Covet (23 page)

So one vote had tipped it all the wrong way.

My throat tightened hard enough to choke me. I had to clear it before I could reply. “Well, it was probably the right vote anyways. I am a danger to him. If I’d remembered the whole draining through a kiss thing, I never would have dated him in the first place. Besides, you guys weren’t the only ones who made me promise to break up with him. So even if y’all had voted differently, the breakup was still inevitable.”

Propping an elbow on the edge of the door, Gowin rubbed a hand over his chin. “Yeah, your dad told me what the Clann did to your grandma in the woods. It’s a sad part of any war. Innocents always get hurt in the process, no matter how hard everyone tries to protect them. But that doesn’t make it any easier on the ones who face that loss.” He rested a hand on mine on the seat between us, and our skin was the same temperature. It threw me off balance again. “I’m sorry about your grandmother. I heard she was a great woman.”

I stared ahead at the windshield, now covered in drops of pinesap and dead bugs. “Thanks.” It came out hoarse. I cleared my throat and had to blink fast a couple of times as my eyes began to sting.

“Your dad was impressed with her magical skills. Apparently she was the only witch to ever come up with a spell that could dampen the bloodlust without hurting or weakening us, even around the Clann.”

“It was how my mom and dad could stay together for so long.”

I glanced at him. He stared at me, going completely still like my dad did sometimes.

A quiet note of warning sounded somewhere in the back of my mind. “Too bad she didn’t write the spell down anywhere or teach me or my mom how to do it.”

“She didn’t teach your mother, either?”

“No. Nanna said she had to turn to the old ways and they required too much sacrifice to make them safe for anyone else to use. Plus, Mom never wanted to be in the Clann, so she refused to develop her magical abilities. She used to throw plates around without touching them when she was mad, but that’s about it. And I don’t think she can even do that anymore.”

He grinned. “She threw plates at your father with her mind?”

“So they say.”

“Ah. So that’s why she’s not around now.”

My mouth twitched with the quick urge to smile. “No, that’s not it at all. We just didn’t want to risk feeling the bloodlust around her now that Nanna’s protective magic has died with her. It’s safer for Mom to stay away.”

Finally Gowin opened his door. We both got out and slowly headed up the lawn toward the house.

“I imagine losing your grandma, mother and true love all at once must be a terrible burden for you.”

I stared straight ahead. “Or maybe it’s just karma for breaking the rules.”

“I don’t believe in karma,” he said as he stepped up onto the porch. “Only the destinies we create for ourselves. And I definitely do not believe that you deserve to have to endure so much pain at so young an age.”

If he was trying to be sympathetic, he needed to stop, because his words were like physical slaps to my body. Every word left its own bruise.

“Karma, accident, whatever it was, you can tell the council that it’s all been a lesson very well learned here.”

He shot me one last look I couldn’t decode, then we entered the house.

* * *

It turned out that the actual feeding itself wasn’t too bad. Dad mixed the donor blood Gowin had brought with a bottle of V8 juice, which I chugged down so I wouldn’t be able to detect the taste of the blood.

Then there was this flash before my eyes, and I stumbled. What the heck?

“Dad, I’m…seeing things,” I muttered.

“Michael, you didn’t warn her about the blood memories?” Gowin made a tsking sound.

“I did not expect her to guzzle down the drink so quickly. I thought I would explain as she fed slowly in a more mannerly fashion.”

“Forget the lesson on manners. Someone tell me what’s going on!” It was like someone had stuck some kind of movie headset over my eyes with wraparound vision…there was a scene playing out everywhere I looked with people I didn’t recognize, calling me by somebody else’s name, somewhere I’d never been. And yet in the background I could still hear Dad and Gowin’s voices.

“The blood contains traces of its owner’s memories,” Dad said as someone took my elbow and guided me somewhere. “I am leading you to your room now. Take a step. And another. And another.”

We made it up the stairs and to my room, where I fell onto my bed. Dad draped a comforter over me.

“How long will it last?” I said, even as the scene changed before my eyes to a birthday party and the sounds grew louder.

