Covet (Clann)

ignored the part where Vanessa believed Savannah had put a repelling spell on her car. Obviously that was pure Clann paranoia. What I couldn’t figure out was why the twins weren’t at least smart enough to cancel their own spell so the paint would wash off.
    “What’s the matter?” Savannah murmured. “Did you get paint on yourselves?” One corner of her mouth twitched.
    “You b—” Choking, Vanessa took a step forward, drawing back a hand as if to slap Savannah.
    More pinpricks of pain erupted over my skin.
    The twins were using power? Here, on Savannah and in front of everyone? They must have lost their minds.
    “Hey!” I lunged out of my desk, ignoring the paperwork sliding onto the floor along with my books.
    Savannah glanced over her shoulder at me. The pain stopped.
    “Later, girls,” she said to the twins. Then she took off down the main hall.
    “What do you two think you’re doing?” I demanded, wishing the twins were guys instead of girls so I could take them outside and throw them up against a brick wall.
    “It wasn’t us!” Vanessa stuttered, her eyes wider than I’d ever seen them. Both girls were pale beneath their spray on tans. “I swear it, Tristan. It was her! She’s learned how to use power.”
    I didn’t bother to reply to that.
    Stepping around them, I searched the hall. There. Savannah was leaning against a wall of lockers fifty yards away.
    I recognized a too-familiar head of shaggy blond hair inches away from her. A shift of bodies in the crowded hall let me see that Dylan was actually holding Savannah trapped against the lockers, his hands braced at either side of her head.
    On each wrist, he wore a leather cuff. Vamp wards. That’s where the most recent needles of pain had come from. He was trying to either knock her out or kill her, but the charms I’d put up before second period were blocking his wards.
    “It’s Dylan,” I told the twins cowering behind me while keeping my eyes locked on him. “He’s the one you’re sensing.”
    Grinding my teeth, I moved down the hall at a near jog, elbowing people out of my way and trying to decide where to hit Dylan first. Thank God for my vamp ward blocks. If not for them, Savannah would be on the floor unconscious or possibly even dead right now. Dylan’s wards were only inches from her cheeks.
    He frowned at those cuffs now, obviously wondering why the wards weren’t affecting Savannah.
    A second later, his back slammed to the lockers where Savannah had just been. Except it wasn’t because of me. I’d planned to play by the Clann rules, skip the magic and just punch him, but I was still yards away.
    More pain stabbed into life over my skin.
    Somehow their positions had become reversed, and it was Savannah who held Dylan prisoner now, though she didn’t touch him in any way, her hands at her sides palm out, fingers spread.
    As if she really were using power to pin him there.
    No way. Not possible. Except…the proof was right there for me to both see and feel. Somehow, Savannah had learned to use power. And judging by how Dylan struggled yet couldn’t get free, she was way past the beginner level. She must have been developing her skills for months. But how? And who would have been crazy enough to teach her?
    Leaning toward Dylan, Savannah tilted her head back and to the side in a way that reminded me of a curious lioness playing with its prey. She smiled and licked her lips, holding his gaze with her own.
    “Dylan, Dylan, Dylan,” she said. “You tried to fry my brand-new car, didn’t you? You already took out my truck. What are you trying to do, force me to fly around like a bat instead?” She grinned at him, ignoring me though she must have felt me approach just like I could always sense when she was near.
    I stopped two feet short of them, the needles of pain on my skin screaming for attention now. God, she was a strong witch, almost half as strong as Emily already. I resisted the urge to rub my skin, focusing on her instead.
    For the first time, she didn’t look like my Savannah. She didn’t look like she belonged to anyone at all. She had become a creature completely alien to our planet, her eyes gone a silver so light it was one shade short of white, her impossibly smooth and poreless skin a sharp and unnatural contrast to the bloodred of her hair.
    She was vamping out.
    Her gaze dropped to his neck, her lips moving as she murmured something to him too low for me to hear, and Dylan’s eyes