“Ah yes, how very romantic and touching,” Demetri smirked as he came to flank Felix, “Marcus would be going into fits of convulsion. By the way, we’re so very sorry we missed the wedding, but alas, we received no invitation.”

Alice rolled her eyes; – she had been in charge of invitations, of course – got up and came to stand beside me, pulling Jasper along with her.

“Chris, get up off the floor and – head to the car,” Demetri instructed, completely ignorant of Alice.

Indeed, she should not have been ignored, as she was nudging me and muttering, “Thoughts!” over and over again.

“Oh!” I let out quietly, and proceeded to venture into the depths of Demetri’s mind.

He was wondering whether or not to maim Edward, Alice and Jasper somehow, since he liked them well enough, and would prefer it if they didn’t pursue after they took me. On the other hand, he was thinking that having the ‘gifted ones’ all gathered in Volterra might press them to stay – or threaten them to. For now he would settle me, the persuader though, if the others wouldn’t stay.

The former idea of his I highly disliked and hoped he would discard. The latter I could deal with, so I fixed his mind on that, though I hoped I wouldn’t have to end up going.

I went over to the vampire Chris’ thoughts, and he was thinking relatively the same things, though his thoughts were exempt of maiming and intent on killing the other three. I fixed his mind onto the same thing as Demetri’s, and I was about to exit his mind, but I saw something. From his thoughts of taking me, he sprang thoughts of his mate. I remembered her face vividly – Heidi. So they could do the same thing then. They were the epitome of seduction. Edward had the same skills as them – all predators did – but theirs were much more pronounced and advanced. So that was how I had managed to forget about Edward so quickly. It also explained his ‘accent.’ I mentally reminded myself never to believe him again, if I could help it.

Then I switched over to Edward’s frequency – unlike him I could only ‘listen’ to one person’s thoughts at a time – and received one strong, steady thought: Rescue Bella.