“A few hours. I am sorry I did not have time to explain more fully. Rest now, and try not to fight against the blood memories. They will pass in time.”

“I have Charmers practice in the morning,” I mumbled. “Seven o’clock.”

There was a beeping noise to my left. “Your alarm is set. The blood memories should be gone by then. However, I will also check on you and make sure you wake in time just in case.”

In case what? I never regained control over my own mind?

That was the last thought of my own that I had. And then I was lost to the real world, drowning in someone else’s life.

CHAPTER 15

When I woke up the next morning, Dad said Gowin had stayed overnight to be sure I reacted well to the donor blood. He’d left early this morning, but he would be back; Gowin had rented an apartment in Tyler so he could visit anytime the council felt it was a good idea.

A council member was moving to East Texas. The Clann would be so thrilled.

I had a hunch exactly who they would blame when they found out, too.

I didn’t bother to mention how much I did
not
enjoy the blood memories. I was pretty sure the look on my face said enough. Dad promised I should need to feed only once a week, which I would be allowed to do on weekends so I could recover from the blood memories by the start of each week.

Being forced to relive a confused jumble of moments from someone else’s life was terrible. While it lasted, I was completely out of control of my own mind. But at least the donor blood meant I didn’t have to go around biting people. Or deal with the bloodlust while at the Charmers boot camp, which lasted from seven till eleven every day for the last week of summer. The team used this week to bond with the Indies, or sophomores, who were just joining the team. The Braves, or juniors, seemed to enjoy no longer being the newbies on the team. But the Chiefs, or seniors, and the new captain and her lieutenant officers, definitely were having the most fun. They spent the week endlessly whipping the newbies into shape with laps around the track and push-ups and sit-ups, mixed in with actual dance practice as everyone learned the first new routines to be performed at the upcoming fall pep rallies and football games.

When I wasn’t working the sound system on the practice field for the team, I was getting to know the new sophomore managers while we worked together to clean and organize Mrs. Daniels’s office. It was hard not to smile when they whined about how hot it was on the third floor without any air conditioning, which wouldn’t be turned on again until next week when school began. To me the heat felt good, thawing me out so my constantly tense muscles could finally relax.

On Wednesday several boxes of new poms came in, so we spent the entire morning crinkling each strand of every pom by hand so the metallic strands would be fuller and catch and throw more light when the Charmers danced with them. I tried not to think about how it would feel to dance with a pair of poms at a football game. That was a dead dream better left forgotten.

Other dreams were harder to forget while I took inventory of all the stage props and backdrops. More than once I caught myself lost in the memories, fingertips pressed to my lips as they tingled with the haunting sensation of the way he’d kissed me over and over here in the dark that last night before Dylan caught us together and it all started to fall apart.

It didn’t help to know that the varsity Indians had their football practices at the same time as the Charmers in an attempt to avoid the rising heat of the day. Which meant Tristan was somewhere on this same campus every morning, probably getting all hot and sweaty in the back practice field with the other varsity players in a see-through practice jersey

Unfortunately Charmers boot camp in the mornings and magic practice in the afternoons didn’t fill up my evenings. So I started doing tai chi in my room at night in an attempt to battle the rising tension that kept my muscles kinked in knots.

But it was increasingly hard to find any peace from my emotions. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough, or focusing properly. Or maybe it was the fact that the new school year would begin in a few days, and I felt anything but ready for it.

The Friday night before the last weekend of the summer, Dad found me in my room trying as hard as I could to think of nothing beyond the next tai chi move.

At his knock, I called out, “Come in.”

He opened his mouth as if to speak, then hesitated and stood there with a frown, watching me practice.

“What? Am I doing it wrong?” I asked, waving my hands like clouds passing across the sky as he’d taught me.

“No. But…” He studied me for a few more seconds. “You look miserable doing it.”

“Gee, thanks,” I muttered.

“It’s supposed to bring you peace and tranquility.”

“I know.”

“Is it?”

I sighed and moved on to the next step. “I’m probably just not focusing enough.”

