Covet (Clann)

to learn how she’d performed the bloodlust-dampening spell even if it killed me.
    But I was alone again in the bright afternoon sunlight.
    A breeze picked up a strand of my hair, and I could swear I felt Nanna’s hand brush it back. I gave what I had to for you and your mother, and I have no regrets, the wind whispered. But nothing is worth sacrificing your life for. At least, not yet. You have so many great things left to do. So mind your grandma, stick with the safe magic, and go make me proud. I love you.
    “I love you, too, Nanna,” I whispered, my throat so tight it was hard to swallow.
    A tear slipped down my cheek. I didn’t wipe it away. It helped to make this moment feel more real, less like the dream my rational brain kept saying it had been.
    I needed to believe seeing Nanna, talking with her again, had really happened. That my stressed-out, overtired mind hadn’t imagined that whole conversation on its own. That she really was somewhere out there, waiting to take me to the other side someday and watching over me in the meantime.
    I flopped back on the ground, too tired to get up yet. Overhead the sun beamed at me through the mostly bare branches of the old pecan tree. Thin wisps of clouds stretched overhead like the thinnest froth over a perfect blue sky.
    Could Nanna see that sky, those clouds, this yard with all her plants, from where she was now?
    Closing my eyes, I relaxed and pretended a silver stream was washing over me. And again, that low level of electric current sent tingles racing over my skin everywhere it made contact with the dirt.
    I smiled, a sense of peace stealing over me for the first time in too long to remember. I couldn’t have dreamed that conversation with Nanna. The proof was in my ability to finally draw energy.
    When I felt less like the living dead, I rolled to my feet, gathered all the spell books back into their box, and put them in the corner of the closet in Nanna’s room. I hadn’t been able to enter her room before, when Mom and I had been packing up the house. The room had felt too much like Nanna’s private space, an area where I didn’t belong. Now, the guilt wasn’t quite so heavy in my chest, and it was simply an empty room.
    Nanna said I didn’t need spell books to do the new magic. So I was going to trust her on that and leave the books here. Bringing them home or carting them around in my car was asking for trouble if anyone discovered them. But they should be reasonably safe here, especially if this house was destined to stay empty till it became mine.
    It was a shame that I couldn’t pass the books on to my own child someday, not only as tools to learn from, but as part of my family’s heritage. Now that my vamp side was taking over, Dad had said I would probably become infertile like all the other female vamps. I would be the last in the Evans line.
    I shook off the old heaviness that tried to drape itself over my shoulders. I couldn’t change my parents’ choices or what I was becoming. All I could do was try to make the best of what I’d been given. And with Nanna’s help, take back what the Clann had tried to steal from me…my heritage as an Evans witch.
    My phone buzzed against the worn-out linoleum floor where I’d left it. I picked it up, checked my missed messages.
    Tristan had texted me. His message confused then scared me. How could he possibly have felt me almost die? His connection spell had stopped working the moment his heart had nearly stopped beating after his wreck. Unless it had kicked back into effect when Emily fixed him?
    Swallowing hard, I texted back, I’m fine. Stop texting me. It’s against the rules. Go text your new girlfriend instead.
    A few seconds later, his reply arrived. Girlfriend???
    Oh please. Did he really think everyone in Jacksonville hadn’t heard about him and Bethany?
    I was so irritated I didn’t bother replying. If he wanted to lie and pretend he wasn’t seeing someone, that was his choice. But I wasn’t going to waste my time arguing with him about something that was already public knowledge. I had better things to do. Like practicing using my newfound powers.
    I would need every hour available this summer to train for the upcoming school year. Now that I was finally learning to use magic, I had a lot of catching up to do.
    Dylan and the Brat Twins were going to be in for a major surprise if they tried to mess with me or my friends this year.
    * * *
    Learning how to do magic gave me a sense