Flash 5: Forms

If this is a medical emergency, you may opt for an Expedited Interview instead of completing this application. The PRPR representative on duty will assist you on request. If you are filling out this form on someone else's behalf, write your full name in the left margin, and otherwise respond to the questions as the other person would accurately reply.

All numbered questions are mandatory except those that do not apply to you on the basis of sex or other criteria specified. The veracity of your answers will be confirmed via appropriate magic. If you are not willing to undergo any available magical test regarding your answers to these questions (see Pamphlet 2-B, section 3, for a description of such tests) you may return this form incomplete and leave at any time.

If your situation is unusual in a way that this form does not cover, or it is ambiguous to you which answer to a question best suits you, there is space available to write on the back.

Turning in this form does not commit you to becoming a vampire. You may change your mind and elect to remain human at any time up until the moment at which you are anesthetized to begin the turning process. You, and only you, are responsible for the decision to apply to become a vampire. If you are being pressured into applying by someone else, including a vampire who is mated to you, tell the PRPR representative on duty and you will receive help. Do not become a vampire for reasons not your own.

If you are filling out this form on behalf of another person, be aware that they will be investigated to confirm their consent, without which no turning will take place. The Golden Coven regrets that we cannot make exceptions for people who are medically unable to consent; however, magical assistance makes it possible to secure consent from some persons who cannot be queried via ordinary means.

Adults are not considered by the Golden Coven to have the power to consent on behalf of their minor children, nor to withhold such consent (although parental opinions will be sought under normal circumstances regarding applicants under 18; note on back if there is a pressing reason to avoid this in your case). Note that, regardless of consent, it is currently opposed to Golden Coven policy to turn anyone younger than 14 years of age. You may apply as or on behalf of such a person anyway if your circumstances are highly unusual, but the application is unlikely to succeed. Turnings of persons younger than 17 are subject to more scrutiny than applications from indivduals 17 and older, but are not directly ruled out.

Becoming a vampire is irrevocable. Becoming a vampire places you under the permanent jurisdiction of the Golden Empire, obliges you to obey its laws, and renders you subject to appropriate penalties for breaking those laws. (See Pamphlet 2D.) You will not be turned if, in the estimation of the Golden Coven, you are unwilling to comport or incapable of comporting yourself as a non-destructive member of vampire society.

If your application is denied, the rejection slip will include a statement about when or under what circumstances, if ever, you will be permitted to re-apply. You are encouraged to re-apply after the designated interval or event. Under certain circumstances, PRPR may be able to put you in touch with members of the supernatural community who may be able to help you improve your application.

If your application is accepted, turning is not guaranteed. Permission may be revoked at any time up until the moment at which venom enters your system.

If you have completed this application and are ready to continue the process, turn it in to the PRPR representative on duty.

"Wow," said Angela, staring at the form. "Um, wow."

"If you have any questions, feel free to ask," invited the ice-pale, dark-haired woman standing behind the counter in the office. "There's no hurry. We take applications on a rolling basis."

"Uh-huh," said Angela, blinking at the form.

This was not what she'd expected to happen as a result of trying Bella's old e-mail address. It had been a gesture of sentiment, nothing else, a message sent into the ether: I know you died, I know you won't read this, but our ten-year high school reunion is next month, and I thought of you. It was a little odd to think of her, so long after the fact. Bella had been Angela's friend for about five months, that was all, and then she'd eloped over summer vacation, dropped out of school, and died in a fire on the Quileute reservation along with hundreds of other people -

Except.

I probably should have told you sooner, but I have been soooo busy! came a reply - a reply from a dead woman's e-mail address. I'm actually alive. Had to fake my death. (Long story.) But not so important to keep secret anymore. Since I didn't graduate am I actually invited to the reunion? Also Edward and Alice. I'm not sure if Jasper and Rosalie and Emmett will want to attend theirs but if you know when it will be that would be good to know just in case. Thanks! -Bella

Angela had stared at the message for half an hour, not knowing what to think. The writing sounded like Bella's, the same careless treatment of serious topics that Angela had found amusing when they were in school together.

It could be some awful joke. Bella's cousin or a friend from Phoenix or something, or an unusually articulate spam bot, with access to her account and an inclination to make fun of the dead at Angela's expense.

Or not.

Angela didn't personally know any of the Quileutes - they said they were real Quileutes, anyway, not random Native Americans from some other tribe - who'd moved back into La Push after its five year vacancy. But she'd heard rumors that some of them had been thought dead in the fire, just like Bella.

How do I know you're really Bella? she asked finally. The real Bella would not be offended by this question. And would come up with an answer.

