Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,238

wondered whether they were a mated pair, but his thoughts didn’t give away any special feeling for her. They must have been together longer than the alliance with Laurent. They were the original coven, and he the interloper. It fit with how easily James contemplated disposing of the newcomer.

“We’ll show you the way,” Carlisle said, less like an offer and more like a command. “Jasper, Rosalie, Esme?”

Jasper didn’t like this—separating from Alice, especially when things were going poorly. But he couldn’t argue with Carlisle now. We needed to present a united front, and he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. Carlisle had no idea of the cover Jasper was generating. Jasper resigned himself to keeping up the concealment as long as necessary; if a fight was coming, he intended it to be an ambush.

He looked at Alice, who nodded at him. She was confident she wasn’t in danger. He accepted that but was still unhappy. She darted to Bella’s side.

Without needing to discuss, Jasper, Esme, and Rose moved together to obstruct James’s view of Bella as they joined Carlisle.

James was not perturbed. His desire to attack had vanished. He was plotting now.

Emmett retreated last, his eyes on James as he moved backward into position beside me.

Carlisle gestured for Laurent and his coven to lead the way out of the clearing. Laurent complied quickly, with Victoria right behind. Her mind was still full of escape routes.

James hesitated for a fraction of a second, and his eyes returned to us. I knew Bella was invisible behind Emmett, but he wasn’t looking for her this time. He stared directly into my eyes and smiled.

Something caught his attention—Alice, uncloaked as Jasper moved away from her. There was a flicker of surprise as he took in her face for the first time, perhaps wondering why he hadn’t thought to appraise her before, but that surprise did not resolve into words before he turned and dashed after the others. Carlisle and Jasper ran close on his heels, Rose and Esme following.

I had to work to keep my voice from coming out as a snarl or a shriek. “Let’s go, Bella.”

She seemed paralyzed. Her wide eyes were so blank that I wondered whether she even understood what I was saying. But I didn’t have time to soothe her, or treat her if she were in shock. Right now the only priority was escape.

I took her elbow and pulled her in the opposite direction from where the others had just disappeared. After one staggering step, she found her footing and half ran to keep up with me. Emmett and Alice moved behind us, hiding her, just in case.

I was positive James would not follow Laurent back to our house. When he found an opportunity, he would break off and circle back to catch Bella’s trail. I couldn’t know how long it would take him to find that opportunity, but I had to act as if he were already watching. If he were, it would be better to let him think that we would move at Bella’s speed. I doubted he would be surprised for long when her scent became suddenly tenuous in the trees, but if we could obscure how we were traveling, he would have to pause to reassess.

His thoughts were too far away for me to pinpoint him now, though I had a sense of where the larger group was. I couldn’t be positive he was still with them. If he ran up the side of one of these peaks, he’d have a good view of our movements. Still, I chafed at our velocity—or lack thereof.

Emmett and Alice didn’t comment on our pace. They were both aware that we might have an audience, though Alice couldn’t see clearly what James was doing. His path wasn’t going to cross ours here, nor in the near future. She’d only seen the strangers in the clearing in the first place because they had decided to interact with us. It wasn’t easy for her to see outsiders unless they were with a member of her family. James would be mostly invisible until he decided to accost one of us.

It seemed hours till we reached the edge of the clearing, but I knew it was really just minutes. As soon as we were deep enough into the trees to be invisible to any watcher, I lifted Bella and settled her against my back. She understood, not too far gone into shock, then. She wrapped her legs tightly around my waist