Covet (16 page)

“Thanks, Dad,” I murmured as the light streaming in through the wooden blinds at the living room windows began to turn more orange and fade. “I really needed this.”

He returned my smile with a gentle one of his own, looking for a brief moment like any other human father might. “You are more than welcome. Tai chi has always brought me great peace when I needed it most. I can only hope it provides you the same.” He glanced at the darkening world beyond the windows. “Unfortunately we will have to conclude today’s training now. It is growing late and I have not fed in a week, so I must leave for a while.”

Peaceful feeling gone.

He talked about feeding on some poor person as casually as if he were mentioning that he needed to make a quick run to the grocery store. Even if that person was a so-called evil-doer, as he referred to them, it was still wrong to go shopping for a blood donor like it was no big deal.

I went to my room, put on my headphones, cranked up the music and tried not to think about my dad and his “grocery shopping.” Or how I might end up just like that soon.

CHAPTER 11

TRISTAN

“Quit faking, I know you’re awake,” Emily grumbled from somewhere at my right side.

I cracked one eyelid open. The coast was clear, no parents or other descendants in sight. “Hey. How’d you know?”

She shrugged and crossed her arms.

“Where’s Dad and Mom?”

“I told them to take a break and go get something to eat. You know, I’ve gotta say, I always knew you were a brat, but this totally takes your selfishness to a whole new level. I ought to hit you, but I’m pretty sure the nurses would throw me out.”

“What? What the heck did I do? Shouldn’t you be giving me some sympathy here instead of grief? I’m
wounded
.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh please. Like I’m really buying that whole line from last night about your brakes not working. Everyone knows you weren’t supposed to be out there. They think you tried to kill yourself in your truck.”

“Give me a break. I needed some fresh air, that’s all. Mom and Dad have been treating me like an inmate lately. Can’t a guy get two minutes to himself without everyone assuming I’m suicidal?”

Emily stared at the floor. She looked like she was ready to swing a bat at my head.

Then I noticed the tears gathering at the edges of her eyes. “Aw, sis, don’t cry. I’m all right now.”

“No, you’re not, you moron. You crushed practically the whole left side of your body! It’s going to take months to heal you.”

I glanced down at myself. Was she serious?

“And you nearly died. Did you know your heart actually almost stopped beating? If not for Savannah—”

“Wait, what? What does Sav have to do with this?” I didn’t believe her about my heart nearly stopping. She was being a drama queen. But her mentioning Savannah was pretty random for her and a huge coincidence for me.

Had my truck wrecked because I’d unleashed that spell for Savannah while driving? Maybe the energy blasted out my brake system or something.

“She was the first one who knew you were hurt. She came tearing across the cafeteria at the dance to tell me she could literally feel your pain. She didn’t know where you were, but we were able to use that pain connection to tell if we were getting closer or farther away from you. Then we found you, and she helped me pull open the door and get you out. And then…” She took a shuddering breath. “Then I had to do a healing spell on you to keep your heart going.”

“Huh.” So the connection spell had worked. Though not exactly in the way I’d meant it to. Sav was supposed to have felt my emotions, not my physical pain.

Her eyes squinted in sudden suspicion. “What did you do? You were out there using power, weren’t you?”

Time to switch gears. “Is she okay?”

“Is she— You nearly
died
, you idiot! Are you not hearing me? Your heart almost
stopped
! You even managed to make
Dad
cry.”

I cringed. Maybe she wasn’t kidding about the near miss after all. “Okay, okay, I hear you, stop shouting. But I don’t know what to say about it. Thanks for bringing me back?”

She scowled at me. “You’re welcome. And yes, she’s fine. When your heart started to fail, so did whatever spell you’d put on her.” She leaned in closer and hissed, “You do know our parents would go mental if they knew about that, by the way.”

I tried a smile. “So don’t tell them.”

Emily sighed loudly. “What spell did you use, anyways?”

I tried to shrug, forgetting about my hurt arm and wrist, and had to freeze and hiss through the resulting pain. When I could think straight again, I answered, “I just wanted her to feel how I felt.”

