Covet (Clann)

Anne’s desk chair the following Saturday night. I hadn’t even noticed her walk over.
    Anne continued to tease Carrie mercilessly about being too wimpy to let Michelle apply her mascara. Carrie calmly ignored her as she sat on the daybed and put on mascara with the help of a small compact mirror.
    “I’m fine,” I lied to Michelle, having to swallow back a lump so I could talk.
    Carrie suddenly swiped Anne on the tip of the nose with the mascara wand, leaving a big spot of black. Anne screeched and stole the mirror, then licked her finger to wash off the spot. She called Carrie a rude name then stuck her wet finger in Carrie’s ear, making the blonde shriek out a few choice words about Anne’s germs.
    “Watch your mouth, missy!” Carrie’s mother yelled from the living room where all three sets of their parents waited, no doubt armed with cameras and video recorders.
    My mother was on the road somewhere in Arkansas tonight, unaware I was even going to the dance. I hadn’t mentioned it to her, and apparently neither had Dad. And of course the idea of being here to record the night in a scrapbook had probably never even occurred to my dad.
    Did vampires scrapbook?
    Probably not. They wouldn’t want a visual record of just how long they had lived.
    “But Mom—” Carrie began.
    “Carrie Lynn, you watch that mouth or you’ll go to that dance with a mouthful of soap.”
    That made me crack my first sincere smile of the evening.
    Michelle giggled, then dropped to her knees beside me on the thick carpet. “It’s good to see you smiling again.”
    I blinked at her, unsure how to respond. “Sorry. Guess I’ve been a bit of a downer lately.”
    She shrugged. “I would be too if I lost a guy that hot and then he turned around and started dating Bethany Brookes like it was no big deal.” Scowling, she sat back on her bare feet. “I thought you two were going to get back together! Especially after he called me the night of the Charmers Spring Show.”
    Wait, what? It felt like my eyes were about to pop out of my head as I struggled to choose which question to ask first. And how did she even know I’d been dating him? I hadn’t told anyone but Anne. Someone else must have blabbed. Maybe someone in the Clann, like one of the Brat Twins? Or maybe a Charmer…one of the dancers or managers might have put two and two together after noticing Tristan and I were both gone from school and Spring Show practice at the same time and then he quit volunteering to help the team.
    That answered how Michelle might have heard about us, but not the rest of it.
    I took a breath and started with one question at a time. “He’s dating Bethany?”
    She nodded, her hazel eyes big and solemn. “Rumor has it they’re going to the dance together.”
    Wow, he sure waited a long time to get over me and move on.
    Once again, I found myself trapped in a battle between my head and my heart. Logically I knew I should be happy for him. Bethany would make him laugh, go to parties with him, eat lunch in the cafeteria with him and the descendants. His parents would probably adore her, too. If I really loved him, I should want nothing but the best for him, right?
    My heart said it infinitely preferred for him to be as miserable as I was for the rest of his life.
    I sighed and moved on to the next question. “Why did he call you the night of the Spring Show?”
    “He wanted to know where you had moved to. He needed to talk to your dad, I think. He made it sound like he wanted to get your dad’s permission to date you publicly or something.”
    My breath caught in my lungs and refused to budge. There was only one possible reason that he would want to talk to my dad. And it wasn’t to get permission to date me publicly. Dad didn’t have that kind of clout with the vamp council. But he could turn a human into a vampire.
    Why was I surprised that Tristan would have asked my dad to turn him? Of course Tristan would have tried everything he could think of to get us back together.
    Michelle glanced over her shoulder then shot to her feet. “Anne, you stop that right now! You’re going to ruin my creation.”
    Still in shock, I barely had time to move my feet out of her path before she took off across the room to grab Anne’s wrist and wrench a brush away.
    “But you left all this down,” Anne complained from where she was leaning down in front of her vanity trying to pin up the hair at the nape of her neck.
    “Those curls are supposed