Twilight 3 - Eclipse | Page 9

their land. Do you want us to start a war?”
“Of course not!”
“Then there’s really no point in discussing the matter further.” He dropped his hand and looked away,
searching for a subject change. His eyes paused on something behind me, and he smiled, though his eyes
stayed wary.
“I’m glad Charlie has decided to let you out — you’re sadly in need of a visit to the bookstore. I can’t
believe you’re readingWuthering Heights again. Don’t you know it by heart yet?”
“Not all of us have photographic memories,” I said curtly.
“Photographic memory or not, I don’t understand why you like it. The characters are ghastly people
who ruin each others’ lives. I don’t know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with couples
like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It isn’t a love story, it’s a hate story.”
“You have some serious issues with the classics,” I snapped.
“Perhaps it’s because I’m not impressed by antiquity.” He smiled, evidently satisfied that he’d distracted
me. “Honestly, though, whydo you read it over and over?” His eyes were vivid with real interest now,
trying — again — to unravel the convoluted workings of my mind. He reached across the table to cradle
my face in his hand. “What is it that appeals to you?”
His sincere curiosity disarmed me. “I’m not sure,” I said, scrambling for coherency while his gaze
unintentionally scattered my thoughts. “I think it’s something about the inevitability. How nothing can keep
them apart — not her selfishness, or his evil, or even death, in the end. . . .”
His face was thoughtful as he considered my words. After a moment he smiled a teasing smile. “I still
think it would be a better story if either of them had one redeeming quality.”
“I think that may be the point,” I disagreed. “Their loveis their only redeeming quality.”
“I hope you have better sense than that — to fall in love with someone so . . . malignant.”
“It’s a bit late for me to worry about who I fall in love with,” I pointed out. “But even without the
warning, I seem to have managed fairly well.”
He laughed quietly. “I’m gladyou think so.”
“Well, I hope you’re smart enough to stay away from someone so selfish. Catherine is really the source
of all the trouble, not Heathcliff.”
“I’ll be on my guard,” he promised.
I sighed. He was so good at distractions.
I put my hand over his to hold it to my face. “I need to see Jacob.”
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His eyes closed. “No.”
“It’s truly not dangerous at all,” I said, pleading again. “I used to spend all day in La Push with the whole
lot of them, and nothing ever happened.”
But I made a slip; my voice faltered at the end because I realized as I was saying the words that they
were a lie. It was not true thatnothing had ever happened. A brief flash of memory — an enormous gray
wolf crouched to spring, baring his dagger-like teeth at me — had my palms sweating with an echo of
remembered panic.
Edward heard my heart accelerate and nodded as if I’d acknowledged the lie aloud. “Werewolves are
unstable. Sometimes, the people near them get hurt. Sometimes, they get killed.”
I wanted to deny it, but another image slowed my rebuttal. I saw in my head the once beautiful face of
Emily Young, now marred by a trio of dark scars that dragged down the corner of her right eye and left
her mouth warped forever into a lopsided scowl.
He waited, grimly triumphant, for me to find my voice.
“You don’t know them,” I whispered.
“I know them better than you think, Bella. I was here the last time.”
“The last time?”
“We started crossing paths with the wolves about seventy years ago. . . . We had just settled near
Hoquiam. That was before Alice and Jasper were with us. We outnumbered them, but that wouldn’t
have stopped it from turning into a fight if not for Carlisle. He managed to convince Ephraim Black that
coexisting was possible, and eventually we made the truce.”
Jacob’s great-grandfather’s name startled me.
“We thought the line had died out with Ephraim,” Edward muttered; it sounded like he was talking to
himself now. “That the genetic quirk which allowed the transmutation had been lost. . . .” He broke off
and stared at me accusingly. “Your bad luck seems to get more potent every day. Do you realize that
your insatiable pull for all things deadly was strong enough to recover a pack of mutant canines from
extinction? If we could bottle your luck, we’d have a weapon of mass destruction on our hands.”
I ignored the ribbing, my attention caught by his assumption — was he serious? “ButI didn’t bring them
back. Don’t