Covet (6 page)

My father sat at the dining table with my mother. I couldn’t remember them ever sitting at a table together. They’d divorced when I was two and barely managed to speak nicely to each other over the phone since, much less actually sit down to a meal together.

The other thing that made my muscles lock up was the realization that I’d never have Nanna’s homegrown tea again. At least not carefully measured out and steeped by her own hands.

“Hey, hon, how are you feeling?” Mom hopped up from her usual seat at the dining table and went into the kitchen to fix a plate of something I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat.

How did I feel? Like a traitorous, rule-breaking, lying murderer. “Fine,” I muttered, sinking into the chair next to Mom’s. Which left me facing Dad.

I caught myself staring at him. Seeing him at Nanna’s dining table was too weird.

Mom set a plate of nuked waffles in front of me. My stomach rolled over and threatened outright revolt as I stalled for time by cutting up the dripping, sticky plate of guilt into the tiniest pieces possible.

Mom sat down, clasped her hands on the table, then exchanged a look with Dad.

My instincts went on alert.

“Savannah, we need to speak with you,” she began.

My gaze shot to her face, then Dad’s. “Okay.”

“Your father and I have been talking,” Mom continued. “And we both feel that you should live with him for a while. At least until you graduate from high school.”

I stared at her, my brain scrambling to understand words I never thought I’d hear her say.

“Over the next year as your vampire side continues to develop, you are going to need me nearby to teach you how to recognize and control each new ability,” Dad said.

“Why can’t I just call you for advice?”

“This is not just your mother’s and my wishes. The council has also…requested that I stay near you during this crucial time.” Which wasn’t a surprise, considering they’d threatened before to require me to live with my father in order to balance out the “effects” of living with former Clann descendants all my life. “If the bloodlust increases in strength, a phone chat is not going to do much to help control you.”

“Control me? You really think I could become that big a threat to others?”

“It is possible, unless we are proactive in recognizing the signs leading up to such a situation and act quickly.”

I tried to imagine living with him, but it was hard. Until this weekend, I’d seen him only twice a year for an hour-long dinner, during which we’d both pretended to eat and care about each others’ lives. So I didn’t have much personal experience to support my imagination.

“And this is what you want, too?” I asked Mom, desperate for her to say no, that she wanted me to keep living with her. All my life, my family had consisted of Mom and Nanna and myself. Now Nanna was gone and they were talking about taking me away from Mom, too.

“Hon, this is the best choice possible. For everyone,” she said.

“I will of course be purchasing a home for us here in your hometown,” Dad added. “So you need not be concerned about relocating to a new school or leaving your friends and dance team.”

“Why would you do that?” I blurted out in confusion. If he was trying to reassure me, he’d just failed big-time. While descendants were spread out worldwide, Jacksonville was the Clann’s home base and therefore had the highest concentration in any one area. The temptation of being surrounded by hundreds of descendants and their powerful, magic-laced blood would make his existence here unbearable. The only upside to moving in with my father should have been getting away from the Jacksonville Clann.

And avoiding the temptation of getting back together with Tristan.

“The council wishes it,” was all he said.

Maybe the council wanted to continue to test me by making me stay here another two years?

“Well, at least I can still come visit you here on weekends, right?” I asked Mom.

“Hon, please try to understand, Nanna’s social security checks barely helped us make ends meet. Now that she’s gone, there’s no way I can continue to make the payments on this place.”

Dad scowled, and she rolled her eyes. “Yes, Michael, I know you’ve offered to help with that. But it wouldn’t be right now that we’re no longer married. I’m not your responsibility anymore, remember?”

She turned to face me again. “Besides, this place is too big for me to live in alone. I’d have to get fifty million cats just to keep me company.”

A reluctant smile bunched my cheeks and pushed the tears out of my eyes. I sniffed and wiped my cheeks with the back of my hands. “That’d be attractive.”

