Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,50

look at her face.

Still not peaceful. The little furrow was there between her eyebrows, the corners of her mouth turned down. Her lips trembled, and then parted.

“Okay, Mom,” she muttered.

Bella talked in her sleep.

Curiosity flared, overpowering self-disgust. So long I’d tried to hear her and failed. The lure of those unprotected, unconsciously spoken thoughts was impossibly tempting.

What were human rules to me, after all? How many did I ignore on a daily basis?

I thought of the multitude of illegal documents my family needed to live as we liked. False names and false histories, driver’s licenses that let us enroll in school and medical credentials that allowed Carlisle to work as a doctor. Papers that made our strange grouping of nearly identically aged adults comprehensible as a family. None of it would be necessary if we didn’t try to have brief periods of permanence, if we didn’t prefer to have a home.

Then, of course, there was the way we funded our lives. Insider trading laws didn’t apply to psychics, but it certainly wasn’t honest, what we did. And the transfer of inheritances from one fabricated name to another wasn’t legal, either.

And then there were all the murders.

We didn’t take them lightly, but obviously none of us had ever been punished by human courts for our crimes. We covered them up—also a crime.

Then why should I feel so guilty over one little misdemeanor? Human laws had never applied to me. And this was hardly my first adventure with breaking and entering.

I knew I could do this safely. The monster was restless but well fettered.

I would keep a careful distance. I would not harm her. She would never know I’d been here. I only wanted to be certain that she was safe.

It was all rationalization, evil arguments from the devil on my left shoulder. I knew that, but I had no angel on the right. I would behave as the nightmarish creature that I was.

I tried the window, and it was not locked, though it stuck due to long disuse. I took a deep breath—my last for however long I was near her—and slid the glass slowly aside, cringing at each faint groan of the metal frame. Finally it was open wide enough for me to ease through.

“Mom, wait…,” she muttered. “Scottsdale Road is faster.…”

Her room was small—disorganized and cluttered, but not unclean. There were books piled on the floor beside her bed, their spines facing away from me, and CDs scattered by her inexpensive CD player—the one on top was just a clear jewel case. Stacks of papers surrounded a computer that looked like it belonged in a museum dedicated to obsolete technologies. Shoes dotted the wooden floor.

I wanted very much to go read the titles of her books and CDs, but I was determined to take no more risks. Instead, I went to sit in an old rocking chair in the far corner of the room. My anxiety eased, the dark thoughts receded, and my mind was clear.

Had I really once believed her average-looking? I thought of that first day, and my disgust for the human boys who were so fascinated by her. But when I remembered her face in their minds then, I could not understand why I had not immediately found her beautiful. It seemed an obvious thing.

Right now—with her dark hair tangled and wild around her pale face, wearing a threadbare t-shirt full of holes with tatty sweatpants, her features relaxed in unconsciousness, her full lips slightly parted—she took my breath away. Or would have, I thought wryly, if I were breathing.

She did not speak. Perhaps her dream had ended.

I stared at her face and tried to think of some way to make the future bearable.

Hurting her was not bearable. Did that mean my only choice was to try to leave again?

The others could not argue with me now. My absence would not put anyone in danger. There would be no suspicion, nothing to link anyone’s thoughts back to the accident.

I wavered as I had this afternoon, and nothing seemed possible.

A small brown spider crawled out from the edge of the closet door. My arrival must have disturbed it. Eratigena agrestis—a hobo spider, from its size a juvenile male. Once considered dangerous, more recent scientific study had proven its venom inconsequential to humans. However, its bite was still painful.… I reached out with one finger and crushed it silently.

Perhaps I should have let the creature be, but the thought of anything hurting her was intolerable.

And then suddenly, all