Covet (45 page)

“Hmm. Maybe you got your father’s nervous stomach after all,” Mom muttered. “I swear that man eats antacids like candy lately.” She sighed, rubbing a thin hand across her forehead. “Okay, I’ll go back to the store and get you some Sprite and crackers.”

“Saltines, they said,” Emily added.

“Right. Saltine crackers. Got it. I guess I’ll call your father on the way and see if he needs anything else, too.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

My door opened and Mom poked her head in. “I’m going to the grocery store. Do you want to come?”

“Sure.” It wasn’t like I had a hot date planned. Or much of anything else now that football season was over. A guy could only work out or listen to so much music.

I yanked on my boots and tied them, called out a quick goodbye to Emily, then jogged downstairs and out the kitchen door to the garage.

But as I opened the passenger door of Mom’s car, I realized there was no way I could go with my mother to the grocery store on a Friday night. It was one thing to take a break from dating and another to purposefully commit social suicide without a cause.

“Uh, on second thought,” I told Mom through the open door. “I think I’ll stay. You know, in case Emily needs something. She probably shouldn’t be alone and sick.”

Mom frowned, then her lips twitched. “Oh. Right. Friday night. No, we wouldn’t want anyone to see you buying groceries with your mom tonight.”

Smiling a sheepish apology, I shut the passenger door so she could leave. Then I tried to figure out something to do with my evening.

My truck. It could use some serious TLC. Usually I cleaned it every couple of weeks, but lately I’d been too busy. Might as well tackle it now.

I was bent over wiping down the dusty dashboard when movement outside the garage door windows caught my eye. It was Emily. Apparently she felt well enough to get some fresh air like she’d mentioned wanting to do earlier.

She was wearing socks, house shoes, her long wool coat and a scarf. Satisfied she was dressed warm enough, I started to look away.

Then some guy came around the side of the house toward her on foot. He looked like he might be around Emily’s age, dressed nice in slacks, loafers and a long wool coat and plaid scarf. He seemed vaguely familiar, but wasn’t anyone we’d gone to school with. One of Emily’s friends from the local colleges? Jacksonville had two junior colleges plus a seminary school. He could be a student at any of them, or a classmate with her in Tyler.

Whoever he was, Emily seemed to know him. She gave him a hug then stood talking with him, her hands resting in her coat pockets, the occasional smile showing on her face. She wouldn’t have looked quite so relaxed around a stranger.

Dad pulled up in his car and parked to the side of the garage, probably so Mom could have the only open bay left to unload the groceries from. I figured he’d go inside the house, but he stayed to talk to Emily and the stranger. After a couple of minutes, all three of them began to stroll around the backyard.

Huh. Okay, maybe the guy was some business associate of Dad’s.

Thankfully no one seemed to notice me inside my truck in the garage, so I wasn’t obligated to go out and make small talk. I could still go back inside and up to my room without being missed.

My plan worked. I was in my room for two hours zoning out with the TV before I finally heard Emily come upstairs and go to her room. Within two minutes, the peace of the second floor was shattered by her snoring.

The fresh air must have really worn her out. Someday I ought to record her snoring. The blackmail possibilities would be endless.

Grinning, I turned my TV up a little louder to block out the log sawing across the hall.

Half an hour later, Mom came home. Bored, I decided to go down and see if she’d bought anything other than meds and stuff for Emily. Sometimes I got lucky and Dad would request junk food. He was the only one in the house who could get her to actually buy the stuff, but at least he took pity on his kids and shared his stash with us.

“Oh good,” Mom said, her hands filled with the straps of multiple plastic bags. “You can help me unload.”

“I thought you were just going for Sprite and crackers.”

“In this household? Impossible!”

I went to the car and grabbed the remaining six bags from the trunk, using my elbow to slam the lid shut before I hauled the load to the kitchen.

“Your father,” Mom muttered as she put away the new food. “He gave me the
longest
list of junk he wanted. Look at this! Cupcakes, oatmeal cookies, crème pies. I swear, if he keeps eating like this, he’s going to die of a heart attack before he’s sixty!”

