Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,49

afford to be thirsty now. I overdid it, drinking more than necessary, glutting myself again—a small grouping of elk and one black bear I was lucky to stumble across this early in the year. I was so full it was uncomfortable. Why couldn’t that be enough? Why did her scent have to be so much stronger than anything else?

And not just her scent—whatever it was about her that marked her for disaster. She’d been in Forks for mere weeks and already she’d twice come within inches of a violent end. For all I knew, right at this very moment she could have wandered into the path of another death sentence. What would it be this time? A meteorite smashing through her roof and crushing her in her bed?

I could hunt no more and the sun was still hours and hours from rising. Now that it had occurred to me, the idea of the meteorite and all its possible allies was hard to dismiss. I tried to be rational, to consider the odds against all the disasters I could imagine, but that didn’t help. What were the odds, after all, that the girl would come to live in a town with a decent percentage of vampires as permanent residents? What were the odds that she would appeal to one so perfectly?

What if something happened to her in the night? What if I went to school tomorrow, every sense and feeling focused onto the space where she should be, and her seat was empty?

Abruptly, the risk felt unacceptable.

The only way I could be positive she was safe was if there was someone in place to catch the meteorite before it could touch her. The jittery high swept through me again when I realized that I was going to go find the girl.

It was past midnight, and Bella’s house was dark and quiet. Her truck was parked against the curb, her father’s police cruiser in the driveway. There were no conscious thoughts anywhere in the neighborhood. I watched the house from the blackness of the forest that bordered it on the east.

There was no evidence of any kind of danger… aside from myself.

I listened and picked out the sound of two people breathing inside the house, two even heartbeats. So all must be well. I leaned against the trunk of a young hemlock and settled in to wait for stray meteorites.

The problem with waiting was that it freed up the mind for all kinds of speculation. Obviously the meteorite was just a metaphor for all the unlikely things that could go wrong. But not every danger would streak across the sky with a brilliant splash of fire. I could think of many that would give no warning, hazards that could slink into the dark house silently, that might already be there.

These were ridiculous worries. This street didn’t have a natural gas line, so a carbon monoxide leak was improbable. I doubted they used coal frequently. The Olympic Peninsula had very little in the way of dangerous wildlife. Anything large I would be able to hear now. There were no venomous snakes, scorpions, or centipedes, and just a few spiders, none of them deadly to a healthy adult, and unlikely to be found indoors regardless. Ridiculous. I knew that. I knew I was being irrational.

But I felt anxious, unsettled. I couldn’t push the dark imaginings from my mind. If I could just see her…

I would take a closer look.

In only half a second, I had crossed the yard and scaled the side of the house. This upstairs window would be a bedroom, probably the master. Maybe I should have started in the back. Less conspicuous that way. Dangling from the eave above the window by one hand, I looked through the glass, and my breath stopped.

It was her room. I could see her in the one small bed, her covers on the floor and her sheets twisted around her legs. She was perfectly fine, of course, as the rational part of me had already known. Safe… but not at ease. As I watched, she twitched restlessly and threw one arm over her head. She did not sleep soundly, at least not this night. Did she sense the danger near her?

I was repulsed by myself as I watched her toss again. How was I any better than some sick peeping tom? I wasn’t any better. I was much, much worse.

I relaxed my fingertips, about to let myself drop. But first I allowed myself one long