Covet (Clann)

didn’t have time to say anything. I was too busy jumping over the curb onto the lawn while using magic to stop the object in midair.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” Emily yelled at the girls at the top of her lungs.
    Squealing in fear, the twins took off at a run back toward the lights of the Tomato Bowl.
    Either Emily’s yelling or the twins’ squeals brought the party spilling out onto the front porch to see what was going on. I hastily let the object fall to the grass, then walked over and picked it up. Lights from the house’s front windows lit up the brick. The twins had used a blue-and-gold cloth hairband to hold a piece of paper in place around the brick.
    “A scrunchie? How decorative,” Emily muttered as I unwrapped the note and read it.
    Get out of town monsters!
    “And their creativity just keeps on going,” I said, showing her the note.
    The party poured onto the front lawn as people asked what was going on.
    “Just some punks trying to ruin a perfectly good party,” I told them with a smile, showing the brick but hiding the note.
    Several people made tsking sounds of disappointment. Then somebody shouted, “Good job stopping them, kids! Y’all should come in and have a drink. It’s all nonalcoholic, of course.”
    Several people seconded the idea.
    “Oh, we really should be getting home,” Emily said in her most mature and polite tone.
    “Aw, sis, we can stay for a few minutes, can’t we?” I’d have to be crazy to pass up the chance to see the changes to Sav’s house when half the rest of the town had already gotten the full tour of the place. “We wouldn’t want to be rude, would we?”
    Emily flashed a glare at me before turning to the crowd with a big smile. “Well, I guess we could stay for a few minutes.”
    And inside we all went.
    Always the mingler, Emily had no trouble finding a conversation to join in, leaving me to walk around and admire the house on my own.
    Mr. Colbert had put a lot of work into the place. The last time I’d been here, every room had been dark and gloomy, full of peeling flowery wallpaper and wood so dirty it had looked black. Now the rooms were brightly lit with wall sconces, smaller chandeliers in the two front rooms, and a huge chandelier over the open staircase that caught the eye and pulled it up to the stained-glass window in the ceiling two stories up. He’d replaced all the wallpaper with fresh paint, and the wooden wainscoting, trim and floors, all now several shades lighter, gleamed. The furnishings were nice, too, not too stuffy or cluttered, so a guy could move around without knocking something over. There was plenty of room for the hundred or so people who had crammed in here tonight to check out the old place and probably its new owner, too.
    Mr. Colbert had made a lot of smart choices with the house, not just in its renovation, but in opting to hold a Halloween party here open to the public. Right or wrong, the residents of Jacksonville put a lot of stock in a person’s home. They would be less likely to make up negative stories about Mr. Colbert and his daughter after seeing what he had done with a building everyone else had wanted to bulldoze.
    And then I realized…this wasn’t just Mr. Colbert’s latest project. It was also Savannah’s home . A small fact I hadn’t given much thought to during my last visit here.
    I tried to picture Savannah hanging out in the front rooms on either side of the entrance area, maybe running down the stairs in the mornings on her way to school, that curly red ponytail of hers swinging along the way. Something tightened in my chest, making it tough to take a deep breath.
    The staircase led to a balcony that ran the length of the second floor, which must have been filled with more than a few bedrooms and baths considering the number of doors up there. One of them was Savannah’s room, where she lived and read and slept every night, and probably where she danced, too. She used to love to dance, though not when anyone was watching. I caught her at it many times in the Charmers’ dance room after school when she didn’t know I was there, and even a couple of times in our connected dreams before she knew I’d joined her.
    The moment she came home, I felt it. I found a corner by the stairs below the balcony, out of the way of all the other guests, so I could watch Savannah enter the house. God, she was gorgeous, even just with her hair in a ponytail and wearing her blue-and-gold Charmers