Solstice

SURPRISES

'Calvin's isn't the only vampire bar in town,' Edward told me in a low voice as we walked down a long, winding flight of stairs that were straight out of a black and white movie. We walked through an archway and were in a cellar, or a string of them, one leading into another; the low, whitewashed ceiling was not far above Edward's head, and the air was warm and dry, scented with freshly-hewn firewood and candlewax. There were many little alcoves and niches set along the walls with tables, chairs and stools tucked into them; most of the tables were occupied by vampires. I recognised the white-blond man I had seen feeding on the young woman's neck in the Temple Bar, and he raised a glass of dark red fluid to me in recognition. Smiling nervously at him, I followed Edward's broad back into the bar. The walls were panelled in wood, and looked like they could be original Colonial. The bar was polished oak, and stools topped with red velvet stood before it. A forest of glasses clustered on a ledge above, and the back wall was covered with black and white photographs, small portraits and banknotes from the last two hundred years. On an old phonograph, jazz music played softly. A bartender, with eyes of a shade I'd never seen before – somewhere between acid green and lime green – greeted Edward by name, and smiled at me. I smiled back, trying not to stare at the man's astonishing eyes.

Edward ordered us a jug of bull's blood and took it over to a cosy corner. I sank on to the soft velvet pew, looking at him by candlelight. Every time I thought that I had seen him at his most beautiful, he surprised me. The golden light flickered across his face, points of light darting across his ochre eyes.

'Surprised?' he asked, and I grinned ruefully. 'You know,' he told me, clinking his glass against mine, 'you look a lot better since we came away from Persephone's. The tension must have been driving you insane. I hope you realise that I was taking it seriously – by not telling you that we were coming to see her, I hoped to preoccupy your mind, so that you weren't overwhelmed by worry –'

'Oh, I do,' I assured him. 'I know you'd never be deliberately cruel to me.'

'And by accident?' He froze into absolute stillness.

'No, I don't think... apart from that day in the forest, of course. But otherwise, I don't think you've ever been accidentally cruel to me. It's not just that you always watch what you say and how you act. I just don't think it's in your nature, Edward.'

He relaxed and sipped at the bull's blood. 'No, I would hope that I have never been cruel to you in any way. Alarming, certainly; arrogant, definitely. Wilful, headstrong, pompous –'

'Stop!' I protested, half-laughing. 'Will you please stop putting yourself down already!'

He shrugged indifferently. 'I have many flaws. I have learnt to identify them; now I need to eradicate them.' He leant forward and laid his hand over mine, stroking my fingertips with his thumb. Even this, the slightest touch, filled me with a warm wave of desire. 'How do you feel?' he asked, his voice soft.

'I don't honestly know,' I confessed. 'I suppose I should feel something, but I'm kind of numb. There's just so much.' I drank some of my own bull's blood and allowed my gaze to range around the room, recognising a few other faces from the Temple Bar. 'Why have you been holding out on me? Why didn't you bring me here years ago?'

'Years ago, I don't think you would have wanted to come.' He smiled crookedly. 'You have changed a lot. Not for better, or worse, and not in essentials; but in other ways – your outlook, your responses – you're simply... different. It's to be expected. We married six weeks after I proposed; six weeks after that, you simultaneously became a vampire and a mother. A huge number of adjustments to someone's existence. Even if they are spread out over time, they are bound to cause stress, upheaval.' I nodded, watching his perfect lips as they moulded themselves to the rim of his glass. 'Though our natures rarely change, big life events can alter a vampire's character permanently. As I changed when I met you, and discovered what it is to love. As I changed several nights ago when you informed me about the less edifying aspects of my behaviour. As I changed while I watched you sleep for the first time in seven years. As we both will change, now that Jacob Black will no longer be the front and centre of our lives and marriage.'