“Nah. Dad’ll never die. He’s going to be the first descendant who lives forever.” Grinning, I handed her more boxes to put away. “But if you’re worried, you could always try putting him on another diet.”

“Ha! Like that ever works. You know how pigheaded he is. He’ll just sneak in more stuff and hide it in his desk in the study where he thinks I won’t know about it.” She glanced at her watch and frowned. “It’s getting late. I’d better start on dinner. Go ask your father what he wants to have with pork chops.”

“Okay.” I went down the hall to Dad’s study and knocked on the closed door. No answer. Just to be sure, I opened the door and checked. No lights on, and no Dad after I turned them on.

I went down the hall and looked in the living room. Everything was quiet, the TV off, the lights off. I turned on a lamp just to make sure Dad hadn’t fallen asleep on the couch like he did sometimes on the weekends.

No Dad in sight.

Maybe he’d gone upstairs to change. I ran up, knocked on my parents’ door, checked inside. Again, Dad was nowhere to be found.

I went back downstairs to the kitchen. “I can’t find him. Was he still outside when you got home?”

“No. It’s forty-five degrees outside. Why would he be out there?”

I shrugged. “Earlier I saw him talking with Emily and some guy. I thought maybe he was a business buddy of Dad’s or something. Emily seemed to know him, too.”

“Well, there was no one out there a few minutes ago. Just your father’s car.”

I opened the kitchen door and looked out through the garage door windows. Dad’s car was still visible in the lights from the garage. “His car’s still here. Maybe he went somewhere with that guy?”

“And not call me and let me know he’d be late for dinner? He knows better than that.” Sighing, Mom grabbed the cordless kitchen phone from the wall and dialed. After a moment, her frown deepened. “Samuel Coleman, that phone of yours better be dead. And if you don’t either call me back or get home right now, you’re gonna be! Where are you?” She hung up, paused then snapped her fingers. The sound was like twigs breaking. “Grab a flashlight and your coat and go check the clearing. I’ll bet he’s out there.”

I glanced at my watch. “Kind of late for spell work, isn’t it?” I pulled on my coat and a pair of Dad’s boots he’d left in the garage.

“Oh, you know your father. He likes to go out there and practice his boardroom speeches. Says the pine scent helps him think clearer. Maybe he lost track of time.”

And the clearing was notorious for killing all incoming cell phone signals. “Right. Be back in a minute.”

“Hurry up. And don’t forget the flashlight. Wait! You need a vamp ward.”

Sighing, she took hers off.

“Mom, I’ll be fine.” The only part of our property not protected by vamp wards was the backyard, which took all of ten seconds to cross at a walk.

“Put it on. Your father is safe enough out there, especially with all the wards around that clearing, but you won’t be until you reach the clearing. And I know you think you’re just as tough as your father, but you’re still learning. So wear it and quit arguing and go find your father please.” She huffed out that last part all in one breath, not even trying to hide the snap in her voice.

I took the stupid cuff and snapped it around my wrist, then went out back, stopping to open one of the garage doors before jogging across the backyard. Once I hit the edge of the woods, I slowed down and turned on the flashlight. Usually enough moonlight trickled down through the pine branches to light the path. But tonight there was no moon at all to see by.

Which was why I nearly stepped on his hand.

CHAPTER 31

He was lying across the path just inside the clearing. I could have pictured him maybe sitting down on a rock or something, but never lying flat on his back like that. Not even in the clearing.

“Dad!” I crouched down, shook his shoulder. His head rolled toward me, his eyes wide open and flat with no shine, no hint of that spark I was so used to seeing in them.

“Dad?” Holding my breath, I laid a hand on his chest.

Nothing. No rise and fall from breathing. No heartbeat. And he was cold.

Not wanting to believe it yet, I checked his neck. No pulse.

“Dad!” I placed both hands on his chest and hit him with a jolt of energy like I’d seen Dr. Faulkner do for Savannah’s grandmother last spring. But the attempt to restart his heart didn’t do anything. I tried again, willing him to blink, breath, gasp, anything. Deep down, though, I already knew it was too late. But I still had to try.

I lost count of the number of times I tried to restart his heart, until finally I stopped. He was gone.

Then I saw the punctures in his neck, and I knew, but I didn’t want to believe that, either.

