Oh my goodness, it's been a long time. But I'm glad you're still with me! (At least I assume you are, if you're still reading this A/N)

To recap: Bella, Alice, and Jasper are young CIA operatives, and Edward, Emmett, Rosalie, and Carlisle are vampires. The CIA has been investigating the existence of vampires, believing them to be a threat to national security. Bella worked out that Edward was a vampire, but kept this knowledge to herself. Meanwhile, Alice has begun an unauthorized campaign to hack into the agency to learn everything she can about what the agents and operatives aren't being told by the administration. She, Bella, and Jasper have their suspicions about another operative named Irina who supposedly died on an op in Siberia. Her body was not recovered.

In the previous chapter, Edward had finally had enough of Bella keeping secrets from him and demanded that she tell him the truth. She said she couldn't, and he accepted that after she said she loved him. They made love. Later that night, the agency called Bella away for an op.

~oOo~

Bella

I was sitting quietly beside Edward in our shared history class the day after my return from my latest op, completely zoned out. My chin was propped up in my palm, my eyes drifting towards the rain that kept spattering the window as Berlenbach gave an overly energetic lecture about the antebellum period or something. All I wanted to do was go home, make hot chocolate, curl up with Edward, and watch mindless movies.

Christmas was coming, I mused. I hadn't done any shopping. What would I get for Edward? Could I get away with buying presents for Jasper and Alice? I felt closer to them than I ever had to my cohort in Phoenix, but I wasn't sure what that meant.

A slip of folded white paper landed on my desk, and I jumped. From the corner of my eye, I caught Edward smirking at me. Subtly flipping him off under the desk, I unfolded the note.

You seem spacey today. Anything on your mind?

I shrugged back at him, then decided he deserved a more concrete answer. Just a lot going on. I'm behind on homework that I don't want to do.

I slipped it to him and waited a moment for him to return it. I'll study with you this afternoon. We can keep each other motivated?

Sure, but we can't go to my house.

Edward frowned at that. Why not?

Because my parents still aren't back. We won't get anything done.

He grinned as he read my note, and I was sure that he instantly came up with a list of sexual innuendoes that would be wildly inappropriate here. Instead, he gave me another answer, one that he must have expected I'd like. That's all right. We can go to my house. Esme won't mind.

I frowned at the note. Inclining my head towards him so as to not attract Berlenbach's attention, I hissed, "Are you sure?"

Edward opened his mouth once, then shut it. We had talked about this countless times, it felt like, but never before had he initiated the idea of me meeting his parents, nor had he ever spoken of it so casually. But I guessed my sudden disappearance over the weekend had changed something in his attitude – it felt like he was trying to draw me in and keep me closer. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

"All right, then," I whispered, smiling slowly, "it's a date."

Edward chuckled. "No, it's not. But speaking of dates, we should do that again soon, actually."

Wondering where my sudden shyness was coming from, I was about to reply that that sounded lovely, but before I could, Berlenbach's voice snapped across the classroom.

"Miss Swan, Mr. Cullen, is there something that the rest of us need to be aware of?"

my head snapped back around to the front of the room, and I thought I heard Edward stifle a laugh at the sudden movement. "No, sir, we're sorry," I apologized for both of us, elbowing his hip under the table.

Berlenbach raised one eyebrow, and said coolly, "Then, if there's no private conversation going on here, would you please tell me about the circumstances under which Rutherford Hayes became President of this country? You've been paying such close attention that you must know, even though I doubt that you did the assigned reading."

I smiled thinly. "Tilden was far ahead of Hayes in the popular vote in the 1876 election, and he was also up by nineteen electoral votes with twenty left to count. Those last twenty were hotly disputed, and then a bunch of backroom deals happened in which the Democrats would concede the race in exchange for the Republicans withdrawing troops from the South and ending Reconstruction. The end."

Folding his arms across his chest, Berlenbach leaned back against his desk. "The end, Miss Swan?"

Shrugging, I replied, trying not to overdo it, "Well, then Jim Crow happened and stuff. Hayes lasted one term and failed at making the North and South get along. And he tried really hard to end the spoils system, but Chester A. Arthur and his friends stopped that from happening. But he did stop the corruption in the US Postal Service."

By the end of my recitation, Edward had put a fist to his mouth to stop the laughter from escaping him at the look at Berlenbach's face. For my part, I kept my expression remarkably straight as I waited.

