"Rosalie and Emmett's room... Carbomb's office... Alice's room..." He gestured at each as he led me past the doors.
He would have continued telling me where every door in the house led, but I'd stopped dead-hat at the end of the hall, staring incredulously at the ornament hanging on the wall above my head. Fredward chuckled at my bewildered307 face.
"You can laugh," he said. "It is sort of ironical."
I didn't laugh; I couldn't. My hand raised itself automatically, one finger at a time, extending as if to touch the large wooden cross, its dark patina contrasting with the lighter tone of the wall. Aged wood. I didn't touch it, though I was curious if it was silky.
"This aged wood must be very old, but silky," I said aloud.
He shrugged. "Silkwood from the early sixteen-thirties, more or less."
I looked away from the cross to stare at him.
"Why do you keep this here, Fredward? Why do you guys do this to yourselves?" I wondered aloud.
"Nostalgia. It belonged to Carbomb's father."
"He collected antiquities?" I suggested quietly.
"No. No, he carved this himself. He carved it and hung it on the wall above the pulpit in the vicarage where he himself preached."
"Oh my goodness!" I wasn't sure if my face betrayed my shock, but I returned to gazing at the simple, ancient cross, just in case it did. I quickly did the mental math: the cross was around three hundred and sixty years old.308 The silence stretched on as I struggled to wrap my mind around the concept of so many years, and what they meant to my first vampire boyfriend.
"Are you all right?" He sounded worried.
I'd started holding my head, I was thinking so hard. "How old is Carbomb?" I asked quietly, ignoring his question, still staring up.
"He just celebrated his three hundred and sixty-second
307. As if it had gotten lost in the wilderness.
308. An allusion to "360 deals," wherein a record label receives a static percentage of all proceeds earned by an artist from anything that has to do with their likeness or products. This in includes record sales, merchandise sales, ticket sales, appearances on morning television, starring roles in film, book deals, activities done by alternate personalities or in alternate dimensions, et cetera.