Covet (21 page)

Why couldn’t I have had the source of that scent for dinner? Had Mrs. Albright cooked something else earlier? Maybe Anne would let me have the leftovers if there were any.

There was a really distracting sound in the background, too. Maybe a movie Mr. and Mrs. Albright were watching in their room? The sound was like a low thumping, almost like a car outside with one of those loud stereo systems. Except this beat was out of rhythm, as if several drums were being played at once and out of sync.

Then I caught snatches of conversation coming through the bedroom door.

“Well, Savannah’s always been weird,” Mrs. Albright muttered. “But what can you expect, considering that family of hers? Joan was always more than a little strange in school, too.”

I tensed up, then glanced at my friends. They were all glued to the TV. Apparently only I could hear the discussion in the other room.

“I heard Joan ran off after her mother’s death and left Savannah on her own,” Mr. Albright murmured. “Savannah’s dad had to move here to take care of her. Perhaps we should feel sorry for the girl.”

“You call her father’s parenting style ‘taking care of her’?” Mrs. Albright snapped. “What kind of parent buys a health hazard and makes his kid live in it? And on top of that, he’s apparently too busy chasing after rats in their new house to bother with getting his daughter some new socks every now and then. Did you see the size of the hole in hers? She looks like a thrown-away orphan.”

Still lying on my stomach on the sleeping bag, I glanced over my shoulder at my feet behind me. Sure enough, my left big toe peeked out past a ragged opening in the cotton. I hadn’t even noticed when I’d pulled them on earlier. All I had cared about was that they were clean.

“Mmm, I know what you mean,” Mr. Albright said. “It’s no wonder the poor girl has developed an eating disorder, living with a father she doesn’t even know in a deathtrap like that. I tried everything I could to talk Michael out of buying that house when he called me about home insurance. But he wouldn’t hear of it. He called it a ‘priceless piece of history.’” He snorted. “He’s probably spent all his money trying to make it liveable and didn’t have any left over to buy her new socks.”

Nausea rose hard and fast, driving me to sit up. Anne looked at me.

“I need some air,” I muttered, yanking on my sneakers over my holey socks and heading for the door.

“But you can’t!” Michelle protested. “There are coyotes out there.”

I managed a half smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

As soon as I stepped out and shut the door behind me, the smells changed. Sun-warmed ragweed was the strongest. But then I heard something rustling through the surrounding pasture’s tall yellow grass. At the same time, a breeze blew a new scent to me. Something warm and wild was out there.

Then the door opened behind me and Anne walked out. I froze as she came to stand beside me, bringing the delicious scent from inside the lodge outside with her.

That scent should be fading. But it wasn’t. It was…

Oh no. This could not be happening. Not here. Not now, with my friends…

The bloodlust…for normal, nonmagical human blood. Dad had warned me that this would happen, but I hadn’t believed him. I hadn’t wanted to. I needed to believe that I could still be friends with humans and everything would be okay.

But it really, really wasn’t. My teeth ached with the need to sink into something....

I clamped a hand over my mouth, my heart racing harder than it ever had before. I had to get out of here. Now. I made a beeline for my truck.

“Sav, what’s wrong?” she asked, grabbing my shoulder to stop me and leaning closer to peer into my face.

I twisted away from her, silently cursing the full moon’s brightness. She would be able to see my teeth.

My fangs.

Oh God. It was one thing for her to have to know what I was, and another to actually see it. Even
I
didn’t want to see what I looked like right now.

“I’ve gotta go,” I muttered, taking the last steps to my truck.

I opened my door, slid in behind the wheel and glanced up to make sure she wasn’t too close to my truck.

Anne gasped. “Your eyes…they’re silver…” She took a quick step back, her hands falling to her sides.

I froze, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the handle of my still-open door, both hearing the fear in her voice and sensing it in the air.

My best friend was afraid of me.

I slammed my door shut, rocking the truck.

How had everything come crashing down again? I’d spent the last month feeling so great about myself for the first time in forever, like learning magic had given me back some control over my body and my life.

And now
this
.

“I’m sorry,” I said through the open window, hoping my face told her just how much I did not want this to be happening.