The teacher blinked. "Miss Swan, the spoils system and the reform of the postal system weren't part of last night's reading. That was for tonight."

I shrugged. "Oops. Guess I did a little more than the assigned reading."

A few low catcalls of "ooh," and some nervous giggles rippled throughout the room.

"Clearly." Berlenbach nodded once and returned to the lecture. I didn't dare let myself look at Edward, certain that his face would cause me to burst into laughter, but I did catch Jasper's eye. He obviously wanted to be mad at me for drawing attention to myself, but even he couldn't fight the smirk on his face. Quickly, he winked at me before facing front again.

"So," Edward began once we were out of Berlenbach's class and headed to our next classes. "What exactly are we doing after school, then? Did we resolve anything?"

"I don't think so," I laughed, "but we actually do need to get homework done this time. So…"

"Come over." Edward stopped walking, apparently not caring that we were in the middle of the hallway and that he was obstructing the flow of traffic. "Please, Bella. I want you to meet everyone. Esme's been bugging me about bringing you home with me. Carlisle was working a graveyard shift, so he'll be there too. I'll text you directions."

Even though the request was unexpected, I found myself unable to disappoint such a face. His liquid gold eyes bored into mine, and I sighed. "Yes."

He exhaled, then grinned. "Really?"

"Really." I reached up and lay my palm in the center of his chest, pretending that I didn't notice the way he tensed. "But I'll need to go home first. I have to check on the house, okay?"

"Fair enough." Still smiling, Edward put his hand on the back of my head and drew me forwards so that he could kiss my forehead. "I'll see you later. I'll text you directions."

I then – in a very un-me-like gesture – blew him a kiss as I began to slowly walk away from him. "Yeah, you will. I love you."

His breath caught in his throat. I knew that he was still unable to say it back, for whatever reason, but the smile he gave me lit his whole face, and I decided that right then, it was enough.

Finally turning away from him, I pulled out my phone as I headed towards my next class. I meant to text Jasper, and then my dad, to let them know what I'd be doing that afternoon, but I saw that my phone had died.

A vague sense of unease settled over me. Rule number one in the agency was to never, ever, ever be unreachable. And having a phone shut off due to battery loss was clearly breaking that rule. I crossed my fingers and whispered a silent prayer that no emergencies would happen in the next hour and a half so that I could get my phone back on charge.

When my last class broke an hour later, I was one of the first people out of the room, and then out of the school building. I had to get my phone charger, and if I was going to do a thorough walk-through of my house before heading to Edward's, I'd have to be quick, especially since I didn't know how to get to his house. As I entered the parking lot, I scanned the area for Jasper and Alice, hoping to signal them that I'd call them later, but didn't see either one. In fact… on further inspection, I couldn't see either one of their cars, either.

Now, I was officially concerned. The odds of both of them having been pulled by Langley for the same op – especially after I'd gone on one the previous weekend – were somewhere between slim and none. That would attract far too much attention, in the opinion of the agency. I remembered the ongoing investigations into the agency's database regarding vampires that Alice had been making, and wondered if she'd been found out.

Shit. None of us could afford to have that happen.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Edward trying to get my attention, and I forced a smile on my face as I turned to him. I responded to his wave, even laughing to myself when he winked at her while Emmett waved excitedly at his side. Rosalie ignored me, but I smiled more easily at all of them as their three doors shut and Edward put the car in gear. I watched as he pulled out of his parking spot and joined the crawl of traffic out of the lot before shaking myself to awareness and getting into my own car.

I drove home faster than I should have done, especially considering the rain that had just started to fall, but I didn't care. The feeling of unease was still sitting with me as I wound my way through the damp, bustling streets so typical of Seattle at this time of day. More than once, I thought I saw the same car in my rearview mirror, but the license plate was different every time. Even so, I took a divergent route home, arriving there five minutes later than usual.

I guided my car into the garage and closed the automatic door before leaving my vehicle, then checked all the corners and tight spaces before entering the house. Quickly I checked and cleared the living room, kitchen, and downstairs bathroom before slowly heading upstairs. The first bedroom I checked was my own, pausing to connect my phone to its charger, knowing that it would have to get to at least ten percent battery before I could turn it on. That done, I cleared my bathroom, Charlie's bathroom and bedroom, the closets, and Charlie's office.

