Sunsets and Silhouette Dreams.

Maybe psychic wasn’t the right word for it. All I did was see visions every week or so about the future. And I dreamt about the future. And apparently, the present, on the other side of the country.

Okay, maybe psychic was the right word for it.

My visions had never been wrong, but the dreams sometimes were. I never really trusted those, which was why I doubted the ones about the wolves. And my dreams and visions only featured people and places I knew - with one exception. Jacob and La Push.

Dad didn’t know. I figured if he had his secrets, I could have mine. He knew about the dreams, since I often woke screaming from them (the wolves hunting freaked me out). But I was adept at hiding the visions from him. The signs were clear to me: the room started pulsing, colors started shifting, my vision blurred. I could hold off the visions for an hour if need be, but it was head-ache inducing. The quicker I closed my eyes and braced for it, the better the side effects.

I washed my face, making sure the signs of the visions were gone, then walked into the living room where Jacob and my parents were.

“Ah, Lucy. I see you’ve met Jacob,” Dad said warmly. His dark brown eyes, though, were almost irritated.

“Yeah, why?” I asked uneasily. Something about my new friend pissed my adoptive father off. And lately, I was scared that one more thing between my father and I would set one of us off.

My mother quickly interjected, her own eyes flitting between faces. “Oh, we’re just glad, honey. Jacob’s a very good boy, we’ve been friends with his father for a very long time.”

I nodded, despite the fact that this was, as usual, me and Dad’s fight.

“Lucy,” Jacob said, trying to ease the tension in the room. “There’s this really cool campfire tonight. You should come.”

“Dad?” I asked, training my golden green eyes onto his.

When he nodded, a huge grin spread across my face. “When’s the campfire, Jake?”

He looked outside. “Probably about half an hour, but we can be there earlier, if you want.”

“Let me go get dressed,” I told him, then hurried down the hallway to my room.

Getting dressed proved to be a challenge, since all of my stuff was still in boxes. However, my outfit I already had on would work, I guessed. So I added a little make-up and was done.

“Ready!” I declared cheerfully.

Jacob led me out to his car, a Volkswagen Rabbit. As he held the door open for me, he said, “By the way, you look really pretty.”

I blushed. “I look the same as I did in the house.”

He got in, then grinned at me. “You looked really pretty in there, too.”

“Thank you. Can I play with your radio?”

Jacob laughed. “Go right ahead, Luce.”

I found a station playing a song I figured would annoy Jacob, a bouncy pop song. He cringed.

“Don’t tell me you like that.”

“No. I’m just trying to be irritatingly cute. Is it working?” Again, I grinned cheekily.

“Yes.”

I tipped my head back and laughed, covering my hand with my mouth to hide my gums. He laughed with me, but kept his smile in full view, thankfully.

“Now, this,” I said, finding ET by Katy Perry on some station. How appropriate. “I do like.”

Jacob drummed on the steering wheel while I sang along obnoxiously. He could not stop laughing, as if the feeling was new to him. I delighted in the sound.

I was definitely developing a crush on this guy.

We got to the campfire quickly, where a few other tall guys and a girl were setting up and one almost ancient man sat. When Jacob and I arrived, laughing and joking, the guys looked in awed amusement.

“Dude!” One of them said. “Jake’s back!”

“And smiling!”

“What the hell?”

The boys are ran towards him, greeting him, and I wondered why Jacob ran to Canada in the first place.

After a few joyful minutes, Jacob said, “Guys, this is Lucy. Lucy, this is Quil, Embry, Paul, and Sam.”

“Hi, Quil, Embry, Paul, and Sam,” I said, cheerfully shaking all of their hands. I could see traces of the wolves they were in all of them. It was spooky.

Sam gave me a hard gaze. “Your father and I have discussed you before.”

I winced. “So, you know about my dreams, then, huh?”

All five boys nodded. “Well, I know your secret, too. So ha.” I couldn’t help but grin.

Jacob jumped slightly. “What secret?”

“You’re werewolves. Or something that turns into wolves.” I shrugged. “I saw you transform, Jacob, before you came over. I’m sorry. I know it’s supposed to be a secret.”

“You’re an exception,” Sam said. Since he seemed to be the leader, I eased up a little. “Besides, I assumed you already knew, since your father is one, as well.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Quil said. “You didn’t know?”

“No. I didn’t.” My words were clipped in anger.

The boys exchanged uneasy looks, and shut up. I thought there might be more to the story, but these boys wouldn’t tell anyone’s secrets, I was sure. They tried to hard to keep their own.

I turned to Jacob. “My dad’s a werewolf?”

“Shape-shifter, technically,” Jacob informed me quietly. “But yeah, pretty much.”

“Well, that explains a lot,” I said bitterly, thinking of all of my father’s ridiculous, unknown “reasons.” Yet I knew there were pieces missing from the puzzle, pieces I intended to find. But not from him.

“You didn’t know?” Jacob asked.

I shook my head angrily. Before I could get too enraged, though, more people showed up for me to meet. After about half an hour, I was seated next to Jacob in a circle consisting of Sam, his fiancé Emily, Embry, Quil, Paul, his girlfriend (and Jacob’s sister) Rachel, Jared, his girlfriend Kim, Seth, Leah, Collin, Brady, and the adults, Old Quil, Jacob’s father Billy, and Seth and Leah’s mother, Sue.

