Chapter Twenty-seven: Everybody Loves Renesmee

Bella spends the first page of the novel recapping the fact that she now has a really big family, especially if you count the werewolves as cousins or something. Even Sue and Leah Clearwater are part of the show now. And it's all because of Renesmee, aww!

Everyone is happy. Bella's even more happy, because everyone around her is happy. Jasper is especially happy, because he can feel all of Bella's happy. SO MUCH HAPPY!!

But some things aren't perfect -- which is to say that they haven't become perfect yet, since they inevitably will. Renesmee spoke her first word ("mommy," aww) at the age of one week, which is slightly earlier than most kids, unless you start them really early on those Your Baby Can Read DVDs. Even they probably wouldn't say that word as part of a complete sentence like this little half-sparklepire.

And that's only the first of many wonderful Renesmee milestones. At less than a month, she's walking, and by three months, she looks almost as big as an average two-year-old. She can speak perfectly, read, run and dance and perform open heart surgery. The last one probably is less true than the others.

But she is growing really fast, and even though it's slowing down, Carlisle estimates that she'll be full grown at age four, and an old woman around fifteen. Lucky Renesmee, she never has to worry about turning 30 and really getting old. Actually, though, they don't know what's going to happen to her, since nobody has ever mentioned any half-vampire babies running around. There might be some legends in Brazil, but I'm sure that won't turn up any useful information to save the day at the last moment or anything.

There's one other not-yet-perfect thing that haunts Bella a little bit: those darn Volturi. Alice sent them a wedding announcement to head off them checking on her too early, and they sent back a lovely necklace featuring a few of the crown jewels in an overly ornate box. Oh, and there's a nice note saying that they can't wait to meet the new Mrs. Cullen! Maybe these guys aren't so bad after all.

Well, I guess there's a slight problem with that, in so much as Aro likes collecting unique vampires, and might want to steal Renesmee as the most uniquest thing ever. Bella's ready to deal with this by traveling to Italy herself and showing her sparkle to the Volturi in person. Since they can't read her thoughts, there's no chance they can find out about Renesmee. Perfectness achieved!

In the meantime, Bella, Jacob and Renesmee hunt together. Renesmee can eat human food, but human blood is way better. Animal blood falls somewhere in between, and since there isn't enough donated blood to go around (baby has learned that hunting humans is a bad thing), they're trying to get her to accept that instead. With Jacob along, they can entice her by making it into a hunting contest. Oh, those poor animals.

Jacob and Renesmee go ahead to hunt, while Bella hangs a few minutes behind them so that Renesmee can surprise her with whatever she catches. But Bella catches something herself -- her first glimpse at the Cullens' friend Irina! She's from that other coven to the north, and if you don't remember (it took me a minute), she's the one who shacked up with Laurent. Thus, she's less than happy with the fact that Jacob and pals killed her sweetie, and is only now coming back to see the happily married couple and make amends with the Cullens.

But oops, this was not the best time for them to meet each other. First of all, she saw Bella being friendly and affectionate with Jacob, who might have killed her vampire boyfriend. Oops. Bella calls her husband and has him and Carlisle come join them, since Irina growled at her -- the universal signal of sparklepire displeasure.

Carlisle and Edward go to find Irina, who ran away, while Bella, Jacob and the other wolves take Renesmee back into the house for safe keeping. I smell a plot coming!