“Maybe you should dance instead.”

I froze, the anger a quick rush of heat blooming in my stomach. “Excuse me? I thought dancing was off-limits.”

“In public. The council said nothing about dancing in the privacy of one’s own home.”

I took a long, slow breath for patience. “Well, they didn’t say I could, either. So maybe I’d better just stick with the tai chi instead.” At least until they banned that, too.

I restarted the routine from the beginning.

“But dancing made you happy, correct?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “It causes problems. Why push the issue?”

Besides, I didn’t feel like dancing. I hadn’t ever since Nanna died. Every time I tried to dance, I remembered how proud Nanna had looked, sitting in the audience of the local Lon Morris College’s theater with my mom and dad at my first and only dance recital. And in the too short, too few weeks afterwards, how Nanna used to sit in a lawn chair in the backyard and loudly cheer me on while I practiced for my doomed Charmers team audition.

Tai chi was never going to help me relax as long as he was standing there critiquing me. I stopped and propped my hands on my hips. “Do you need something?”

Frowning, he strolled over to my closet and opened the door. “School starts on Monday.”

“I know.”
Believe me, I know.

He lifted a sleeve on one of the button-up shirts I’d had for years. I had a quick flash memory of Tristan’s hands gliding down my arms within those sleeves…. “I would have assumed that you would want or need to go shopping to prepare for the new school year.”

“I will. I figured I’d go late tomorrow night to Walmart when the store’s mostly empty and buy my school supplies then.”

“What about your wardrobe?”

“What about it? I haven’t grown any, so everything still fits.”

“But this is not what the magazines show the teens to be wearing now.”

“No one cares what I wear, Dad.”

He turned to face me, arms crossed. “That is not a good strategy for blending in.”

“Uh, actually it’s a great one. No one’s going to notice the wallflower with three-year-old clothing. Trust me, I’ll be practically invisible.”

“No, you will not. You will… How would your mother put it? Stick out like a…”

“A sore thumb?” I finished for him.

“Precisely.”

I let my stare show him how much I agreed with him.

“Perhaps we should discuss this with your mother. Skype is showing her as online now if you would like to webcam with her.”

Ha! Mom would totally side with me on this. She was all about the waste-not want-not mentality. “Fine.” I sat down at my desk, booted up my laptop and logged into the program. Sure enough, as soon as I appeared online, Mom sent me a video chat request. Within seconds we were able to see each other onscreen.

She gasped.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, half rising from my chair out of instinct, as if I could actually do anything to help her from here.

She gaped at me, leaning toward the screen and adjusting her laptop, judging by how the angle of my view of her changed.

“Is it weird lighting or…?” she asked.

“No, it is not,” Dad said, standing behind me. “Which brings us to why I suggested Savannah webcam with you this evening.”

“I see what you mean,” Mom muttered.

“What?” I asked, gripping the edge of my desk. “What’s wrong?”

Mom made that face she always made when she was trying to choose her words carefully. “Well, dear, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you, and you look so…different.”

“Like a vampire,” Dad said, his tone flat.

“Really?” I touched my cheeks with both hands. It felt the same to me. Of course, I hadn’t taken a good look at my reflection in weeks, not since Anne’s birthday. There hadn’t been any reason to as I stayed at home all the time now and saw only Dad and Gowin.

“Perhaps it is due to the feedings,” Dad murmured.

I glared at him over my shoulder. “I
told
you it was a bad idea!”

“Hon, it was necessary,” Mom said. “None of us could stop the change. And it’s not like you’re ugly now. In fact, you’ve become quite…beautiful.”

So why did her tone sound so weirded out about it?

“I have been trying to convince our daughter that she needs a new wardrobe this year,” Dad said. “One that is fashionable enough to be a distraction.”

“He means he wants to waste money on stupidly expensive clothes,” I corrected. “All my old stuff still fits just fine. There’s no point in spending a lot of money on a whole new wardrobe. Right, Mom?”

She cringed. “Well, sweetie, your dad might actually have a point this time.”