She smiled. “Exactly.” She took a deep breath, then dropped the biggest bombshell of all. “But the main reason is, now that your grandma is gone, her magic has begun to fade. Within days it will be gone completely, depending on how strong each spell was and how recently she strengthened it. That includes the dampening wards here.” She didn’t quite meet my eyes as she said that last part.

Oh. She was talking about the bloodlust-dampening spells only Nanna had known how to make, because she was the only descendant with magic abilities who had ever wanted to dampen a vampire’s bloodlust—mine, in this case—without actually repelling the vampire completely.

As a teenager Mom had chosen to let her abilities atrophy like an unused muscle. But that decision couldn’t erase her lineage. She was still a descendant with the Clann’s powerful blood running through her veins, the kind of blood that was almost irresistible to vampires.

Without the dampening wards on my home, I might begin to feel the bloodlust for my own mother. And now those wards were beginning to fade.

I shuddered. As much as I hated it, there was only one thing to do. “I guess we’d better start packing.”

CHAPTER 4

I should have tried to enjoy my last week in my childhood home. I also probably should have called my friends and mentioned that I would be moving in with my dad soon. But Mom had already called their parents to let them know about Nanna’s funeral, and the rest they would find out about once I was back at school next week.

Right now, I had zero desire to talk to anyone. Talking to my friends would mean lying about how Nanna really died and why I was moving in with my dad, and I was already crawling around under enough guilt as it was. While my best friend, Anne Albright, knew a little bit about the Clann’s abilities from helping Tristan ward off the algebra classmates I’d accidentally gaze dazed last year, she had no idea I was a dhampir, or even that vampires existed in the first place. My friends wouldn’t see it that way, but I knew without a doubt that the less they knew about the vampires and the Clann, the safer they would be.

As a result, the week passed quietly and much too quickly. Mom and I stayed busy packing up the house and putting it on the market. Mom had decided to sell the house and use the money for my college fund and to buy herself an RV so she could expand her sales territory. We’d thought, due to the lingering effects of the recession, that the house would take at least a few months to sell. But it found a new owner within days, to the surprise of Mom, me and the real estate agent. Apparently two companies had seen it on the internet the day the agent posted it and entered into a bidding war, driving the price up way higher than we’d set it. The winning bidder had also paid cash in full and skipped the usual house inspection so they could close within days instead of a month. Their only stipulation was that we vacate the premises as quickly as possible, apparently because they intended to put it on the rental market immediately.

All too soon, a stranger became the owner of our childhood home.

Later that week, we went to Tyler in Mom’s truck to do some serious RV shopping. Dad had tried to talk me out of going with Mom. But she’d insisted if I could be trusted to go to school with the Clann, then I could be trusted to go shopping with my own mother for the day. Dad had argued that going to school with descendants only put me in large classrooms with them, not tiny truck cabs. But Mom said that was ridiculous and she wasn’t discussing it any further with him.

Still, to be on the safe side, Mom took one of Nanna’s most recent dampening charms with her in her pocket, and for added measure I kept my window rolled down. Just in case.

Halfway to Tyler, I finally gave in to the curiosity that had been bugging me for days.

“Mom, did you ever go to the Circle when you were in the Clann?”

She made a face as if she’d just smelled a skunk. “Unfortunately, I spent half my childhood there. Not only is it the place where all the major Clann gatherings are held, but it’s also a safe place where elders can take descendants to train, especially the kids who are having a tough time learning to control their abilities. They’ve got a bunch of safeguards around it to keep out v—” She glanced at me. “I mean, outsiders, and to prevent descendants from accidentally setting the trees on fire or blowing up anything beyond its border. And believe me, I probably tested those wards more than all the other descendants combined.”

“Then how did Dad and I get past the wards?”

“Your Clann blood will always allow you to enter the Circle. And if you were there and even thought that your dad should be allowed in, then the wards there wouldn’t stop him, either. That’s how the wards were set up, so we could pick and choose which allies to allow in during times of danger.”

“So all I had to do was think ‘let Dad in’ and it did? There’s no magic words that have to be said first?”