Trying to dislodge the knot that had settled in my stomach, I decided to use the house phone to call my parents. My dad was on a break during a meeting, so I only got to speak to him for a few minutes, but it was long enough to reassure myself that he was indeed okay – tired and bored from the conference, maybe, but okay. "I love you, Daddy," I told him when he had to get back to his meeting.

His reply was gruff, as was characteristic of him, but I still knew how much he meant it. "love you too, pumpkin."

My conversation with my mom was much more satisfying, in that special way that only conversations with moms can be. Renee was enjoying her stay with her sister in Tempe, but she told me she missed me. She was dismayed to find that I had been called to an op on Friday night.

"In the middle of the night?" she asked sadly. "Did you at least get enough sleep on the plane?"

"Yeah, Mom, of course," I assured her, deciding not to mention what I'd been doing with Edward mere hours before I'd gotten the call. "The op itself wasn't that big of a deal anyway."

I could tell that Renee wanted to ask, but knew she wouldn't. Instead, she asked, "And how's Edward?"

"He's…" I paused. "Good, Mom. He's really good. We're really good."

"I'm so glad, sweetie. You deserve to be happy, and he's such a nice boy." Renee's smile was clear in her voice through the phone. "Is he with you now?"

"No, actually, but I'm about to go over to his house to meet his parents and do some studying." Nervously, I glanced over to my cell phone. Seven percent charge. Dammit. I decided to turn on my computer and check to see if I had any emails – I could at least do that. I raised the lid of my laptop and pressed the power button as my mother launched into a story about something that her sister's nine-month-old granddaughter had done involving a teething ring or something. I made the appropriate listening noises as my computer turned on and I quickly opened my email.

My breath caught in my throat.

Over the last hour, Alice had sent me seven emails – the first four containing copies of in-house memos coded highly classified by the agency, meaning that only those with security clearance black (the highest clearance level there was) were supposed to see them. The next three were demands – increasingly panicky in succession – for me to contact either her or Jasper stat. quickly, I clicked the first email and pulled up the attached memo.

TO ALL DIRECTORS AND HIGH-CLEARANCE PERSONNEL:

We have received confirmation as to the existence, base, and mission statement of the Очистители крови (The Blood Purifiers). This cell, which is inclined to refer to itself as a coven, as if of witches, is based near to Lake Baikal outside the town of Babushkin in Siberia. Their mission is to find a way to "cure" vampires – that is, to return them to human. From what we can ascertain, if they fail in their attempts to cure vampires (and we can find only two documented tales of temporary success out of hundreds of attempts since 1900), they then execute the vampires by fire.

The situation is progressing, and POTUS has not yet been read in.

For ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set ye free.

I thought, for one moment, that I would actually vomit. Execute the vampires by fire…

I was no longer pretending to listen to my mother, who continued to chatter on, unaware. With fumbling fingers, I opened Alice's next email.

TO ALL DIRECTORS AND HGH-CLEARANCE PERSONNEL

Further to the clearance black memo you received approximately four days ago, additional information has been discovered regarding the leader of the coven Очистители крови. She is one Tanya Wiktoryevna, age forty-three years, three months (approx). At the age of four, she lost her father (himself a member of Очистители крови) to a vampire attack and promptly was drafted by her mother into the organization. She became de facto leader of the coven when leader Pytor Vasiliv in 2006, and was confirmed by the coven a year later. We have deemed her threat level orange to national security, given that the organization under her has a pattern of targeting American citizens and ex-patriots for experimentation of her cures. Our next step is to plant a deep-cover agent with the organization; we anticipate this to take between fifteen to eighteen months before results are shown.

The situation is progressing, and POTUS has not yet been read in.

For ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set ye free.

"Bella?" asked Renee, finally noticing my silence. "Sweetie, are you still there?"

"Yeah, Mom, of course," I responded distractedly, opening Alice's third email as I spoke. "What did Uncle Bill do then?"

TO ALL DIRECTORS AND HIGH-CLEARANCE PERSONNEL

Three days after his deployment, Agent Jack Hudson was terminated by Очистители крови in his efforts to infiltrate the coven. Any further efforts to infiltrate will be postponed until further notice.

The situation is progressing, and POTUS has been read in.

For ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set ye free.

I exhaled sharply. Terminated. Shit.

Suddenly, there was a squeal of brakes on the street below my house, and I darted to the window just in time to see Jasper's car skid to a stop at the curb next to my driveway. Hastily, I cut my mother off as I rushed towards my bedroom door and the staircase. "Mom, I'm sorry, but I have to go."

