Chapter Twenty-two: Sometimes, vampires are slow.

Bella and her vampires leave bright and early for the airport, ready to meet the rest of the Cullens when they get into town. But Bella has another secret plan that she's managed to keep from them, even though they have Alice, who can predict the future. In fact, Alice has just had another vision, seemingly of Bella...but she's not talking about what it was. Bella can guess though: it's her, in the ballet studio with James, about to be killed or already dead.

Edward's flight is coming in at the busiest terminal, which makes Bella think there's a chance she can sneak away. Just before his flight arrives, she says she wants to get something to eat, and that she'll take Jasper with her -- she could use him around to calm herself. Oh, tricky Bella! In reality, she's going to make her escape through the bathroom, a place even a vampire boy won't follow her. The bathroom has two exits, so when she enters one and goes out the other, Jasper can only stand in the hallway and amuse himself by giving nearby people an uncontrollable urge to pee.

And so, Bella manages to make her getaway, getting on a hotel shuttle bus before Alice and Jasper realize she's gone. From the hotel, she picks up a cab to her mom's place in Scottsdale. Bella describes it as a 20-minute cab ride. Google maps says that it might be 25. Either way, when she throws $80 at the cab driver, that must include a pretty massive tip. Lucky guy: an $80 fare, and he doesn't even have to get eaten today!

Bella races to her mom's house, where she finds a phone number. It's a toll-free vampire hotline, and her customer service representative today is James. Isn't it nice when you call somewhere and get a real person, instead of an automated help line? Much more personal than "if you'd like to see your mother alive, please press seven."

James tells her that she'll need to come by the ballet studio alone if she wants to save her mother. She dutifully arrives, hearing her mother's voice...only to realize that her mom isn't there at all. It's just James using old home movies to create an amazing simulation. Mom is still watching spring training baseball in Florida, where Phil just struck out again to complete another 0-4 day.

James goes into his Bond Villain act, where he explains his entire plan and how he did it and how predictable humans are BLAH BLAH BLAH. Eventually, he mentions he's going to make a snuff film out of Bella, hopefully provoking Edward to continue hunting him. James also points out that he's done this once before, and that the last vampire he tried this with protected the potential human victim by turning her into a vampire. She was so out of it -- she had been a patient in an asylum undergoing electroshock therapy -- that she never even noticed. And now, she was living with the Cullens. Oh hi, Alice's origin story!

Actually, there's something here I need to talk about. James says that while in the 1920s, Alice was subjected to "treatment" in a dark asylum cell, a century earlier her visions would have caused her to be burned at the stake instead. Really, James? You think there were a lot of burnings at the stake in the 1820s? My five minutes of research finds that burning at the stake was out of fashion before 1800, and burning "witches" at the stake (presumably what he was referring to) had stopped well before then, at least in any official capacity. James may be a clever vampire, but someone needs to make him take a history class.

After James' soliloquy, we come to the end: it's time for James to kill her. But in classic villain fashion, he can't even do this quickly. He lets her run around, inflicts many injuries, and generally causes her to go through extra pain -- wasting time all the while. Finally, Bella begins to bleed, which makes James salivate (much to Bella's relief, and mine, since at least this means it'll all end soon). As the chapter ends, he lunges in for the kill, certain that there will be no consequences to all of his time-wasting antics that in no way gave the Cullens just enough time to reach Bella before he could eat her.