Covet (Clann)

up to make sure she wasn’t too close to my truck.
    Anne gasped. “Your eyes…they’re silver…” She took a quick step back, her hands falling to her sides.
    I froze, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the handle of my still-open door, both hearing the fear in her voice and sensing it in the air.
    My best friend was afraid of me.
    I slammed my door shut, rocking the truck.
    How had everything come crashing down again? I’d spent the last month feeling so great about myself for the first time in forever, like learning magic had given me back some control over my body and my life.
    And now this .
    “I’m sorry,” I said through the open window, hoping my face told her just how much I did not want this to be happening.
    Her gulp was loud in the dark silence. “It’s okay. It’s just another birthday. I have one every year, right?”
    My eyes burned. I closed them, took a deep breath in an attempt to regain control over myself, smelled that delicious scent again and realized my mistake. There would be no regaining control, not here, not now.
    I sucked as a best friend. “I…I’ll see you at school, okay?”
    As I drove away, tires churning on the dirt road, I tried to find some way to make the tight knot in my throat ease up.
    Maybe I wasn’t a complete failure as a friend. I had managed to distribute all the protection spells tonight.
    Except Anne didn’t know about them. So it couldn’t really make up for my having to bail on her birthday party.
    Then again, I would feel a heck of a lot more guilt if I stuck around and ended up attacking one of my friends tonight.
    The burning in my eyes increased, making my eyes feel like they were being bathed in acid.
    No, there was no way to lie even to myself about this. I really did suck as a friend.
    Maybe I should have put vamp wards on those bracelets instead.

CHAPTER 14
    I didn’t realize I was crying until I walked into my house twenty minutes later and Dad leaped off the couch only to reappear beside me in the foyer.
    “What happened?” he demanded.
    “What?” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the side table. My cheeks glistened. I swiped them dry with my sleeves. “The pizza made me barf, and then the bloodlust showed up. You were right. Happy?”
    “Why would your unhappiness ever make me happy?” He frowned. “Come with me. It is time you learned how to feed.”
    “No way. I am not sucking on someone’s blood like some kind of…”
    He turned to face me, and my throat closed up on the word monster .
    “Perhaps you would prefer to return to the party then?” he said. “I am sure your friends would be only too happy to welcome you back.”
    I pictured being shut up inside that tiny hunting lodge with all those hearts pulsing around me, and my mouth watered.
    And then I wanted to be sick. I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to be…” My mind struggled for a word that wouldn’t hurt his feelings. A bloodsucker. A leech. A danger to my friends and mother and every other human around me. “I don’t want to be… this !”
    “We are what we are, Savannah. You cannot stop the change. You can only decide either to take control of your new life or let it control you.”
    Control. That was such a thing of the past right now. “I don’t want to kill anyone. Or hurt them, either.”
    “I would never allow you to kill anyone. And I have been told that feeding actually can be quite a pleasant experience for the humans if performed correctly.”
    Like that made preying on humans any better? “There’s got to be some other way.”
    Silence. Finally he sighed. “I might be able to make a call or two and come up with another solution.”
    “Thank you.” I nearly wilted from relief at the thought that I wouldn’t be forced to go find someone to bite. “Can I go to bed now?”
    He nodded, and I slunk upstairs to my room.
    * * *
    The next morning, we received a special delivery.
    The doorbell rang a little after eight, right around the time our mail usually arrived. It was probably yet another shipment of some historically accurate doorknobs or something.
    “Savannah, can you get that?” Dad called out over the ear-piercing sander from one of the guest bedrooms.
    I went downstairs, opened the front door and froze. The delivery guy was hot, probably early twenties, with sandy hair cut short at the back and long enough in the front to have to be brushed sideways out of his eyes. He was definitely two yums up, as