You know the spa that got built where my family (I mean the Cullens, not my dad) used to live? the next message said. Angela hadn't personally seen the spa complex, but she'd heard of it. It was oddly placed, considering that it was so exclusive that no one who actually lived in Forks was allowed in and only seemed to be open two months out of every couple of years. Jessica (not exactly Angela's friend anymore, but they talked, sometimes; Jessica had a son in Angela's kindergarten) had gone up to it once while the lights were on. She'd been turned away by a snooty employee.

I can so not afford that. They were trading e-mails in real time at this point, and Angela would have switched to IM if she'd known Bella's screen name.

Don't have to. I work there. You can just show up anytime, and tell someone who you are and that you're looking for me. They'll let you in :)

4pm tomorrow?

Sure, said Bella's response, just tell the lady on duty at the front office that you're looking for Bella and she'll show you where to go. See you soon!

And so Angela hurried five-year-olds through fingerpainting and storytime and naps and counting and the alphabet, saw them all onto their buses, and then got into her little blue car and drove up to the spa.

The lady in the front office did not appear to have a chair behind her desk, which was strange. Her eyes were a rich gold (hadn't the Cullens had gold eyes, at least some of the time?), and she wore black hair in a long braid that contrasted with her frosty complexion. When Angela came in, the receptionist - it seemed the likeliest job title - waited for her to speak first.

"Er, hi, I'm Angela. I'm here looking for Bella."

"Of course," replied the receptionist with a tilt of her head. "This way." She stepped around the counter and beckoned with one hand, leading Angela down a corridor that stretched off to the right. There were various offices, some with nameplates (one said "HIH Elspeth Cullen" - Angela didn't remember an Elspeth in the Cullen family and had no idea what HIH stood for) and other designations ("Turning", what was that supposed to mean?). There was also an eminently normal "Copy Room", although Angela wasn't sure why a spa would need one. She didn't see anything very spa-like, but this was only one building of several.

Past all these offices was just a hallway, with windows looking out onto the grounds. They were pretty lush with plant life, although it was mostly the sort that wouldn't require much maintenance - trees and shrubs rather than grass that would need mowing or flowers that would need weeding. Angela supposed it would be expensive to have a gardener around all year when the spa was often closed.

Angela and the receptionist didn't encounter anyone in the hallway, but there were people flitting about behind the windows to the other buildings, uniformly pale people who moved like dancers just as the receptionist did. The air smelled like flowers, and a little shiver went up Angela's spine.

"So what does Bella do here?" Angela asked.

"She's... in charge," came the reply, and Angela gaped in confusion, but they were at the end of the hall and her guide held open the door, and there, in the amphitheater-sized room of the central building, was Bella.

Recognition was immediate, and then second-guessed. Yes, the woman - wearing, of all things, a crown wrought of gold on top of a perfectly ordinary jeans-and-t-shirt outfit - looked like Bella. Except Bella's eyes were brown (the crowned woman's were gold), Bella's hair was long (the crowned woman had a pixie cut), Bella's skin was pale but flushed and this person was bloodlessly white, and moreover, Bella should be almost thirty and this person was obviously a teenager. Bella had also not been quite that beautiful.

Angela decided that this was some relative of Bella's - a niece? Maybe Bella had an older sibling she'd never mentioned, who'd already moved away from home by the time Bella's mom had taken up with the baseball player, and the sibling had a kid who went around wearing a circlet and now worked for Bella at the spa (although the facility was still not particularly spa-like). Stranger things had happened.

The crown-clad woman watched Angela, who looked around at the others in the room. Edward - no, not Edward, Edward would also be almost thirty, was this secretly a cloning facility? - a guy who looked exactly like Edward Cullen was standing behind the girl who looked like Bella. There was a brown-eyed redhead girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen, standing between a man and a woman each in their mid-twenties who looked Quileute but not like any of the specific individuals Angela had seen prowling about town. Staring into space near the Bella-lookalike, although not as close to her as the Edward-lookalike, was a leggy brunette who didn't resemble anyone in particular, especially not with that vacant expression.

There were others in the room, standing or sitting on the floor (there didn't seem to be any chairs), some with laptops plugged into outlets in the wall, everyone but the redheaded girl and her companions with their eyes black or gold or somewhere in between and looking at Angela.

"Angela is here to see you, Your Imperial Majesty," said the receptionist, bowing to the crowned woman so deeply that her braid swept the floor.

"Thank you, Santiago," said Her Imperial Majesty (who in the world was called such a thing anymore, in the United States?), and the receptionist straightened up, nodded to Angela, and turned back into the hallway.

