Is It Black Or Is It Noir?

Embrace The Future

Hope you all enjoy this. I think the men in white coats might be coming to fit me with one of those jackets that button up the back after this chapter lol xx Alexis

Business was going well for Whitlock, Whitlock & McCarty. Their ongoing dealings with the Casino chain kept them busy and a steady stream of vampires looking for loved ones, family and possessions kept Ashley on her toes. They refused as many, those wanting them to locate other vampires due to feuds or rivalry, that wasn't the kind of company they wanted to run.

The case of sticky fingers was all too easy to solve, deliveries arrived intact and the store person just kept a couple of bottle for himself or a joint of beef, sometimes it was vegetables or canned goods. Thinking by only taking a small amount it would not be noticeable. But all businesses kept records and what came in did not calculate with what was ordered. Therefore Emmett was able to pinpoint the days and who worked them then just videoed the next transgression as it happened.

Bella had cut her on-site classes to the bare minimum; the rest was being done online and in the evenings at other locations off campus. All in all, because she was working at her own pace and not the dictated course time Bella was now ahead of her game plan. Her year was now just six months and two had passed already, the end was in sight and Peter was happy.

He stayed as close as he dared while she was on campus and watched her like a hawk. But the silence from Forks was like a ticking bomb, just waiting for a spark to set it off. They prayed that as no one knew of her revised timetable, she would be finished before he managed to break free of the pack and elders. Everyone except Peter was stunned at how easy Bella found the accelerated learning programme she was now on.

All were only now seeing just how mentally advanced she was before she'd been working within a structured normal human environment, but she was no ordinary human. With those constraints nearly all removed, Bella was soaking up all the information like a sponge. She was still working for and with them too. Rose was rightly mortified by her previous thoughts and behaviour to Bella, who was clearly smarter than them all.

Heaven knows just how much smarter she'd be with a vampire's brain. But no matter what it didn't change her, she had time for Ashley and Jasper, to bond and become a family. Her friendship with Emmett and Rose strengthened too, mainly due to Emmett smoothing the way and showing Rose there was another approach, the Cullens did it their fashion, that didn't make it the only choice.

So Rose too was starting to grow for the first time in years and she liked it. Her first major decision was getting them a place of their own, which she decorated and organised. It was a freeing, cathartic event and helped her to see change as a good thing and to embrace it wholeheartedly. With every day that passed her ties to Carlisle and Esme loosened and she knew she'd never go back to being a glorified child. She was happy to be in charge of her own life after all this time.

IIBOIIN

In La Push, everyone was on watch Jake duty and had been for two long months, but they hated it. He listened to no one, railed against them all and little by little his ties with them all dwindled to an obligation on their side and total disinterest on his. While they worked on ways to make him stay, his wolf magic worked to strengthen him enough to leave.

The very thing that made the tribe special was the thing that might destroy them. They'd tried potions, lotions and incantations all to no avail. Deep in the annals of their history, long overlooked and thus almost forgotten were stories of the wolf madness. Where a phased one, became unstable and irrational and ultimately for everyone's safety, put to death. These were not tales told around the campfires, they were not seen as important or heroic, but they should have been, as a warning.