𝐏𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐑, sam uley

𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄

┏━━━━.˚✧˚₊ ᗢ₊˚✧ ﾟ.━━━━┓

TO BE RECOGNIZED

THE FIRST LESSON TALULLAH EVER LEARNT when she first awoke in Volterra was simple; fear makes you weak. Showing fear, especially when in the presence of those beneath the Volturi's power, was inexcusable — but in that moment, outside of the Cullen home, it was all that she felt.

Red eyes met dark brown ones as she whipped around, facing the direction of the voice that rang out. It was a lean boy, with cropped hair and an unrecognizable face. She noticed that he wore similar clothing to the two boys he stood next too, but he was the only one of the three whose eyes almost softened as he looked at her figure. She tried to catch a scent, but scrunched her nose at the bad smell.

"Talullah? Is that you?"

A sense of nauseating deja-vu washed over her, this interaction vividly reminding her of her last encounter with Bella Swan in Italy. Talullah had been recognized by yet another being that she didn't know, and again it unsettled her to no end. She had to leave, now.

It seemed as though the boy noticed her hesitance, yet he took a large step forward before the boy who stood in the middle of the three put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him at bay. "Tal, it's me...Embry?" he tried, voice turning up with a hopeful tone. "Was about yay-high the last time you saw me?" He gestured his hand beside him at a shorter height.

Another face, and another name, the young vampire couldn't identify. She was getting tired of this back and forth, especially when another shorter boy from the trio's gaze widened in disbelief.

Before a jumble of words could spill from the shorter one's mouth, that was now comically agape, Talullah closed her eyes. In an instant, she was back within the confines of her own body, surrounded by the dusty walls of the warehouse and with Demetri's grin looking down at her.

.˚✧˚₊

Embry Call's babysitter, who went missing and became the county's biggest damn cold case, was a vampire. Not only that, but she was an amnesiac vampire with weirdly hazed eyes at that.

It was true that the last time he'd seen her was when he was much shorter, being thirteen years old and without a babysitter when his mother went to work on the weekends — until Talullah offered and rejected any money from Tiffany Call. Embry recalled the short walk he took to the Eubanks home every weekend from age eleven to thirteen, just waiting to hang out with the older girl who seemed much cooler than his friends from school.

Embry had seen her the night before she disappeared from Dawson Graves' backyard. His mother had been a bit later than usual to pick him up which led him to profusely apologize, but the seventeen year old merely waved him off and suggested they bake cookies while they waited. Her own parents wouldn't be home until much later, and Talullah said that seven PM was the perfect time to make her renowned hazelnut cookies. This recipe is very hush hush, Em. I think you're the only one to be let in on the secret, she had told him once with a smile as she ruffled his hair.

If Embry thought hard enough, he could still remember the taste of the raw batter that he stole a spoon full of while Talullah was in the washroom. So after three years of everyone believing her to be dead, the young shifter couldn't help the giddy feeling that rose in his chest. She was alive...ish.

"There's no way that's possible, right?" It was Quil Ateara to pipe up first as he asked, staring dazedly at the spot that the girl had vanished from. Being from the rez himself meant that he knew Talullah, and knew even more about her only after she vanished. "I mean, we must've had some sort of collective hallucination because—"