“A love spell?” She made a face as if I were too pathetic for words. Maybe I was.

“No, not exactly. She already loves me. I just wanted her to feel confident about us again.”

She stared at me then slowly shook her head. “Oh wow. You are really and truly a lost cause, aren’t you? How many times, in how many ways, by how many different people, do you need to hear that you two are over, and furthermore, were totally and impossibly doomed from the start? She’s the
enemy
, Tristan, plain and simple. Let her go already.”

Okay, now Emily was starting to tick me off. “I thought you were supposed to be the smarter one here. I mean, okay, maybe I shouldn’t have tried to do a connection spell on her. I can see now that it wasn’t such a smart move.” At least not without better planning first. “But why is it so hard for
you
to see how we’ve been brainwashed? All of us have, on both sides! We shouldn’t even be enemies in the first place. We should all be working together—”

The door to my room opened, and Dad and Mom came in. I had to endure several long, excruciating minutes of Mom’s teary hugs before she finally gave me air to breathe again and backed off. In the meantime, Emily got up out of their way. I thought she was leaving, but she stopped and leaned against the doorjamb.

Dad stood at the foot of the bed watching me, his face scrunched up in an expression I’d never seen him make before. He patted my right foot under the sheets. “Glad to have you back with us, son. You sure worried us for a while there.”

Emily threw me an I-told-you-so look.

“Um, sorry about that. I swear it was an accident.” How many times would I have to repeat that before everyone got the message? “I tried slowing down in time for the curve, but the brakes never responded. By the time I tried to downshift it was too late and I was going too fast to be able to take the curve.”

Mom grabbed a tissue from a box on the bedside table and dabbed at her eyes.

“I don’t suppose my truck…” I began.

“Totaled,” Emily answered without even a hint of sympathy. “It’s scrap metal now.”

Aw man! I’d loved that truck. It was the one space I had that was truly mine.

Not to mention, Sav had once ridden in it beside me on a date.

“Tell you what,” Dad said. “Why don’t you worry about recovering over the next few months, and let your mom and I worry about getting you some new wheels.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said.

Spoiled brat!
Emily slowly mouthed.

Mom glanced at her, and Emily put on a sweet smile.

“I’m going to go call everyone with an update,” Mom murmured and headed out the door. Shaking her head, Emily followed her out, leaving me alone with our father.

He dropped heavily into the room’s only chair.

“You look tired,” I said, studying the lines radiating from the corners of Dad’s eyes and the heavy bags beneath.

“You sure gave me a few extra gray hairs.”

I grinned. “Impossible. It was all gray already.”

Dad snorted, but at least he was smiling. After a few seconds, though, that smile faded again. He sat forward, his elbows braced on his knees.

“Look, son, you can tell me the truth, and I swear it’ll stay just between us. Was it really—”

“Dad, I’m not lying. The brakes weren’t working. Can’t you get a cop or a mechanic or somebody to take a look at it?”

He stared at me. “You’re that certain about it?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“All right, I’ll get somebody to look it over.” His thick eyebrows drew together. “Is anything going on at school that I should know about? Anybody who might want to mess with your truck?”

“You mean other than the Williams family?”

We shared a look.

“Other than them, no,” I said.

He searched my face as if he thought he’d find a different answer hidden there. Finally he sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Well, at least one good thing came out of it all. Your mother agreed to let you play football again next year. If you’re physically recovered enough to.”

My pulse sped up at that. “She did?”

He nodded. “We thought… Well, maybe we’ve been pretty tough on you this year. Football used to keep you mostly out of trouble. And your punishment for using magic on Dylan in public has lasted plenty long enough to satisfy any descendants who matter.”

“Think Coach Parker will let me back on the team after all this time?”

Dad grinned. “You let me work on that. Just focus on healing up as fast as you can, and we’ll get you all the field time you can handle next fall.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

* * *

My family went home to get some rest and returned later to bring me a few things to clean up with as best I could in bed. When Mom answered a call on her phone, Dad quietly leaned in to mutter that he’d had a mechanic look at my truck and the brake lines had been ripped loose, but they couldn’t tell if it happened before or as a result of the wreck.