It was a full house.

“We have important things to discuss, firstly,” Billy said. “I’m assuming everyone has met Lucy?”

I tried to smile without showing my gums.

Billy himself smiled at Jacob and I warmly. “It’s wonderful to have you here. Sam tells me you suffer from strange dreams?”

I nodded, a little scared to speak. Normally, I wasn’t shy, but a crowd of seventeen people I barely knew made me nervous.

“Do you have any idea why?”

I shook my head. It was the truth; I didn’t know why I was psychic, or why I had the dreams. I decided at that second not to tell them that about my visions yet, though I wasn’t sure why.

Billy frowned a little. “Well, do you know what we have to do with it?”

“The boys are the wolves?” I guessed.

He nodded. “How did you find out?”

“I accidentally saw Jacob transform from a wolf to a human.” I felt like I was being interrogated.

“Does that mean you saw him naked?” Embry mumbled. Jacob and I blushed.

“Allow me to explain a little further…” Billy then told me how the Quileute people originally started shape-shifting.

Quileutes were magic. They weren’t a big tribe, but a surprisingly powerful one. The men had the power to leave their bodies and travel with their spirits. When another, bigger tribe tried to take over, Kaheleha led his people in some sort of spirit attack against them. It freaked the other guys out, so they ran, and the other nearby tribes didn’t want to mess with them. The Quileutes dealt with any other threats the same way, as they came. For years and years, this worked, until Taha Aki and Utlapa.

Utlapa wanted to build an empire using the Quileute magic. The chief, Taha Aki, knew this because when the people were in the spirit world, they could hear each other’s thoughts. Taha Aki kicked Utlapa out, but before long, Utlapa stole Taha Aki’s body when he was in the spirit world, slit his own throat, and started ruling over the Quileute tribe. Utlapa was, obviously, a terrible chief, and Taha Aki was furious, but helpless, since he was stuck in the spirit world. Being only a spirit was no fun, though, so Taha Aki was even more despaired. When the real chief sent a wolf down the kill Utlapa, but it killed someone else instead, Taha Aki asked the wolf if he could enter his body. So he did.

Taha Aki went to his tribe, hoping to explain what happened. Another man went into the spirit world and saw the truth. But Utlapa, in Taha Aki’s body, slit his throat before he could come back into our world. When Taha Aki went back into the wolf’s body, his emotions were too vast and complex, so the wolf transformed into a human. The first shape-shifter.

Taha Aki in his human wolf form set things right. He had a lot of kids, and some of his sons found out that they could change into wolves too. Whenever any harm came their way, they would protect the tribe with their wolf forms. When they were wolves, they did not age, but if they gave up their wolf forms, they did. And that was how they came to be wolves.

“Tell her the rest, Dad,” Jacob said. “She should like it.”

“That’s Old Quil’s job,” The man said. He was in a wheelchair, making his authority slightly odd.

Old Quil gave me a smile before telling his part of the story.

When Taha Aki had lived three lifetimes, trouble started brewing. Women from other tribes started disappearing. After a few years, they discovered it was a vampire. They killed the vampire and burned the body, but his beautiful mate came soon enough. She killed many, many people, drinking their blood relentlessly. When Taha Aki fought her, his wife sacrificed herself to save him. And from then on, there was little trouble from the vampires. Wolves only came when vampires were nearby.

“You’re all wolves now,” I said. “Who are the vampires?”

“The Cullens.”

I turned to Jacob, gasping. “Bella’s husband?”

“And his family, and her. And their half-daughter.”

I’m afraid my biggest worry was that being around other supernatural things would increase my visions, which I loathed.

“So now, we have a large pack of wolves,” Sam told me. “We can still hear each other’s thoughts in wolf form. Our senses are heightened, and we have great strength. We’re very warm, and very fast.”

“And we eat a lot,” Said Paul. “Which reminds me, I’m hungry.”

We laughed, and the magical air of the story telling died as the men started passing out food to the human girls first, then Leah, then the wolf boys. And they did eat a lot, my God.

Between hot dogs, Jacob told me, “Lucy, you can not tell anyone about the wolves. If they don’t know, you have to keep it a secret. That’s very, very important. Can you keep a secret?”

I nodded, thinking to myself, A lot better than you think. “Why don’t you attack the Cullens?”

“Treaty,” Jacob explained. “Old Quil didn’t mention that, but yeah. As long as they don’t bite another human or come onto our land, we don’t attack. Bella was an exception.”

Again, I nodded. “So they won’t hurt any humans?”

“Nope. You’re about as safe here as you can get, Luce.” He smiled at me warmly.

“What if other vampires come?” I asked, thinking about the Volturi Edward had mentioned in my vision.

“We kill them.”

I shivered, and Jacob put his warm arm around me. It was comforting, but I still felt uneasy.

Jacob said they would kill any vampires other than the Cullens, so I should be safe from the mysterious Volturi. But if they did get to me, if they did hurt me… I didn’t want to think about it.

I bit my lip and stared into the fire. I was starting to think I was getting more than I bargained for in La Push.