“Would they have been able to surprise her?” Carlisle asked, his voice as even as if he were standing motionless rather than running at full speed.

“I don’t see how,” Edward answered. “But Aro knows her better than anyone else. Better than I do.”

“Is this a trap?” Emmett called from behind us.

“Maybe,” Edward said. “There’s no scent but Alice and Jasper. Where were they going?”

Alice and Jasper’s trail was curling into a wide arc; it stretched first east of the house, but headed north on the other side of the river, and then back west again after a few miles. We recrossed the river, all six jumping within a second of each other. Edward ran in the lead, his concentration total.

“Did you catch that scent?” Esme called ahead a few moments after we’d leaped the river for the second time. She was the farthest back, on the far left edge of our hunting party. She gestured to the southeast.

“Keep to the main trail—we’re almost to the Quileute border,” Edward ordered tersely. “Stay together. See if they turned north or south.”

I was not as familiar with the treaty line as the rest of them, but I could smell the hint of wolf in the breeze blowing from the east. Edward and Carlisle slowed a little out of habit, and I could see their heads sweep from side to side, waiting for the trail to turn.

Then the wolf smell was suddenly stronger, and Edward’s head snapped up. He came to a sudden stop. The rest of us froze, too.

“Sam?” Edward asked in a flat voice. “What is this?”

Sam came through the trees a few hundred yards away, walking quickly toward us in his human form, flanked by two big wolves—Paul and Jared. It took Sam a while to reach us; his human pace made me impatient. I didn’t want time to think about what was happening. I wanted to be in motion, to be doing something. I wanted to have my arms around Alice, to know beyond a doubt that she was safe.

I watched Edward’s face go absolutely white as he read what Sam was thinking. Sam ignored him, looking straight at Carlisle as he stopped walking and began to speak.

“Right after midnight, Alice and Jasper came to this place and asked permission to cross our land to the ocean. I granted them that and escorted them to the coast myself. They went immediately into the water and did not return. As we journeyed, Alice told me it was of the utmost importance that I say nothing to Jacob about seeing her until I spoke to you. I was to wait here for you to come looking for her and then give you this note. She told me to obey her as if all our lives depended on it.”

Sam’s face was grim as he held out a folded sheet of paper, printed all over with small black text. It was a page out of a book; my sharp eyes read the printed words as Carlisle unfolded it to see the other side. The side facing me was the copyright page from The Merchant of Venice. A hint of my own scent blew off of it as Carlisle shook the paper flat. I realized it was a page torn from one of my books. I’d brought a few things from Charlie’s house to the cottage; a few sets of normal clothes, all the letters from my mother, and my favorite books. My tattered collection of Shakespeare paperbacks had been on the bookshelf in the cottage’s little living room yesterday morning.…

“Alice has decided to leave us,” Carlisle whispered.

“What?” Rosalie cried.

Carlisle turned the page around so that we all could read.

Don’t look for us. There isn’t time to waste. Remember: Tanya, Siobhan, Amun, Alistair, all the nomads you can find. We’ll seek out Peter and Charlotte on our way. We’re so sorry that we have to leave you this way, with no goodbyes or explanations. It’s the only way for us. We love you.

We stood frozen again, the silence total but for the sound of the wolves’ heartbeats, their breathing. Their thoughts must have been loud, too. Edward was first to move again, speaking in response to what he heard in Sam’s head.

“Yes, things are that dangerous.”

“Enough that you would abandon your family?” Sam asked out loud, censure in his tone. It was clear that he had not read the note before giving it to Carlisle. He was upset now, looking as if he regretted listening to Alice.

Edward’s expression was stiff—to Sam it probably looked angry or arrogant, but I could see the shape of pain in the hard planes of his face.

“We don’t know what she saw,” Edward said. “Alice is neither unfeeling nor a coward. She just has more information than we do.”

“We would not—,” Sam began.

“You are bound differently than we are,” Edward snapped. “We each still have our free will.”

Sam’s chin jerked up, and his eyes looked suddenly flat black.

“But you should heed the warning,” Edward went on. “This is not something you want to involve yourselves in. You can still avoid what Alice saw.”

Sam smiled grimly. “We don’t run away.” Behind him, Paul snorted.

“Don’t get your family slaughtered for pride,” Carlisle interjected quietly.

Sam looked at Carlisle with a softer expression. “As Edward pointed out, we don’t have the same kind of freedom that you have. Renesmee is as much as part of our family now as she is yours. Jacob cannot abandon her, and we cannot abandon him.” His eyes flickered to Alice’s note, and his lips pressed into a thin line.

“You don’t know her,” Edward said.

“Do you?” Sam asked bluntly.

Carlisle put a hand on Edward’s shoulder. “We have much to do, son. Whatever Alice’s decision, we would be foolish not to follow her advice now. Let’s go home and get to work.”

Edward nodded, his face still rigid with pain. Behind me, I could hear Esme’s quiet, tearless sobs.

I didn’t know how to cry in this body; I couldn’t do anything but stare. There was no feeling yet. Everything seemed unreal, like I was dreaming again after all these months. Having a nightmare.

“Thank you, Sam,” Carlisle said.

“I’m sorry,” Sam answered. “We shouldn’t have let her through.”

“You did the right thing,” Carlisle told him. “Alice is free to do what she will. I wouldn’t deny her that liberty.”

I’d always thought of the Cullens as a whole, an indivisible unit. Suddenly, I remembered that it had not always been so. Carlisle had created Edward, Esme, Rosalie and Emmett; Edward had created me. We were physically linked by blood and venom. I never thought of Alice and Jasper as separate—as adopted into the family. But in truth, Alice had adopted the Cullens. She had shown up with her unconnected past, bringing Jasper with his, and fit herself into the family that was already there. Both she and Jasper had known another life outside the Cullen family. Had she really chosen to lead another new life after she’d seen that life with the Cullens was over?

We were doomed, then, weren’t we? There was no hope at all. Not one ray, one flicker that might have convinced Alice she had a chance at our side.

The bright morning air seemed thicker suddenly, blacker, as if physically darkened by my despair.

“I’m not going down without a fight,” Emmett snarled low under his breath. “Alice told us what to do. Let’s get it done.”

The others nodded with determined expressions, and I realized that they were banking on whatever chance Alice had given us. That they were not going to give in to hopelessness and wait to die.

Yes, we all would fight. What else was there? And apparently we would involve others, because Alice had said so before she’d left us. How could we not follow Alice’s last warning? The wolves, too, would fight with us for Renesmee.

We would fight, they would fight, and we all would die.

I didn’t feel the same resolve the others seemed to feel. Alice knew the odds. She was giving us the only chance she could see, but the chance was too slim for her to bet on it.

I felt already beaten as I turned my back on Sam’s critical face and followed Carlisle toward home.