It worked, and I ground my teeth as Rosalie touched home plate.Bella, however, was delighted. She clapped her hands with a huge smile, impressed by the play. Rosalie didn’t acknowledge Bella’s spontaneous applause—she wouldn’t even look at her, instead rolling her eyes at me—but I was surprised to hear that she was ever so slightly… softened. I supposed it wasn’t that remarkable; I knew how much Rosalie craved admiration.Maybe I should tell her some of the complimentary things Bella had said about her beauty… but she might not believe me. If she would look at Bella now, she would see Bella’s obvious marveling. That would probably soothe Rose even more, but she refused to look.Still, it made me more hopeful. A little time and a lot of compliments… we could win Rose over together.Emmett, too, was enjoying Bella’s excited amazement. He already liked her more than I’d expected, and he found this game more fun with an animated audience. And just as Rose loved admiration, Emmett loved fun.Carlisle, Alice, and I ran in while Rosalie’s team took the field. Bella greeted me with huge eyes and a wide smile.“What do you think?” I asked.She laughed. “One thing’s for sure, I’ll never be able to sit through dull old Major League Baseball again.”“And it sounds like you did so much of that before.”Then she pursed her lips. “I am a little disappointed.”She hadn’t looked disappointed. “Why?”“Well, it would be nice if I could find just one thing you didn’t do better than everyone else on the planet.”Ugh.Rosalie wasn’t the only one who groaned at that, but she was loudest.How long will the goo goo eyes take? Rosalie demanded. The storm won’t last forever.“I’m up,” I said to Bella. I retrieved the bat from where Emmett had tossed it, and walked to the plate.Carlisle crouched behind me. Alice showed me the direction of Jasper’s pitch.I bunted.“Coward,” Emmett growled as he chased down the ball, which was bouncing unpredictably. Rose was waiting for me on second, but I made it in plenty of time. She scowled at me and I grinned back.Carlisle stepped up to the plate and leaned into his stance. I could hear his intention, and Alice’s prediction that he would be successful. I set myself, every muscle ready to surge. Jasper threw a fast curveball—Carlisle angled his bat perfectly.I wished I could warn Bella to cover her ears again.The sound it made when Carlisle connected was not something that could be convincingly explained away as thunder. It was lucky that humans were so unsuspicious, that they didn’t want to believe in anything unnatural.I was running full out, listening through the echoing boom to the sound of Rosalie racing through the forest. If she moved fast enough—but no, Alice could see the ball landing on the ground.I hit home plate before the ball was halfway to its eventual destination. Carlisle was just rounding first. Bella blinked fast when I came to a stop a few feet from her, as if she hadn’t been fully able to follow my run.“Jasper!” Rosalie called from somewhere still deep in the forest. Carlisle flew past third. The sound of the ball zooming in our direction whistled through the trees. Jasper darted to the plate, but Carlisle slid under him just before the ball smacked into Jasper’s palm.Esme called, “Safe.”“Beautiful,” Alice congratulated us, holding her hand up for a high five. We both obliged her.We could all hear Rosalie’s teeth grinding.I went to stand beside Bella, lacing my fingers loosely through hers. She smiled up at me, her cheeks and nose pink from the cold, but her eyes glowing with excitement.Alice was thinking of a hundred different ways to tip the ball as she picked up the bat, but she couldn’t see a way past Jasper and Emmett. Emmett was hovering close to third, knowing that Alice didn’t have the muscle to outstrip Rosalie’s fielding.Jasper pitched a fastball, and Alice drove it toward right field. He raced the ball to first, grabbed it, and tagged the base before Alice could get there.“Out.”I squeezed Bella’s fingers once, then went to take my turn again.This time I tried to get one past Rosalie, but Jasper tossed out a slow pitch, robbing me of the momentum I needed. I grounded the ball, but only made it to first before Rosalie blocked me.Carlisle smashed the ball straight down against the rocky ground, hoping it would pop up high enough that I would have a chance to get around the bases, but Jasper leaped up and got it back in play too quickly. Emmett had me cornered on third.Alice ran through the possibilities as she approached the plate, but the outlook wasn’t encouraging. She did her best, though, driving the ball as hard as she could down the right foul line. Jasper didn’t take the bait, not even trying to tag her out before he fired the ball back to Emmett, who stood like a brick wall in front of home plate. I didn’t have a lot of choices. There was no way to make it past him, but if our entire team got stranded on the bases—according to our family rules—that meant an automatic end to the inning.I charged Emmett, who looked thrilled by my choice, but before I could even try to dance around him to the plate, Rosalie was already complaining.“Esme—he’s trying to force an out.” This was also against the family rules.Of course, Emmett tagged me, there just wasn’t any way around him.