Her gulp was loud in the dark silence. “It’s okay. It’s just another birthday. I have one every year, right?”

My eyes burned. I closed them, took a deep breath in an attempt to regain control over myself, smelled that delicious scent again and realized my mistake. There would be no regaining control, not here, not now.

I sucked as a best friend. “I…I’ll see you at school, okay?”

As I drove away, tires churning on the dirt road, I tried to find some way to make the tight knot in my throat ease up.

Maybe I wasn’t a complete failure as a friend. I had managed to distribute all the protection spells tonight.

Except Anne didn’t know about them. So it couldn’t really make up for my having to bail on her birthday party.

Then again, I would feel a heck of a lot more guilt if I stuck around and ended up attacking one of my friends tonight.

The burning in my eyes increased, making my eyes feel like they were being bathed in acid.

No, there was no way to lie even to myself about this. I really did suck as a friend.

Maybe I should have put vamp wards on those bracelets instead.

CHAPTER 14

I didn’t realize I was crying until I walked into my house twenty minutes later and Dad leaped off the couch only to reappear beside me in the foyer.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“What?” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the side table. My cheeks glistened. I swiped them dry with my sleeves. “The pizza made me barf, and then the bloodlust showed up. You were right. Happy?”

“Why would your unhappiness ever make me happy?” He frowned. “Come with me. It is time you learned how to feed.”

“No way. I am not sucking on someone’s blood like some kind of…”

He turned to face me, and my throat closed up on the word
monster
.

“Perhaps you would prefer to return to the party then?” he said. “I am sure your friends would be only too happy to welcome you back.”

I pictured being shut up inside that tiny hunting lodge with all those hearts pulsing around me, and my mouth watered.

And then I wanted to be sick. I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to be…” My mind struggled for a word that wouldn’t hurt his feelings. A bloodsucker. A leech. A danger to my friends and mother and every other human around me. “I don’t want to be…
this
!”

“We are what we are, Savannah. You cannot stop the change. You can only decide either to take control of your new life or let it control you.”

Control. That was such a thing of the past right now. “I don’t want to kill anyone. Or hurt them, either.”

“I would never allow you to kill anyone. And I have been told that feeding actually can be quite a pleasant experience for the humans if performed correctly.”

Like that made preying on humans any better? “There’s got to be some other way.”

Silence. Finally he sighed. “I might be able to make a call or two and come up with another solution.”

“Thank you.” I nearly wilted from relief at the thought that I wouldn’t be forced to go find someone to bite. “Can I go to bed now?”

He nodded, and I slunk upstairs to my room.

* * *

The next morning, we received a special delivery.

The doorbell rang a little after eight, right around the time our mail usually arrived. It was probably yet another shipment of some historically accurate doorknobs or something.

“Savannah, can you get that?” Dad called out over the ear-piercing sander from one of the guest bedrooms.

I went downstairs, opened the front door and froze. The delivery guy was hot, probably early twenties, with sandy hair cut short at the back and long enough in the front to have to be brushed sideways out of his eyes. He was definitely two yums up, as Michelle would say.

Then I noticed the color of his eyes…the same white/silver as mine and Dad’s and every other vampire I’d ever met. He wasn’t wearing a FedEx, UPS or postal worker uniform, either.

Smiling, he held up a small cooler and said, “Did someone around here order some blood?”

Speaking of blood…mine went decidedly cold.

“Um, hang on just a second,” I mumbled. My heart pounding loud enough that he had to have heard it, I kept my gaze on him and yelled, “Dad!”

Dad appeared beside me a second later then froze. Silence. Then he smiled broadly. “Gowin! You did not say you would be coming by for a visit anytime soon. To what do we owe the pleasure of hosting a council member?”

Oh, so that’s why he looked familiar. He had been one of the vamps at my “test” in France last spring.

“The council heard a rumor that our Savannah here is having some trouble adjusting to the new lifestyle.” Gowin smiled. “And since I hadn’t seen my own protégé in quite some time, and I was in the neighborhood anyway, I offered to make the first delivery myself and see how you were both doing.”