"Oh!" Renee sounded flustered. "Are you all right? Has something happened?"

I hesitated as I pounded down the stairs before answering. "I'm not sure. But I love you."

"I love you too," Renee replied, suddenly sounding choked up. "More than you know."

"I'll call you later if I can," I promised.

"Okay. Stay safe. Bye."

I hung up just as I flung open the house's front door. Alice was barreling towards me, her face twisted and her hair flying, before she threw herself into my arms and hugged me so tightly that I thought my ribs were going to crack. But before I could begin to reply to the hug, Alice released me and promptly slapped me upside the head.

"What the hell?" I sputtered.

"We fucking thought you were dead," roared Jasper, who had run into the house right behind Alice, fury burning in his eyes. "What the fuck is wrong with your phone?"

"It died – I'm sorry – Alice, I've been reading your emails…"

"Did you see the last memo?" Alice choked out. When I shook my head, Alice continued, "They vacated Irina's death declaration and amended it to 'missing presumed rogue.' No explanation was given."

"Holy fuck," I breathed. "But why would that make you think I was dead?"

"There's more," Jasper told me grimly before glancing over his shoulder to where the front door was still wide open. He shut and locked it before saying, "We should sit down."

We moved into the living room and, after Jasper had drawn the blinds, Alice pulled out her phone and opened an encrypted file, explaining as she did so. "Ever since we were sure that whatever was going on was coming out of Siberia, I've been monitoring all electronic communication in the region – which isn't as hard as it sounds, given that the whole fucking area is basically third world. But I wrote an algorithm that looked for identical words, similar sentence structure – the works. But then I combined it with senders and recipients taking extra security measures, like encryption or diversion. I got about three different strains, and of course one of the ones I'd decided was irrelevant decided to become relevant today… just after I hacked into the agency's clearance level black communication archive."

"And?" I prompted her, feeling my gut twist.

Alice sighed and passed her phone to me, and I scrolled through the file pulled up on the screen. The ongoing email conversation, which was written in Russian and was between five different addresses, seemed to be about wedding planning – setting a date, picking types of flowers, deciding on the number of guests – but it didn't take a genius to figure out that it was a loose code for planning a strike on a particular person or group of persons. The last email was the only one that made reference to a venue – an emerald city. The date was today.

I looked up to see Jasper and Alice both staring at me. "Should… should I know what that means?" I asked, feeling vaguely foolish.

"Um," replied Alice blankly, seemingly shocked that I hadn't immediately understood the significance.

"She wasn't born here," Jasper muttered to Alice before turning back to me. "The Emerald City is a nickname for Seattle. It's a thing. It means they're coming here. Today."

"And then you didn't pick up your phone," Alice added, glaring at me, but I didn't care. It was like my ears were underwater.

They're coming here. Today.

I couldn't move. I could barely breathe.

Irina had followed Edward and me outside the craft store so many weeks ago. And now the agency was no longer listing her as dead. They were presuming that she had gone rogue.

Edward.

"Oh, God, no," I choked out as I leapt to my feet and flew up to my bedroom. I was vaguely aware of Jasper and Alice following me, their footsteps thundering up the stairs.

"Bella, what–" Alice began, but cut off when she saw me dive under the bed and retrieve my gun, which I tucked into my waistband at my back. Once it was secure, I seized my phone from its charger – it now had a fifteen percent battery – and turned it on before grabbing my car keys.

"Where are we going?" Jasper demanded, but wisely got out of my way as I barreled down the stairs and dashed out into the garage. My phone buzzed in my hands with a dozen missed text messages and calls – most of them from either Alice or Jasper, but the one that I was looking for was the one with the directions to Edward's house.

"Just follow me," I threw over my shoulder as I yanked my car door open and dropped into the driver's seat. I glimpsed Alice and Jasper exchanging a glance before ducking under the slowly opening garage door and jumping into Jasper's car. They seemed to have decided that it would be in everybody's best interest to just trust me – at least for now.

It took an enormous amount of self-control for me to maintain traffic laws as I sped through the streets, one eye on Edward's directions and the other on the road. Occasionally I checked my rearview mirror to make sure that Jasper was indeed following me, but he seemed to be keeping my tail easily enough. From the glimpses I got of his expression, though, I knew that he would be demanding an explanation from me sooner rather than later.