“Cheater,” Rose hissed.Esme gave me a reproving look. “Rose is right. Take the field.”I shrugged, and headed to the outfield.Rose’s team did better this time. Both she and Jasper got around off one of Emmett’s big hits, though I was pretty sure she’d cheated. The path of the ball shifted in flight, almost as if something smaller had knocked it off course, but I was too deep in the trees to see where that projectile had come from. I had time to throw Emmett out, at least. Rosalie’s next long fly was too low; Alice was able to jump for it. Jasper got on base again, but I stopped Emmett’s line drive before it reached the forest, and Carlisle and I caught Jasper between us on his way to third.As the game progressed, I watched for signs that Bella was getting bored. But every time I looked, she seemed completely engrossed. This was something new to her, at least. I knew we didn’t look much like humans playing baseball. I monitored her expression, waiting for the novelty to wear off. We had hours left in the storm, and Emmett and Jasper wouldn’t want to miss any of it. If Bella were weary, or too cold, though, I would excuse myself. I winced internally, thinking of how well that would go over with Rosalie. Ah, well, she would survive.Manners wore thin as the score fluctuated, and I wondered what Bella would think of us, Esme’s warning notwithstanding. But when Rosalie shouted that I was a “pathetic, cheating tool” (because I’d known exactly which tree to scale in order to catch her fly ball) and later a “leprous swine” (tagging her out at third), Bella just laughed along with Esme. Rosalie wasn’t the only one hurling insults as we played, but this time Carlisle wasn’t the only person who wasn’t. I was on my best behavior, though I could see this irritated Rosalie more than if I’d matched her trash talking.So it was a win-win.We were in the eleventh inning—our innings never lasted more than a few minutes; we wouldn’t stop at any particular number, we’d just end when the storm did—and Carlisle was batting first. Alice could see another big hit coming, and I wished that one of us were on base. Sure enough, Emmett—taking his turn on the mound—couldn’t resist trying to throw a fast strike past Carlisle, and thus gave him all the power he needed to crush the ball so hard it sailed far past where Rosalie had any hope of stopping it. The sound reverberated off the mountains, more like an explosion than thunder.While that sound was still echoing around us, another sound caught my attention.“Oh!” The sound huffed out of Alice as though someone had punched her.The images were pouring through her head in a torrent. An avalanche of new futures swirled unintelligibly, seemingly disconnected from each other. Some were blinding bright and some so dark there was nothing to see. A thousand different backgrounds, most of them unfamiliar.Nothing was left of the future she’d been perfectly confident in before this moment. Whatever had changed was big enough that it left no part of our destiny untouched. Alice and I both felt a shiver of panic.She focused. Working quickly, she traced the new visions back to their beginnings. The churning images funneled into a narrow moment very close to the present, almost immediate.Three strangers’ faces. Three vampires she saw running toward us.I darted to Bella, considering racing away with her immediately. But there were near futures of us alone, outnumbered.…“Alice?” Esme asked.Jasper rocketed to Alice’s side almost faster than I’d moved to Bella’s.“I didn’t see,” Alice whispered. “I couldn’t tell.”She was comparing visions now. The older ones where, tomorrow night, the three strangers would approach the house. It was a future I was prepared for; Bella and I were far away in that version.Something had changed their plans. She moved forward, just a few minutes, into this new timeline. A friendly meeting was a possibility, introductions, a request. Alice realized what had happened. But I was fixated on the fact that Bella was there in this vision, quietly in the background.We were all in a tight circle at this point, Alice at our center.Carlisle leaned close, putting one hand on her arm. “What is it, Alice?”Alice shook her head quickly, as though trying to force the pictures in her head to line up in a way that made sense. “They were traveling much quicker than I thought. I can see I had the perspective wrong before.”“What changed?” Jasper had been with Alice for so long that he understood better than anyone besides me how her talent worked.“They heard us playing,” Alice told us; the strangers would reveal this information in the friendly version of events. “And it changed their path.”Everyone stared at Bella.“How soon?” Carlisle demanded, turning toward me.It was not an easy distance for me to hear across. It helped that on a late, stormy night like this, the mountains around us were mostly empty of humans. It helped more that there were no other vampires in the area. Vampire minds were slightly more resonant; I could hear them from a greater distance, pinpoint them more easily. So I was able to locate them—aided by the landmarks I’d seen in Alice’s vision—but I could only catch the most dominant thoughts.“Less than five minutes,” I told him. “They’re running—they want to play.”His eyes flashed to Bella again. You have to get her away from here. “Can you make it?”Alice focused on one strand of possibility for me. Trying to escape, Bella on my back.Bella didn’t slow me down very much—it wasn’t the burden of her weight but the need to move carefully so as not to hurt her that impeded me—but I wouldn’t be quite fast enough. This strand tied into the other future I’d seen: us surrounded, outnumbered…The strangers were not so enthusiastic about baseball as to be careless. Alice saw that they would come at the clearing from three different angles, surveilling, before regrouping to present a united front. If any of them heard me running, they would come to investigate.I shook my head. “No, not carrying—”Carlisle’s thoughts roiled in alarm.“Besides,” I hissed, “the last thing we need is for them to catch the scent and start hunting.”“How many?” Emmett demanded.“Three,” Alice growled.Emmett snorted. The sound was so at odds with the tension that I could only stare at him blankly.“Three?” he scoffed. “Let them come.”Carlisle was considering options, but I could already see there was only one. Emmett was right: There were enough of us that the strangers would have to be suicidal to start a fight.