It was like walking into class and hearing we were going to have a pop quiz. But worse. Way worse.

Wait. Protégé? “You’re…my dad’s maker?”

“The proper term is
sire
,” Dad said. “And yes, he is.”

I stared at Gowin, trying to see how someone who looked so young could possibly be older than my dad.

His grin widened under my scrutiny. He sighed and gestured at Dad. “These kids. They leave home, they never call or write or visit.”

A smile formed before I could stop it.

Dad hesitated only a fraction of an instant before stepping back to let Gowin enter. “It is always good to see you again. Will you come in and see my latest project?”

Was he talking about the house or me?

Dad quickly sent the floor crew home early for the day, then we vamps gathered around the kitchen table.

I couldn’t stop staring at our guest. Not because he was overwhelmingly gorgeous. Only Tristan’s looks could really make me breathless. But it was strange to see a vamp who appeared so young yet had to be at least as many centuries old as my dad. Gowin was the first vamp I’d met who looked anywhere close to my age.

Appearances could be deceiving, though. I tried to remember that fact as Gowin and Dad talked. Gowin was such a contrast to my dad. Unlike Dad, who always seemed a little formal and old-fashioned, Gowin was completely relaxed both in how he talked and dressed. Right now, he was wearing a T-shirt tight enough to show off his well-defined biceps and trim waist, plus faded jeans and sneakers.

He could fit right in on any college campus. And yet, while he and Dad talked about the good ole days, I had to forcibly remind myself that those good old days were probably pre-American Revolution era. Gowin was anything but the harmless college kid he acted like.

He made that hard to remember though, especially when he told jokes.

“Hey, do you know how the Roman Empire was cut in half?” Gowin asked.

Startled from my thoughts, I joined Dad in shaking my head.

“With a pair of Caesars!” Gowin answered.

Dad and I both groaned.

“Missing your toga days, old man?” Dad teased.

“Ah, now
those
were the days.” Gowin sighed and slouched back in his chair. “Talk about the perfect man fashions to show off these legs!” He stretched one leg out in my direction. “Now I have to wait for summer swimwear. And of course do the sunless tanning thing all the time so the ladies don’t laugh me out of the pool.”

My jaw dropped. “You were a Roman?” That would make him a couple thousand years old.

He grinned. “You are looking at one of the youngest senators Rome ever had. I had barely turned twenty-five when I joined the Senate.”

“Gowin is also the third oldest vampire still existing,” Dad murmured.

“And who are the oldest two?” I asked.

“Caravass is the second oldest,” Dad said. “And the oldest is Lilith.”

Gowin froze, his entire demeanor completely changing in a flash. Gone was the humanlike college kid, replaced in an instant with a too-still and very alien creature. “Don’t speak her name, old friend, or you may not like the consequences.”

Silence filled the kitchen before Dad said, “I am sorry. I forgot your beliefs.”

“They’re not just
my
beliefs,” Gowin muttered. “Those who know of her also know that to speak her name is to invite her attention. And trust me, you don’t want that.”

“I thought she was sleeping under a desert or something,” I said, wondering if maybe I should whisper. Half vamp or not, I was getting seriously creeped out. What was it about Lilith that could possibly make even the old and powerful vampires too scared to say her name?

“She may be physically asleep, but she’s still always listening,” Gowin said. “Saying her name, even here, is the same as standing outside someone’s bedroom door and calling out to them. We’re all her children through the blood, and as such, she’s connected to us at all times. She has only to choose to wake up and she can be here in an instant in any form of her choosing.”

Silence in the kitchen.

Clearing his throat, Gowin glanced out the kitchen window and put on a smile. “But enough about her for now. What time does the sun set around here?”

“Around eight or nine in the summer,” Dad said.

Gowin checked the black sports watch at his wrist. “Plenty of time to see the local sights before our girl here has her first feeding. The drive in was quick and I didn’t see much, but it seems like you might have chosen a lovely town to settle down in.” He smiled at us. “I don’t suppose it would be okay for Savannah to give me a short tour? Maybe check out the downtown shopping area while we’re at it? I’m on the hunt for a particular little Queen Anne side table.”