them all down when they were panicked and scrambling, moving in chaos. Not impossible, but there would be much more noise. Time for lots of screaming. Someone would hear… and I’d be forced to kill even more innocents in this black hour.

And her blood would cool while I murdered the others.

The scent punished me, closing my throat with dry aching.…

So the witnesses first, then.

I mapped it out in my head. I was in the middle of the room, the row farthest from the front. I would take my right side first. I could snap four or five of their necks per second, I estimated. It would not be noisy. The right side would be the lucky side; they would not see me coming. Moving around the front and back down the left side, it would take me, at most, five seconds to end every life in this room.

Long enough for Bella Swan to see, briefly, what was coming for her. Long enough for her to feel fear. Long enough, maybe, if shock didn’t freeze her in place, for her to work up a scream. One soft scream that would not bring anyone running.

I took a deep breath, and the scent was a fire that raced through my dry veins, burning out from my chest to consume every better impulse that I was capable of.

She was just turning now. In a few seconds, she would sit down inches away from me.

The monster in my head exulted.

Someone slammed shut a folder on my left. I didn’t look up to see which of the doomed humans it was, but the motion sent a wave of ordinary, unscented air wafting across my face.

For one short second, I was able to think clearly. In that precious instant, I saw two faces in my head, side by side.

One was mine, or rather had been: the red-eyed monster that had killed so many people that I’d stopped counting. Rationalized, justified murders. I had been a killer of killers, a killer of other, less powerful monsters. It was a god complex, I acknowledged that—deciding who deserved a death sentence. It was a compromise with myself. I had fed on human blood, but only by the loosest definition. My victims were, in their various dark pastimes, barely more human than I was.

The other face was Carlisle’s.

There was no resemblance between the two faces. They were bright day and blackest night.

There was no reason for a resemblance to exist. Carlisle was not my father in the basic biological sense. We shared no common features. The similarity in our coloring was a product of what we were; every vampire was corpse-pale. The similarity in the color of our eyes was another matter—a reflection of a mutual choice.

And yet, though there was no basis for a resemblance, I’d imagined that my face had begun to reflect his, to an extent, in the last seventy-odd years that I had embraced his choice and followed in his steps. My features had not changed, but it seemed to me as though some of his wisdom had marked my expression, a little of his compassion could be traced in the set of my mouth, and hints of his patience were evident on my brow.

All those tiny improvements were lost in the monster’s face. In a few moments, there would be nothing left in me that would reflect the years I’d spent with my creator, my mentor, my father in all the ways that counted. My eyes would glow red as a devil’s; all likeness would be lost forever.