“Nope, not usually. Clann magic is mostly based on willpower and focused intention, not fancy words or magical candles and herbs.” She blew out a noisy breath between her lips, making a sound like a horse so I would smile. “When I was your age, I would have given anything if only our abilities required eye of newt and hair of dog to work. Then I wouldn’t have had so much trouble controlling them.”

“Why not just do a spell on yourself to get rid of your abilities?” It seemed obvious to me. There must be some catch.

She burst out laughing. “Oh hon, don’t you think I thought of that already? I tried a million times as a teen! But there are some things that are fundamental to our nature and can’t be stopped with just willpower. Remember how Nanna gave you those special daily teas to hold off your puberty so we could try to prevent your vamp side from developing as long as possible? Remember how well that worked in the end?”

Did I ever. My body had ended up going to war with itself last year and I’d nearly died until Nanna’s spell-laced teas flushed out of my system.

“But what about Nanna’s bloodlust-dampening spell? Doesn’t it affect the fundamental nature of vamps?”

“In a way, yes. See, the vamp wards work on your brainwaves by putting out a kind of targeted energy field that interferes with certain frequencies of thought. But that’s almost like creating a sonar signal set to a frequency our ears can’t pick up. That’s not affecting anything on a cellular level.

“The bloodlust, however, isn’t about your mind or emotions—it’s in a vamp’s genetic coding to crave blood. So the bloodlust-dampening spell has to work on that same DNA level. And that is some deep magic. It’s like nothing the Clann normally teaches descendants nowadays. Which is why Nanna had to turn to the old ways from our Irish ancestors to find a way to make the dampening spell. She said there’s a reason the Clann doesn’t use the old ways anymore, because they’re too dangerous. She even hinted that she had to make some sort of personal sacrifice every time for it to work. That’s why she refused to write down the process or teach it to anyone. She was afraid other descendants would be desperate enough to try the spell regardless of the consequences.”

I stared out at the highway ahead, both my mind and my heart racing. Dr. Faulkner had said Nanna died of heart complications, that her heart had years worth of scar tissue on it. But she’d never told us she was having health problems.

Could her heart disease have been connected to the bloodlust-dampening spells she’d done for my parents for years, and later on our own home so I could continue to live with her and Mom safely?

No. No, I was already at fault enough for the Clann imprisoning Nanna in the Circle. My vamp side couldn’t be even more of a cause for her heart failure. She’d died because she’d fought against the Clann too hard that day, and because of the high cholesterol foods she ate, because she never exercised, because her genes had predisposed her to heart disease.

And yet…it fit, didn’t it? If she were giving up part of her life or her health in some way in order to overcome the vamp’s basic craving for powerful Clann blood, she wouldn’t tell her daughter what Mom’s love for Dad had cost. And she definitely wouldn’t discuss it with her half vamp granddaughter.

Oh God. Nanna, what did you do to yourself?

I stared out my open window, biting my knuckles to keep from crying out loud as tears slid down my cheeks. The guilt, ever present in my gut, rose up to claw at my lungs, making it hard to breathe. I couldn’t break down, not here, not now, when Mom was so excited about picking out the RV she’d always wanted. I’d already taken so much from her. I couldn’t ruin this day, too.

“You okay, hon?” Mom said. “You got awful quiet there all of a sudden.”

I cleared my throat, grateful the wind had dried the tears on my cheeks almost as soon as they fell, and forced a smile into my voice. “Sure! Just looking forward to seeing which RV you pick out.”

“So what’s with all the Clann questions today?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “You know, just…thinking about things.”

“Missing your Nanna?” Her murmur was low and heavy with sympathy, nearly causing more tears to spill from my eyes.

I nodded. Closing my eyes, I tried to make my mind go blank. And yet flashes of that day in the Circle still managed to slip through…all those descendants watching Nanna die, watching me fall apart, listening to us as Mr. Coleman offered his condolences.

There had been something odd in Mr. Coleman’s tone, a strange little catch as he’d almost said Mom’s first name.

Desperate to change the subject, I blurted out the question, “Did you know Sam Coleman very well?”