The minds I hunted were usually hardened to all human pity—and most other emotions besides greed and desire. There was a coldness and a focus that stood out from the normal, less dangerous minds around them. Of course, it had taken most of them some time to reach this point, where they saw themselves as predators first, and anything else second. So there was always a line of victims I had been too late to save. I could only save the next one.

Scanning for such minds, I was able to tune out everything more human for the most part. But that evening in Milwaukee, as I moved quietly through the darkness—strolling when there were witnesses, running when there were not—a different kind of mind caught my attention.

He was a young man, poor, living in the slums on the outskirts of the industrial district. He was in a state of mental anguish that intruded upon my awareness, though anguish was not an uncommon emotion in those days. But unlike the others who feared hunger, eviction, cold, sickness—want in so many forms—this man feared himself.

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t. It was like a mantra in his head, repeating endlessly. It never resolved into anything stronger, never became I won’t. He thought the negatives, but meanwhile he was planning.

The man hadn’t done anything… yet. He had only dreamed of what he wanted. He had only watched the girl in the tenement up the alley, never spoken to her.

I was a bit flummoxed. I had never condemned anyone to death whose hands were clean. But it seemed likely this man would not have clean hands for long. And the girl in his mind was just a young child.

Unsure, I decided to wait. Perhaps he would overcome the temptation.

I doubted it. My recent study of the basest of human natures had left little room for optimism.

Down the alley where he lived, where the buildings leaned precariously together, there was a narrow house with a recently collapsed roof. No one could get to the second floor safely, so that was where I hid, motionless, while I listened through the next several days. Examining the thoughts of the people crowded into the sagging buildings, it didn’t take me long to find the child’s thin face in a different, healthier set of thoughts. I found the room where she lived with her mother and two older brothers and watched her through the day. This was easy; she was only five or six and so didn’t wander far. Her mother called her back when she rambled out of sight; Betty was her name.

The man watched, too, when he wasn’t scouring the streets for day labor. But he kept his distance from her in the daytime. It was at night that he paused outside the window, hiding in the shadows while a single candle burned in her family’s room. He marked at what time the candle was blown out. He noted the location of the child’s bed—just a newspaper-stuffed cushion under the open window. It was getting cool at night, but the smells in the overcrowded house were unpleasant. Everyone kept their windows open.

I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t. His mantra continued, but he began to prepare. A piece of rope he found in a gutter. Some rags he plucked off a clothesline during his nighttime surveillance that would work as a gag. Ironically, he chose the same dilapidated house where I hid to store his collection. There was a cave-like space under the collapsed stairs. This was where he would bring the child.

Still I waited, unwilling to punish before I was positive of the crime.

The hardest part, the part he struggled with, was that he knew he would have to kill her afterward. This was distasteful, and he didn’t like to consider the how of it. But this qualm, too, was overcome. It took another week.

By this time, I was quite thirsty, and bored with the repetition in his mind. However, I knew I could not justify my own murders unless I was acting within the rules I’d created for myself. Punish only the guilty, only those who would grievously harm others if they were spared.

I was oddly disappointed the night he came for his ropes and gags. Against reason, I’d hoped he would stay guiltless.

I followed him to the open window where the child slept. He didn’t hear me behind him, would not have seen me in the shadows if he had turned. The chanting in his head was over. He could, he had realized. He could do this.

I waited until he reached through the window, until his fingers brushed her arm, looking for a good hold.…

I grabbed him by the neck and leaped to the roof three stories up, where we landed with a low thud.

Of course he was terrified by the ice-cold fingers wrapped around his throat, bewildered by the sudden flight through the air, confused as to what was happening. But when I spun him to face me, somehow he understood. He didn’t see a man when he looked at me. He saw my empty black eyes, my death-pale skin, and he saw judgment. Though he didn’t come close to guessing what I actually was, he was absolutely correct about what was happening.

He realized that I had saved the child from him, and he was relieved. Not hardened like the others, not cold and sure.

I didn’t, he thought as I lunged. The words were not a defense. He was glad he had been stopped.