No way could my dad, the fourth-generation leader of the Clann, be taken out by a vamp. It wasn’t possible. Especially here in the clearing, where he would have been surrounded by some of the most powerful wards in the world. This place was magically designed to protect hundreds of descendants at a time. No vamp could have gotten past the edge of the clearing without a descendant present and consciously allowing them in, the way I had Sav’s dad when we’d returned from France. And even if the wards had failed somehow, Dad was too strong, too skilled with magic. He would have fought, and Emily and I both would have felt that use of power and been able to come help him.

It had to have been a setup.

Even as I stared down at his body, at those unblinking eyes, I couldn’t believe he was gone. My eyes burned, my chest so tight I couldn’t catch a deep breath. He was supposed to live forever, or at least until he was eighty or ninety years old. I was supposed to have decades still to learn from him. He was invincible, the single most powerful and magically gifted descendant in the Clann.

Even though I knew he was gone and couldn’t be saved, I didn’t want to leave him there. But I had to. I hadn’t brought a phone with me, and Dad’s was nowhere in sight. I had to go back to the house and tell Mom.

Mom.

I remembered her reaction to the death of her sister. There was no way she was going to be able to handle losing Dad. Once the shock wore off, I didn’t know how
I
was going to deal with it. It wasn’t real to me yet. I didn’t want it to be real yet.

I walked back down the path toward the house, across the back yard, the grass crunchy beneath my feet from frozen frost. Too soon, I was on the steps leading up to the kitchen, and then inside.

“Hey, did you—” At the stove, Mom turned toward me, a metal spatula in one hand, a glass of red wine in the other.

She took one look at my face, reading the thoughts I was too freaked out to hide.

She shook her head. “No. He’s too strong.”

“Mom,” I choked out, slowly crossing the kitchen, the words lodged in my throat and refusing to come out.

“No,” she whispered, the glass of wine hitting the floor, shattering, spilling red fluid like a crime scene all over us and the tiles and cabinets.

I tried to hug her, to offer some kind of comfort, knowing she needed me to be strong for her like Dad had been at her sister’s funeral last weekend. But she shoved past me and out the kitchen door, not even taking a coat or the flashlight.

I had to run after her. She didn’t even slow down when she reached the dark woods. She tripped over a branch on the path halfway to the clearing, would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed her elbow to steady her. She didn’t say anything to me, just wrenched her arm free and took off running again.

I shined the light ahead of us just in time before she would have tripped over him.

She stood there for a few seconds, then a high-pitched wail tore its way out of her throat.

If the old stories about banshees had ever been true, this is what they would have sounded like.

She fell to her knees beside him, and it was like reliving that nightmarish day Savannah’s grandmother died in her arms. Once again, I was helpless, useless, without the right words to make this easier for any of us.

I went to my mother, tried to hug her shoulders, but she shoved me away.

“He’s not gone,” she growled, sounding like something wild, completely unlike the mother I’d known. My mother had often been scary during my life, especially when I’d done something wrong. But she’d never sounded this inhuman before.

She tried spell after spell on Dad’s body, lighting up the surrounding woods and the clearing with her magic and her will.

“Mom, he’s gone,” I said.

“No, he’s not! I just need the right spell. Your father’s too strong to die. He’s still in there. If I can find the right spell, I can bring him back.”

But no one knew the old Clann ways that had once affected things on the DNA level, and the ability to bring someone back from the dead was lost to us now. No one could bring Dad back.

If only one of us had gone to check on him hours ago…

If I had only gone out to talk to him and Emily and that stranger…

Emily. She didn’t know.

“Mom, we need to tell Emily.”

“No, we’re not telling her anything because he’s not gone.”

I touched her shoulder, trying to bring her back to reality. She hissed at me and slapped my hand away. “Leave us!” She leaned over Dad’s body, whispering, “Come back to me, Samuel. I’m here now. I won’t leave you. I know you can still hear me. Come back to me now.”

I couldn’t leave her here. Whoever—or whatever—had killed Dad could still be around. But I also knew I had to get Emily. She would never forgive us for taking even this long to tell her. She would be furious, sure that, like Mom, she could have done something to save him.