The Edge

Fire and Ice

Summary: Things are going well with Alice, but other things are happening around her that are making Bella uneasy.

A Week Later

Bella felt a now familiar prickling at the edge of her consciousness, and looked up from the sudoku puzzle in front of her.

She felt her heart rate begin to pick up.

Taking a deep breath, Bella turned her head to the side and slowly began to scan the store, her eyes then moving to look at what was visible of the street through the windows. She couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, yet she couldn't shake the feeling that ...

"What's up?" Mike asked, walking towards her from the back room.

Bella closed her eyes, releasing the breath she had been holding and turned to look at him, forcing a blank expression onto her face as she did.

For days she hadn't been able to shake the feeling that she was being watched. A cold, creeping sensation seemed to constantly be tickling her spine, but whenever she looked around nobody was ever there.

However, despite never having actually seen someone watching her, the feeling that she was being watched never quite went away.

She might have thought that she was just being paranoid, that the multiple near death experiences she had had over the past year were finally catching up with her, leaving her constantly expecting danger everywhere she went. But, Alice and Edward had both been tense for the past week, which left her feeling uneasy and suspicious. They told her it was nothing; that they were 'fine', that everything was 'fine', but it didn't feel 'fine', and the fact that they were both reading from the same script only intensified Bella's feelings that something was going on.

However, they were immovable on the subject, presenting a united front for the first time since Italy, which left Bella in the dark ... and uneasy.

But, these were not fears that she could burden Mike with, so she focused her attention on Mike, and sighed, "Nothing," before looking back down at the sudoku puzzle in front of her, poking the page a couple of times with her pen before wearily pushing it away from her.

"Right," Mike drawled in a way that let her know he didn't believe that she had just been idly daydreaming. "Which of your 'boyfriends' are you looking out for?" he asked, smirking.

Bella clamped down on the urge to sigh.

Ever since Alice had returned to Forks and had decided that it was occasionally fun to walk around school holding hands with her, Mike had decided that it would be hilarious to refer to Alice as 'her boyfriend', and whenever Alice would pick her up from work he would ask, where they were going on their date, or something equally witty.

Bella usually rolled her eyes, but Alice seemed to find it all terribly amusing and whenever he said something like that, Alice would loop her arm through Bella's and kiss her on the cheek before saying 'candle lit dinner on the beach', 'romantic stroll through the woods', or her favorite, 'a quiet evening at the Have-a-Nap Inn' or something equally 'comical' in response.

Alice and Mike would then laugh, while Bella sighed deeply, Mike would wink at them and tell them 'Don't anything I wouldn't do', and then mercifully they would be off.

"Alice," Bella responded, not even bothering to give him the stink-eye. He knew that she didn't find him as hilarious as Alice did, but whenever she clearly showed her displeasure it only encouraged him to tease her more.

"Oh, sweet," Mike responded, running his hand through his hair.

Bella turned her head away and smirked at that. For all that he liked to tease the two of them about being 'special friends' it never stopped him from trying to flirt with Alice when she came into the store.