"I'm looking for Bella," said Angela again, slowly, unclear on what could possibly be going on and sticking to her script.

"I am Bella," said the too-young, too-pretty, wrong-eyed crown-wearing mystery woman. "I'm sorry if this is a shock, but, well, you weren't even sure I was myself via e-mail... I didn't think you'd believe anything more outlandish I wrote."

"I - bwah?" said Angela. There might have been something more befitting the situation to say, but Angela didn't know what it was.

"I would have offered to meet you at a restaurant or something, but I'm still not set to go wandering about in public, not here in Forks where everyone knows me," said Bella (could she be Bella?) "looking the way I do. In a few years it should be all right, at least on a local scale. But you're a friend." Bella (?) smiled, but uncertainly, like she wanted confirmation that Angela was her friend.

"Bella?" said Angela.

"Yes?"

"I feel like I should be fainting about now. I'm not sure how to do it. Do I need a fainting couch?" Angela said.

"If you do, I'm sorry, we're fresh out," said Bella, not quite laughing.

"Bella! Bella!" exclaimed a high, crystalline voice, and Angela watched Alice (or her lookalike, or her clone, or whatever) hurtle into the room impossibly quickly, "Bella, the coven in Cuba, they're going to - erm - should the human be here while I explain?"

"Elsie, if you would?" Bella said to the redheaded girl - come to think of it, her hair was just like Edward's. "Angela, Elspeth's job is to help explain things to people; she'll answer all your questions. I'm sorry, I didn't expect to have anything else come up this afternoon or I'd do it myself." She smiled apologetically, and the older (or not, who knew, Bella should have been nearly thirty) girl approached Angela and motioned towards the hallway. "What was that you said about Cuba, Alice...?" Angela heard behind her, as she numbly followed the redhead and the two Quileutes who seemed to be magnetized to her.

"So, er, you're the Elspeth with the office I saw?" Angela asked.

"Mm-hm. Oh, and these are Jacob and Kelly," Elspeth added, gesturing at the following man and woman. "They're my bodyguards, and if it's more comfortable, you can ignore them, though you don't have to. We can talk in my office."

"Right," said Angela.

Elspeth's office was neat and luxurious, with deep carpet and a dark-stained desk and several matching cushy green chairs. Angela sat in one, grateful that chairs existed in the strange alternate universe she'd found herself in; Elspeth chose one opposite Angela, and the bodyguards fell into place behind their charge. (Bodyguards, thought Angela, I'm talking to someone who has to have bodyguards. I wonder if they have guns on them. I wonder if I'm in a room which has guns in it.)

"There are four ways to go about this," Elspeth said, "or any combination of the four. You can ask me questions, and I can answer them; you can read the pamphlets I wrote up which explain most everything, albeit impersonally; I can explain in approximately chronological order starting from the first time you were misinformed; or I can magically impart a summary of all the relevant information to you, including a summary of why I'm able to do that."

Angela stared at her, unable to detect deceit, even about the magic part. Feeling as though her throat were very dry, she said, "I think I'll have a look at those pamphlets you mentioned." Pamphlets were very ordinary things. One could find them on any number of subjects. Angela had a vivid memory of sitting in her college's infirmary, staring at a pamphlet about safe sex and marveling that it was able to make the most arresting topics sound not worth the trouble. That was just the thing needed for this situation.

Elspeth smiled, and fetched a stack of folded-up booklets from her desk, and Angela began to read.

Some hours later, Angela was sitting back in the front room with Santiago, having read a great many pamphlets and asked a great many questions and feeling remarkably unenlightened for it. She held a form, which purported to be her application to become a vampire, which had a variety of perks... and several serious drawbacks. Angela's on-again off-again boyfriend-who-might-propose-soon would probably not approve. It would make teaching kindergarten prohibitively difficult for a lengthy adjustment period. It was not conducive to producing a kindergartener of her own someday without elaborate interventions like the ones that explained Elspeth.

Angela re-read the form several times, and then looked up at Santiago, who regarded her cordially. "No hurry, right?" Angela asked. "None at all - I can come back in a few years, maybe?"

"Of course," said Santiago.

"Right." Angela handed back the form, which she hadn't written on at all, and Santiago tucked it away into the counter. "I'll be going, then."

"Have a good evening," said Santiago. "Please don't be indiscreet with what you've learned; we aren't ready to go completely public."

"Right," said Angela. "No one would believe me, anyway."

Santiago inclined her head, and Angela left the building and got in her little blue car and drove home.

The next time one of her kindergarteners asked her if magic was real, she said yes.