He had been my only technically innocent victim, the one who had not lived to become the monster. Ending his progression toward evil had been the right thing, the only thing to do.

As I considered them all, every one of those I’d executed, I didn’t regret any of their deaths individually. The world was a better place for each one of their absences. But somehow this didn’t matter.

And in the end, blood was just blood. It quenched my thirst for a few days or weeks, and that was all. Though there was physical pleasure, it was too marred by the pain of my mind. Stubborn as I was, I could not avoid the truth. I was happier without human blood.

The total sum of death became too much for me. It was only a few months later that I gave up on my selfish crusade, gave up trying to find something meaningful in the slaughter.

“But as time went on,” I continued, wondering how much she’d intuited that I hadn’t said, “I began to see the monster in my eyes. I couldn’t escape the debt of so much human life taken, no matter how justified. And I went back to Carlisle and Esme. They welcomed me back like the prodigal. It was more than I deserved.” I remembered their arms around me, remembered the joy in their minds when I returned.

The way she looked at me now was also more than I deserved. I supposed my defense had worked, no matter how weak it sounded to me. But Bella must have been used to making excuses for me by now. I couldn’t imagine how else she could bear to be around me.

We’d reached the last door along the hallway.

“My room,” I informed her as I held it open.

I expected her reaction. The close scrutiny returned. She analyzed the view of the river, the abundance of shelving for my music, the stereo, the lack of traditional furniture, her eyes skipping from one detail to the next. I wondered if it was as interesting to her as her room had been to me.

Her eyes lingered on the wall treatments.

“Good acoustics?”

I laughed and nodded, then turned on the sound system. Even as low as the volume was, the speakers hidden in the walls and ceiling made it sound like we were in a concert hall with the performers. She smiled, then wandered over to the closest shelf of CDs.

It felt surreal to see her in the center of a space that was almost always an isolated retreat. We’d spent most of our time together in the human world—school, town, her home—and it had always made me feel the interloper, the one who didn’t belong. Less than a week ago, I couldn’t have believed she would ever be so relaxed and comfortable in the middle of my world. She was no interloper; she belonged perfectly. It was as if the room had never been complete till now.

And she was here under no pretext. I’d told no lies, revealed every one of my sins. She knew it all, and still wanted to be in this room, alone with me.

“How do you have these organized?” she wondered, trying to make sense of my collection.

My mind was so caught up in the pleasure of having her here, it took me a second to respond.

“Ummm, by year, and then by personal preference within that frame.”

Bella could hear the abstraction in my voice. She glanced up at me, trying to understand why I was staring at her so intently.

“What?” she asked, her hand straying self-consciously to her hair.

“I was prepared to feel… relieved. Having you know about everything, not needing to keep secrets from you. But I didn’t expect to feel more than that. I like it. It makes me… happy.”

We smiled together.

“I’m glad,” she said.

It was easy to see she was telling nothing but the truth. There were no shadows in her eyes. It brought her as much pleasure to be in my world as being in hers brought me.

A flicker of unease twisted my expression. I thought of pomegranate seeds for the first time in a while. It felt right to have her here, but was that just my selfishness blinding me? Nothing had scared her away from me, but that didn’t mean that she shouldn’t be frightened. She’d always been too brave for her own good.

Bella watched my face change. “You’re still waiting for the running and the screaming, aren’t you?”

Close enough. I nodded.

“I hate to burst your bubble,” she said, her voice blasé, “but you’re really not as scary as you think you are. I don’t find you scary at all, actually.”

It was a well-performed lie, especially considering her usual lack of success with deception, but I knew she made the joke mostly to keep me from feeling dejected or worried. Though I sometimes regretted the depth of her leniency toward me, it did shift my mood. It was a funny joke, and I couldn’t resist playing along.

I smiled, showing too much of my teeth. “You really shouldn’t have said that.”

She’d asked to see me hunt, after all.

I coiled into a parody of my actual hunting stance, a loose, playful version. Exposing even more of my teeth, I growled softly; it was almost a purr.

She started to back away, though there was no real fear on her face. At least, no fear of physical harm. She did look a little afraid that she was about to become the butt of her own joke.

