Free The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer Page B

glare in my
     direction, or for the next fight to break out. Something.
    When nothing did, I eventually pulled myself together and did what I should have been doing—pretending nothing unusual was
     going on. I grabbed a book from the pile near Fred’s feet and then sat down right there and acted like I was reading. It was
     probably one of the same books I’d pretended to read yesterday, but it didn’t look familiar. I flipped through the pages,
     again taking nothing in.
    My mind was racing around in tight little circles. Where was Diego? How had Riley reacted to his story? What had it all meant—the
     talk before the cloaks, the talk after the cloaks?
    I worked through it, going backward, trying to assemble the pieces into a recognizable picture. The vampire world had some
     kind of police, and they were damn scary. This wild group of months-old vampires was supposed to be an army, and this army
     was somehow illegal. Our creator had an enemy. Strike that, two enemies. We were going to attack one of them in five days,
     or else the other ones, the scary cloaks, were going to attack her—or us, or both. We would be trained for this attack… as
     soon as Riley got back. I snuck a glance at the door, then forced my eyes back to the page in front of me. And then the stuff
     before the visitors. She was worrying about some decision. She was pleased that she had so many vampires—so many
soldiers
. Riley was happy that Diego and I had survived…. He’d said he thought he’d lost two more to the sun, so that must mean he
     didn’t know how vampires
really
reacted to sunlight. What she’d said was strange, though. She’d asked if he was
sure
. Sure Diego had survived? Or… sure that Diego’s story was true?
    The last thought frightened me. Did she alreadyknow that the sun didn’t hurt us? If she did know, then why had she lied to Riley and, through him, to us?
    Why would she want to keep us in the dark—literally? Was it very important to her that we stay ignorant? Important enough
     to get Diego in trouble? I was working myself into a real panic, frozen solid. If I still could sweat, I would have been sweating
     now. I had to refocus to turn the next page, to keep my eyes down.
    Was Riley deceived, or was he in on it, too? When Riley’d said he thought he’d lost two more to the sun, did he mean the sun
     literally… or the lie about the sun?
    If it was the second option, then to know the truth meant being
lost
. Panic scattered my thoughts.
    I tried to be rational and make sense of it. It was harder without Diego. Having someone to talk to, to interact with, sharpened
     my ability to concentrate. Without that, fear sucked at the edges of my thoughts, twisted with the always-present thirst.
     The lure of blood was constantly close to the surface. Even now, decently well fed, I could feel the burn and the need.
    Think about
her,
think about Riley
, I told myself. I had to understand why they would lie—if they were lying—so that I could try to figure out what itwould mean to them that Diego knew their secret.
    If they hadn’t lied, if they’d just told us all that the day was as safe for us as the night, how would that change things?
     I imagined what it would be like if we didn’t have to be contained in a blacked-out basement all day, if the twenty-one of
     us—maybe fewer now, depending on how the hunting parties were getting along—were free to do what we wanted whenever we wanted
     to.
    We would want to hunt. That was a given.
    If we didn’t have to come back, if we didn’t have to hide… well, many of us wouldn’t come back very regularly. It was hard
     to focus on the return while the thirst was in charge. But Riley had drilled so deeply into all of us the threat of burning,
     of a return of that hideous pain we’d all experienced once. That was the reason we could stop ourselves. Self-preservation,
     the only instinct stronger than thirst.
    So the threat kept us together. There were other