“Let’s just continue the game,” Carlisle agreed, though I didn’t need to read minds to hear how unhappy he was with this decision. “Alice said they were simply curious.”Alice started combing through all the possibilities for an encounter here in the clearing, the images more solid now that a decision had been made. It looked like the vast majority were peaceable, though they all began with tension. There were a few outliers on the spectrum of outcomes where something ignited a standoff, but those were less clear. Alice couldn’t see what would trigger the conflict—some decision yet to be made. She didn’t see any stable version that would result in physical combat here.But there was so much she couldn’t interpret yet. I saw the blinding sunlight again, and neither of us could understand where she was seeing.I knew Carlisle’s decision was the only decision, but I felt sick to my core. How could I have allowed this to happen?“Edward,” Esme whispered. Are they thirsty? Are they hunting now?Thirst wasn’t in their thoughts, and in Alice’s vision, every second more clear, their eyes were a satiated red.I shook my head at her.That’s something, at least. She was nearly as horrified as I was. Her thoughts were, like mine, snarled up in the idea of Bella’s being in danger. Though Esme was no fighter, I could hear how fierce this made her feel. She would defend Bella as if she were her own child.“You catch, Esme,” I directed. “I’ll call it now.”Esme took my place quickly, but her focus was locked on Bella’s position.No one was eager to stray deep into the field. They hovered close, ears all trained toward the forest. Alice, like Esme, had no intention of moving away from Bella. Her protective thoughts were not exactly like Esme’s—not as maternal—but I could see that she, too, would shield Bella at any cost.Despite the sick feeling consuming me, I could feel a rush of gratitude for their commitment.“Take your hair down,” I murmured to Bella.It wasn’t much of a disguise, but the most obviously human thing—besides her scent and her heartbeat—was her skin. The more of it we could hide…She immediately pulled the band from her ponytail and shook her hair out, letting it fall around her face. It was clear she understood the need to hide.“The others are coming now,” she stated. Her voice was quiet, but even.“Yes,” I said. “Stay very still, keep quiet, and don’t move from my side, please.”I placed a few locks of her hair in a better position to camouflage her face.“That won’t help,” Alice murmured. “I could smell her across the field.”“I know,” I snapped.“What did Esme ask you?” Bella whispered.I thought about lying. She must already be terrified. But I told her the truth. “Whether they were thirsty.”Her heart thudded out of rhythm, then picked up faster than before.I was vaguely aware of the others pretending to continue the game, but my mind was so focused on what was coming that I saw nothing of their façade.Alice watched her visions solidify. I saw how they would split up, which routes they would take, and where they would reassemble before confronting us. I was relieved to see that none of them would cross Bella’s earlier trail before entering the clearing. Perhaps that was why Alice’s vision of the cordial if cautious meeting held firm. Of course, there were hundreds of possibilities once they were here. I saw myself defending Bella many times, the others always standing with me—well, Rosalie taking Emmett’s flank; it looked like she had little interest in protecting anyone besides him. There were a few fragile future threads where it came to a fight, but they were as insubstantial as steam. I couldn’t get a good view of the outcome.I could hear their minds approaching, still distant, but clearer. It was obvious that none of them had any hostility toward us, though the one trailing the pack—the redheaded female Alice had seen—was skittish with anxiety. She was prepared to run for it if she felt any hint that we were aggressive. The two males were just excited about the possibility of some recreation. They seemed to be comfortable with approaching a group of strangers, and I assumed they were nomads familiar with how things worked here in the North.They were splitting up now, doing their due diligence before exposing themselves.If Bella hadn’t been here, if she’d rejected the idea of spending her evening watching us play… well, I probably would have been with her. And Carlisle would have called me to let me know the strangers had arrived early. I would have been anxious, of course. But I would have known I’d done nothing wrong.Because I should have foreseen this possibility. The noise of playing vampires was a very specific sound. If I’d taken the time to think through all the conceivable contingencies, if I’d not accepted Alice’s vision of the strangers coming tomorrow as gospel—set my watch to it, so to speak—if I’d been circumspect rather than enthusiastic…I tried to imagine how I would have felt if this encounter had taken place six months ago, before I’d ever seen Bella’s face. I thought I would have been… unperturbed. Once I’d seen these visitors’ minds, I would have been confident that there was nothing to worry about. Probably, I would even have been excited about the novelty of newcomers and the variation they would add to the pattern of our usual game.Now I could feel nothing but dread, panic… and guilt.“I’m sorry, Bella,” I breathed just loud enough for her to hear. The strangers were too close for me to risk speaking at a greater volume. “It was stupid, irresponsible, to expose you like this. I’m so sorry.”She just stared at me, whites showing all around her irises. I wondered if she kept silent because of my warning, or if she just had nothing to say to me.The strangers reunited at the southwest corner of the clearing. Their movements were audible now. I shifted my position so that my body would hide hers and began tapping my foot quietly to the rhythm of her heartbeat, hoping to disguise it as long as I could by creating a plausible source for the sound.Carlisle turned to face the whisper of their approaching feet, and the others followed his lead. We would not give away any of our advantages, but would pretend to have no more than our extensive vampire senses to guide us.Frozen, motionless as if we were hewn from the rock around us, we waited.