"Bears?" I repeated with difficulty.
"Grizzly is Emmett's favorite." His voice was still offhand, but his eyes were scrutinizing my reaction.
"Mm—Hm—Uh—hMMMmmm," I said, taking another bite of pizza and pretending I wasn't disturbed. I chewed slowly, and then took a long drink of Coca-Cola without looking up at him.
"So," I said after a moment of looking down, finally meeting his anxious gaze. "What's your favorite?" I asked timidly.
He raised an alabaster eyebrow and the corners of his mouth turned down in crooked disapproval. He said something completely unintelligible while coughing.
"What was that?" I asked.
He did it again. Was he trying to say something without me actually being able to understand it?
"Mountain lion?" he finally answered. I shuddered. It sounded nothing like what he had been saying earlier through the coughs. What was he hiding from me?
"Ah," I said in a politely casual tone.
"Of course," he said, and his tone mirrored mine, "we have to be careful not to impact the environment with injudicious hunting, because we are good vampires. We try to focus on areas with an over-population of predators—ranging as far away as we need. We spend at least every other weekend just researching different ecosystems and studying populations of different species. I've learned a lot of really interesting things, actually, and I'd be glad to tell you about them. In fact, I've enjoyed learning about ecosystems so much that I think I might study biology, might even become a doctor like my father. How about that?" He took a small pause to recollect his thoughts. "As for food, there's always plenty of deer and elk here, and they'll do, but where's the fun in that?" He smiled teasingly.
"Where indeed," I murmured around another bite of pizza.238 "So... you like the chase?"
"Yes, Bella. I like the chase. Sometimes it's less fun when it just falls right into your lap and all you have to do is bite its neck off, turn it upside down, and suck. Where's the fun in that?"
"Where indeed," I repeated, agreeing.
"Early spring is Emmett's favorite bear season—they're just coming out of hibernation, so they're more irritable." He smiled at some remembered joke, I presumed; a joke that I wasn't in on. I frowned.
"Nothing more fun than an irritated grizzly bear," I said pleasantly, hoping he'd stop tormenting me.
He snickered,239 shaking his head. "Tell me what you're really thinking, please."
"I'm trying to picture it—but I can't," I admitted. "How do you hunt a bear without weapons?" I was still stuck a few minutes back in the conversation, and though it embarrassed me, my curiosity to know the truth overpowered my embarrassment.
238. Her mouth was literally around the bite of pizza when she said it.
239. "Hungry? Why Wait?"; a trademark of Mars, Inc.