Dr. Faulkner also stopped by later that afternoon to show me my X-rays and talk about the recovery plan. When I saw the X-rays, I realized why everyone had been so freaked out. I hadn’t just broken a bone or two. When my truck’s driver’s side door had crunched in on me, it had practically shattered my left wrist and my left leg below the knee. I’d also gotten several deep cuts from broken glass, one gash across my forehead, and two or three more on my left shoulder and forearm where apparently I’d tried to hold on to the steering wheel while being tossed around like a sock inside a dryer.

Even with my family and the local descendants helping with long-distance spell work, it was going to be at least a week before they could reknit my bones enough to allow me to leave the hospital, and a month in casts and on crutches. That was the last time I
ever
used magic while driving. Just in case it was the reason my brake lines blew out.

By Monday afternoon, I was sure it was going to be the longest week of my life. I’d never realized how much I needed two hands until I temporarily lost the use of one of them. I couldn’t play video games. Shaving, even with the help of a nurse to hold a mirror for me, was a joke and left me with nicks all over the left side of my face where I couldn’t seem to angle the razor correctly. There was nothing worth watching on TV. And I’d already seen all the movies they had in the nurse station’s library.

And my last plan to find a solution for Savannah and me had failed. Big-time.

So when a familiar girl poked her head in the doorway, I was pretty happy about it. Even if the girl was a blonde instead of a certain redhead, at least Bethany was someone to talk to who could distract me from the frustration brewing inside my skull like a spring twister.

She returned my smile as she came into the room. “Hey, champ. How are you feeling?”

“Better now that you’re here. You wouldn’t believe how boring this place is.”

Sinking down into the chair, she opened her Charmers bag. “I brought you your homework for the week. I hope you don’t mind? Your mom asked me if I could pick it up for her from the front office.”

“She called you?” Mom sure was turning on the matchmaker skills lately. Either she really liked Bethany, or she was pretty worried about me.

“Um, no. I called her to see how you were doing and asked if it would be okay to stop by.” She took out a stack of books, each one with several loose pages stuck inside. I tugged one paper free, glanced at the notes, and groaned.

“Oh man, this is going to suck.”

“Having trouble in history class?” she teased after glancing at Mr. Smythe’s notes.

I thought of Savannah, how her long legs looked tucked up under the desk beside mine in that class. “Always.”

“If you need a little help this week, I could work with you on it.”

I debated for about two seconds, just long enough to remember how ticked off Emily was at me right now. No doubt she was going to be too ticked off to offer much help with homework this week.

“Sure, that’d be great. Thanks.”

She grinned, her cheeks turning pink. “It’s no problem. The Charmers don’t have practice this week or the next so we’ll have more time to study for finals. So I can come right after school. And in the meantime…want to start with today’s lineup?”

I sighed. “Yeah, why not? It’s not like I’ve got anything else planned.”

Laughing, she pulled a textbook from the stack and we got to work.

* * *

Bethany turned out to be a much better tutor than my sister. For one thing, she had way more patience when the deeper context of the English lit reading assignment was lost on me. She also didn’t whack the back of my head if a certain redhead came to mind and I spaced out every so often.

When somebody came in with a tray of food at six o’clock, followed by my mother, I think we were all surprised, me most of all. Where had the time gone?

I pretended to eat the craptastic food until Mom left to find a spoon to eat her own takeout with.

As soon as she was gone, I hissed, “Quick, save me! Eat this before she gets back.”

Bethany frowned at my tray of food. “Um, why?”

“Because it tastes like dog sh—er, crap—and I don’t want to have to listen to everyone’s nagging if I don’t eat it.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh, but it’s okay to torture me with the bad food? I don’t think so.”

“Aw, come on, Bethany! Don’t you have any sympathy?” Putting on my best puppy-dog face, I pointedly draped my free hand on my arm cast.