An explanation. Oh, God, why hadn't I given Edward one in the beginning?

I had reached the other side of town, and quickly turned off into Edward's neighborhood, Jasper still right behind me. My palms were sweating, making it a challenge to hold on to the steering wheel. "Left… right… right again," I muttered to myself in between glances at his directions. The houses were growing larger and farther apart; it reached a point where there were two minutes between passing a house and seeing its nearest neighbor. Some small part of my mind registered how important privacy would be – with regards to hunting and suchlike. I had never asked him about that…

No. No fatalistic thinking. There isn't time.

Finally, I reached what Edward's text described as a "long, mysterious-looking driveway" on the right side of the road. Without slowing, I turned on to it, Jasper barely managing to keep up as I sped up the drive, around a few curves, before finally seeing the house. There were no lights, no activity in any of the windows, no one coming out to investigate the roar of the two cars' engines. I cut my motor and got out of the car as Jasper pulled in beside me.

Staring intently at me, not the house, he asked, "So where exactly are we?"

Fuck it. "Edward's house," I murmured. There was exactly zero point in being disingenuous anymore.

"Guys," said Alice sharply as we began to walk towards the house. "Front door."

"Shit," Jasper breathed as he and I saw what Alice had noticed. The door was slightly ajar, and even from here I could see that it had been kicked in. "Draw, ladies. I'm on point."

"Sir," Alice and I replied, recognizing that Jasper had taken charge of our entrance to the house. All three of us drew our weapons and removed the safety switches from them before forming a loose triangle, Jasper at the center front, Alice on his left, me on his right. Slowly, we crept up the front porch, and then Alice flattened herself along the wall beside the door, bracing one hand against it and waiting. When Jasper nodded to her, she sharply pushed it inward, and Jasper and I, guns raised, darted over the threshold and veered off to the sides.

Carefully, I crept through what looked like a formal living room, making sure to keep my back to the walls at all times. I swallowed hard when I saw a lamp shattered on the ground beside an overturned end table and armchair. But no one was in the room. "Clear," I called, trying to keep my voice steady.

"Clear," answered Jasper from the other end of the house. I turned to see him emerging from what looked like a kitchen, and he gestured that we would be following Alice up the stairs. As soundlessly as possible, we climbed the steps, entering a hallway just as Alice emerged from a bedroom to the right of the landing. "Clear," she mouthed, and the three of us made quick work of the rest of the bedrooms, the bathrooms, and the closets.

"No signs of a struggle in the kitchen," Jasper reported as he returned the safety to his gun and tucked it away. Alice did the same.

"There was in the living room." My voice was flat as I led the way back down. Alice and Jasper trailed after me in silence.

Alice hissed when she saw the lamp, table and chair, and Jasper knelt down beside a cluster of drops of blood a few feet away, tapping his fingers through it and sniffing it. "Fresh. But…" he frowned and looked up at me. "It doesn't smell like it should. It doesn't smell… human."

"We must have just missed them," I murmured, staring blankly around the room, realizing how cozy, how comfortable it looked. A half-finished game of chess sat on a coffee table, next to an open art history textbook. I vaguely remembered Edward saying that Esme was extremely interested in art history as a part of architecture.

"Bella, I'm tired of this bullshit," Jasper snapped, standing and glaring at me. "What he holy fuck is going on? We tell you that vampire hunters are coming to this city and we think they're after you, and your first thought is to come to your boyfriend's house, and when we get here it looks like they've been abducted?"

I shut my eyes and pressed my fingertips to my temples. It had caught up with me at last, then. I should have known that I couldn't run from all the secrets I was keeping forever. I heard Alice move to my side, and her tentative voice asked, "Bells? Is…is Edward a vampire?"

Forcing myself to breathe, I opened my eyes, ignoring Alice's anxious gaze and Jasper's accusing stare. Once more, I surveyed the room, imagining the struggle that must have happened… the door breaking down, hooded figures tackling Rosalie – austere Rosalie, so beautiful – Emmett trying to defend her before he was subdued too… Edward, my Edward, resisting and being injured…. I stared at the blood on the ground.

I had no choice. From the very beginning I'd had no choice. I was in love with Edward, and I had to save him. Whatever the cost.

"Jasper," I whispered. "Jasper, I need you and Alice to help me."

~oOo~

Sorry for the cliffy, guys! Next chapter will be up sooner than this one was, I promise.