She swallowed loudly. “You wouldn’t.”

I sprang.

She wasn’t able to see much of the action; I moved at immortal speed.

Launching myself across the room, I scooped her up into my arms as I flew by. I shaped myself into a sort of defensive armor around her, so that when we collided with the sofa, she felt none of the impact.

By design, I’d landed on my back. I held her against my chest, still curled within my arms. She seemed a little disoriented, as though she wasn’t sure which way was up. She struggled to sit, but I wasn’t finished making my point.

She tried to glare at me, but her eyes were too wide to make the expression effective.

“You were saying?” I asked, my voice a playful snarl.

She tried to catch her breath. “That you are… a very, very… terrifying monster.”

I grinned at her. “Much better.”

Alice and Jasper were bounding up the stairs. I could hear Alice’s eagerness to offer an invitation. She was also very curious about the sounds of a struggle emanating from my room. She hadn’t been watching me, so now she only saw what she would find when they arrived; the way we’d gotten so disarranged was already in the past.

Bella was still trying to free herself.

“Um, can I get up now?”

I laughed at her continued breathlessness. Despite her overconfidence, I’d still been able to truly startle her.

“Can we come in?” Alice asked from the hallway, aloud for Bella’s sake.

I sat up, now holding Bella on my lap. There was no need to pretend here, though I assumed a more respectful distance would be necessary in front of Charlie.

Alice was already walking into the room as I answered, “Go ahead.”

While Jasper hesitated in the doorway, she settled herself in the middle of my rug, a wide grin on her face. “It sounded like you were having Bella for lunch, and we came to see if you would share,” she teased.

Bella braced herself, her eyes flying to my face for reassurance. I smiled and pulled her tighter against my chest.

“Sorry, I don’t believe I have enough to spare.”

Jasper followed her into the room, unable to help himself. The emotions inside were nearly intoxicating to him. In this moment, I knew Bella’s feelings were just the same as mine, for there was no counterbalance to the atmosphere of bliss that Jasper was getting high on now.

“Actually,” he said, changing the subject. I could see that he wanted to control what he was feeling, to regulate it. The ambience was overwhelming. “Alice says there’s going to be a real storm tonight, and Emmett wants to play ball. Are you game?”

I paused, looking to Alice.

Lightning fast, she ran through a few hundred images from that possible future. Rosalie was absent, but Emmett wouldn’t miss a game. Sometimes his team won, sometimes mine did. Bella was there watching, her face delighted by the otherworldly display.

“Of course you should bring Bella,” she encouraged, knowing me well enough to understand my hesitation.

Oh. Jasper was caught off guard. Internally, he readjusted his idea of what was to come. He would not be able to relax, as he’d planned. But experiencing the emotions Bella and I made each other feel… that was a trade he could accept.

“Do you want to go?” I asked Bella.

“Sure,” she answered quickly. And then after a tiny pause, “Um, where are we going?”

“We have to wait for thunder to play ball,” I explained. “You’ll see why.”

Her concern was more obvious now. “Will I need an umbrella?”

I laughed that this was her worry, and Alice and Jasper joined in.

“Will she?” Jasper asked Alice.

Another flash of images, this time tracking the course of the storm.

“No. The storm will hit over town. It should be dry enough in the clearing.”

“Good, then,” Jasper said. He found that he was excited by the idea of spending more time with Bella and me. His enthusiasm spread out from his body, infecting the rest of us. Bella’s expression changed from cautious to eager.

Cool, Alice thought, glad that her plan was now certain. She wanted recreational time with Bella, too. I’ll leave you to sort out the details.

“Let’s go see if Carlisle will come,” she said, bouncing up from the floor.

Jasper poked her in the ribs. “Like you don’t already know.”

She was out the door in the same breath. Jasper followed more slowly, savoring each second near us. He paused to shut the door behind himself, an excuse to linger that much longer.

“What will we be playing?” Bella asked as soon as the door was closed.

“You will be watching. We will be playing baseball.”

She looked at me skeptically. “Vampires like baseball?”

I answered her with put-on gravitas. “It’s the American pastime.”