world. The Filipino Danag, the Hebrew Estrie, the Romanian Varacolaci, the Italian Stregoni benefici (a legend actually based on my new father-in-law's early exploits with the Volturi, not that I'd known anything about that at the time)... I'd paid less and less attention as the stories had grown more and more implausible. I only remembered vague bits of the later entries. They mostly seemed like excuses dreamed up to explain things like infant mortality rates - and infidelity. No, honey, I'm not having an affair! That sexy woman you saw sneaking out of the house was an evil succubus. I'm lucky I escaped with my life! (Of course, with what I knew now about Tanya and her sisters, I suspected that some of those excuses had been nothing but fact.) There had been one for the ladies, too. How can you accuse me of cheating on you - just because you've come home from a two-year sea voyage and I'm pregnant? It was the incubus. He hypnotized me with his mystical vampire powers....
That had been part of the definition of the incubus - the ability to father children with his hapless prey.
I shook my head, dazed. But...
I thought of Esme and especially Rosalie. Vampires couldn't have children. If it were possible, Rosalie would have found a way by now. The incubus myth was nothing but a fable.
Except that... well, there was a difference. Of course Rosalie could not conceive a child, because she was frozen in the state in which she passed from human to inhuman. Totally unchanging. And human women's bodies had to change to bear children. The constant change of a monthly cycle for one thing, and then the bigger changes needed to accommodate a growing child. Rosalie's body couldn't change.
But mine could. Mine did. I touched the bump on my stomach that had not been there yesterday.
And human men - well, they pretty much stayed the same from puberty to death. I remembered a random bit of trivia, gleaned from who knows where: Charlie Chaplin was in his seventies when he
fathered his youngest child. Men had no such thing as child-bearing years or cycles of fertility.
Of course, how would anyone know if vampire men could father children, when their partners were not able? What vampire on earth would have the restraint necessary to test the theory with a human woman? Or the inclination?
I could think of only one.
Part of my head was sorting through fact and memory and speculation, while the other half - the part that controlled the ability to move even the smallest muscles - was stunned beyond the capacity for normal operations. I couldn't move my lips to speak, though I wanted to ask Edward to please explain to me what was going on. I needed to go back to where he sat, to touch him, but my body wouldn't follow instructions. I could only stare at my shocked eyes in the mirror, my fingers gingerly pressed against the swelling on my torso.
And then, like in my vivid nightmare last night, the scene abruptly transformed. Everything I saw in the mirror looked completely different, though nothing actually was different.
What happened to change everything was that a soft little nudge bumped my hand - from inside my body.
In the same moment, Edward's phone rang, shrill and demanding. Neither of us moved. It rang again and again. I tried to tune it out while I pressed my fingers to my stomach, waiting. In the mirror my expression was no longer
bewildered - it was wondering now. I barely noticed when the strange, silent tears started streaming down my cheeks.
The phone kept ringing. I wished Edward would answer it - I was having a moment. Possibly the biggest of my life.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
Finally, the annoyance broke through everything else. I got down on my knees next to Edward - I found myself moving more carefully, a thousand times more aware of the way each motion felt - and patted his pockets until I found the phone. I half-expected him to thaw out and answer it himself, but he was perfectly still.
I recognized the number, and I could easily guess why she was calling.
"Hi, Alice," I said. My voice wasn't much better than before. I cleared my throat.
"Bella? Bella, areyou okay?"
"Yeah. Urn. Is Carlisle there?"
"He is. What's the problem?"
"I'm not... one hundred percent... sure___"
"Is Edward all right?" she asked warily. She called Carlisle's name away from the phone and then
demanded, "Why didn't he pick up the phone?" before I