Stephenie Meyer - The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

“Wow,” I muttered.

Diego grinned at me, his face beautiful with light, and suddenly, with a deep lurch in my stomach, I realized that the whole BFF thing was way off the mark. For me, anyway. It was just that fast.

His grin softened a little bit into just the hint of a smile. His eyes were wide like mine. All awe and lights. He touched my face, the way he’d touched my hand, as if he was trying to understand the shine.

“So pretty,” he said. He left his hand against my cheek.

I’m not sure how long we stood there, smiling like total idiots, blazing away like glass torches. The inlet was empty of boats, which was probably good. No way even a mud-eyed human would have missed us. Not that they could have done anything to us, but I wasn’t thirsty, and all the screaming would have ruined the mood.

Eventually a thick cloud drifted in front of the sun. Suddenly we were just us again, though still slightly luminous. Not enough that anyone with eyes duller than a vampire’s would notice.

As soon as the shine was gone, my thoughts cleared up and I could think about what was coming next. But even though Diego looked like his normal self again—not made of blazing light, anyway—I knew he would never look the same to me. That tingly sensation in the pit of my stomach was still there. I had the feeling it might be there permanently.

“Do we tell Riley? Do we think he doesn’t know?” I asked.

Diego sighed and dropped his hand. “I don’t know. Let’s think about this while we track them.”

“We’re going to have to be careful, tracking them in the day. We’re kind of noticeable in the sunlight, you know.”

He grinned. “Let’s be ninjas.”

I nodded. “Super-secret ninja club sounds way cooler than the whole BFF thing.”

“Definitely better.”

It didn’t take us more than a few seconds to find the point from which the whole gang had left the island. That was the easy part. Finding where they’d touched ground on the mainland was a whole other problem. We briefly discussed splitting up, then vetoed that idea unanimously. Our logic was really sound—after all, if one of us found something, how would we tell the other?—but mostly I just didn’t want to leave him, and I could see he felt the same. Both of us had been without any kind of good companionship our whole lives, and it was just too sweet to waste a minute of it.

There were so many options as to where they could have gone. To the mainland of the peninsula, or to another island, or back to the outskirts of Seattle, or north to Canada. Whenever we pulled down or burned down one of our houses, Riley was always prepared—he always seemed to know exactly where to go next. He must have planned ahead for that stuff, but he didn’t let any of us in on the plan.

They could have been anywhere.

Ducking in and out of the water to avoid boats and people really slowed us down. We spent all day with no luck, but neither of us minded. We were having the most fun we’d ever had.

It was such a strange day. Instead of sitting miserably in the darkness trying to tune out the mayhem and swallow my disgust at my hiding place, I was playing ninja with my new best friend, or maybe something more. We laughed a lot while we moved through the patches of shade, throwing rocks at each other like they were Chinese stars.

Then the sun set, and suddenly I was stressed. Would Riley look for us? Would he assume we were fried? Did he know better?

We started moving faster. A lot faster. We’d already circled all the nearby islands, so now we concentrated on the mainland. About an hour after sundown, I caught a familiar scent, and within seconds we were on their trail. Once we found the path of the smell, it was as easy as following a herd of elephants through fresh snow.

We talked about what to do, more serious now as we ran.

“I don’t think we should tell Riley,” I said. “Let’s say we spent all day in your cave before we went looking for them.” As I spoke, my paranoia started to grow. “Better yet, let’s tell them your cave was filled with water. We couldn’t even talk.”

“You think Riley’s a bad dude, don’t you?” he asked quietly after a minute. As he spoke, he took my hand.

“I don’t know. But I’d rather act like he was, just in case.” I hesitated, then said, “You don’t want to think he’s bad.”

“No,” Diego admitted. “He’s kind of my friend. I mean, not like you’re my friend.” He squeezed my fingers. “But more than anyone else. I don’t want to think…” Diego didn’t finish his sentence.

I squeezed his fingers back. “Maybe he’s totally decent. Our being careful doesn’t change who he is.”

“True. Okay, the underwater cave story it is. At least at first… I could talk to him about the sun later. I’d rather do it during the day, anyway, when I can prove what I’m claiming right away. And just in case he already knows, but there’s some good reason why he told us something else, I should tell him when we’re alone. Grab him at dawn, when he’s coming back from wherever it is he goes….”

I noticed a ton of I ’s rather than we ’s going on in Diego’s little speech, and it bothered me. But at the same time, I didn’t want much to do with educating Riley. I didn’t have the same faith in him Diego did.

“Ninja attack at dawn!” I said to make him laugh. It worked. We started joking again as we tracked our herd of vampires, but I could tell he was thinking serious stuff under the teasing, just like I was.

And I only got more anxious as we ran. Because we were running fast, and there was no way we had the wrong trail, but it was taking too long. We were really getting away from the coast, up and over the closest mountains, off into new territory. This wasn’t the normal pattern.

Every house we’d borrowed, whether it was up a mountain or on an island or hidden on a big farm, had a few things in common. The dead owners, the remote locale, and one other thing. They all were sort of focused on Seattle. Oriented around the big city like orbiting moons. Seattle was always the hub, always the target.

We were out of orbit now, and it felt wrong. Maybe it meant nothing, maybe it was just that so many things were changing today. All the truths I’d accepted had been turned upside down and I wasn’t in the mood for any other upheavals. Why couldn’t Riley have just picked someplace normal?

“Funny they’re this far out,” Diego murmured, and I could hear the edge in his voice.

“Or scary,” I muttered.

He squeezed my hand. “It’s cool. The ninja club can handle anything.”

“You got a secret handshake yet?”

“Working on it,” he promised.

Something started to bug me. It was like I could feel this strange blind spot—I knew there was something I wasn’t seeing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something obvious…

And then, about sixty miles farther west than our usual perimeter, we found the house. It was impossible to mistake the noise. The boom boom boom of the bass, the video-game soundtrack, the snarling. Totally our crowd.

I pulled my hand free, and Diego looked at me.

“Hey, I don’t even know you,” I said in a joking tone. “I haven’t had one conversation with you, what with all that water we sat in all day. You could be a ninja or a vampire for all I know.”

He grinned. “Same goes for you, stranger.” Then low and fast, “Just do the same things you did yesterday. Tomorrow night we’ll get out together. Maybe do some reconnaissance, figure out more of what’s going on.”

“Sounds like a plan. Mum’s the word.”

He ducked close and kissed me—just a peck, but right on the lips. The shock of it zinged through my whole body. Then he said, “Let’s do this,” and headed down the side of the mountain toward the source of the raucous noise without looking back. Already playing the part.