Covet (Clann)

seemed in all the self-improvement books Mom had given me while we’d packed up Nanna’s house.
    Silence filled the phone. Finally Mom said, “Listen, you know that box of books I gave you?”
    “Yeah. I’m working my way through them now. I’m about halfway through Love Yourself and Change Your Life. ” Not that it was helping any.
    She cleared her throat. “Well, you might want to skip to the bottom of the stack. And do it when your dad’s not around.”
    Okaaay. “Why?”
    “There are a few of your grandma’s books at the bottom.”
    Nanna’s books? Nanna used to read all the time. Her favorites were celebrity biographies. She used to say their lives were far crazier than anything she’d ever had to live through, so they made her feel normal by comparison. Of course, none of them had died after being magically kidnapped and held hostage by a bunch of ticked-off descendants in the woods.
    More silence from Mom.
    “Okay, Mom, what’s your point?”
    “They’re not…normal reading.”
    I was starting to get a funny feeling here. “You mean, they’re like…”
    “Something we shouldn’t discuss by phone. And nothing your dad should ever see. Okay?”
    I dug through the box, which was almost as high as my waist. At the bottom I found old leather books filled with hand-drawn sketches and handwriting. Spell books. I gasped.
    “Mom! Why on earth would you—”
    “She made me promise to give them to you if anything happened to her! She knew I never wanted the ability. So it’s only right that they’re passed down to you. Not that I’m condoning anything, or even want to know anything about what you do with them. I’m just keeping my promise to her. Oh, and she said to be sure to tell you that she and I made the promise to the Clann, but you never did.”
    Her words sent goose bumps racing down my arms. I’d thought the same thing two weeks ago after Tristan’s wreck and the “chat” with Dylan at the Sonic.
    She sighed. “Now maybe she’ll stop showing up in my dreams every night and bugging me about this.”
    “Nanna’s haunting you?”
    “Well, maybe not her actual ghost. I don’t know. The dreams are so real, it feels like I’m awake. Anyways, whatever it is, maybe it’ll stop now that I’ve done the magic queen’s bidding.” Her tone was more than a little cranky.
    Okay, this was getting beyond creepy.
    After ending the conversation with Mom, I decided to put all of Nanna’s spell books into a smaller box. Then I considered where to hide them. Under my bed? No, Dad might find them there if he ever got around to refinishing the hardwood flooring in here.
    Dad wasn’t home today. He’d gone to Tyler to pick up some crystal drops for a chandelier.
    Before I could change my mind or lose my courage, I sent him a quick text saying I had to do some Charmers fund-raiser stuff and would be back later this evening.
    Then I grabbed Nanna’s box of contraband and carried it out to my truck.
    As soon as I pulled into the pine-needle-covered driveway of Nanna’s former house, so many emotions welled up within me…surprise at the lack of a rental sign out front, relief that it looked untouched, homesickness, sadness, and above all the guilt. It was worse than visiting Nanna’s grave could ever be. The memories of Nanna weren’t in some lifeless cemetery. She was here at the front stoop, watering her potted plants, now dying, that hung from hooks at the sides of the porch roof. She was in the front yard, fighting a futile and endless battle with a rake against the needles that fell constantly from the towering pines that both shaded and threatened the brick house with their leaning trunks and branches. The haunting memory of all I’d once known and called home reached out to me everywhere I turned.
    Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the box of books and carried it around the side of the carport to the backyard. I set it on the metal stool I used to sit on and spin for hours as a little kid beneath the old pecan tree.
    The garden was starting to go wild. Nanna used to work daily to keep it under control and tidy.
    She should be here, sweating under the East Texas sun while Mom and I begged her to take it easy and come inside. She should be kneeling on that green spongy cushion she used to save her knees while she talked to the plants as if they were her children, making this little section of the world beautiful and useful and helpful to others with its produce of herbs and