Covet (Clann)

toughest, bravest people I knew. Look how well she’d reacted to the news that I was half vamp and half witch. She hadn’t acted scared at all until the night of her birthday when the bloodlust had started messing with me and made me all vampy. What could be worse than that?
    Maybe it had something to do with the black cats he’d been thinking and reading about in the library yesterday.
    Were Ron’s family cat wranglers or something? Maybe they bred exotic cats and sold them on the internet?
    Or maybe it was some weird religious belief or something, like the Abernathys worshipped black cats?
    Nah, that couldn’t be it. There had to be some other reason, something big for Anne to run away from the relationship like that. But try as I might, I couldn’t come up with anything.
    When the dismissal bell rang, we gathered our books and headed out the door, Ron directly behind me. When the chaotic noise of the main hall slammed over me and I stopped in surprise, he stepped on my heels.
    I hadn’t realized till now just how peaceful chemistry class had been.
    “Sorry. Headed to the jungle?” Ron asked, nearly having to shout to be heard over the stampede.
    “Um, I don’t know.” There didn’t seem much point in going to the cafeteria when I no longer ate human food, other than getting to see my friends since we didn’t have any classes together this year.
    On the other hand, considering what a mess of things the stupid ESP had helped me make yesterday, maybe Carrie and Anne would be happier if I wasn’t there today.
    “You headed to the library again?” I asked him.
    He nodded. “Figured I could get a head start on my homework. I’m pretty tired after football practice, and my mom likes to do supper early every evening. By the time we get done eating, all I want to do is crash.”
    I could empathize with that. I was trying to drink as little blood each week as I could get away with in an effort to reduce the flood of the donor’s memories. Which meant I was exhausted almost all the time lately.
    And then there was the near nightly issue of having nightmares about Tristan and Nanna.
    As if my thoughts had conjured him up, I felt my chest and stomach ache, as well as pinpricks race along my neck and down my arms. Two signs that Tristan was nearby and ticked off. I looked to my left down the main hall, and there he was.
    Tristan crossed to the other side of the hall before passing by, not looking my way in the process.
    Gritting my teeth, I headed for my locker a few yards away. Ron walked with me, his mouth moving as he talked about something, but I couldn’t hear him with everyone’s thoughts screaming inside my head. At my locker, I nodded like I could hear every word he said while I spun through my locker’s combination lock then yanked the metal latch to open it.
    Something sticky coated the latch, and now my hand, too.
    “Oh ew!” Nose wrinkled, I glanced at my hand, then stopped breathing. It was dark red and looked an awful lot like…
    Blood.
    “Hey, are you okay?” Ron grabbed my hand. “You’re bleeding!”
    “No, it’s not me. It was on my locker.” I couldn’t seem to look away from my hand. My mouth watered, and I had to swallow a few times.
    Ron studied my locker’s latch. “Aw, now that’s just nasty. Who would…” He looked at me, confusion turning into annoyance on his face. “The Clann.”
    The hall was starting to clear out as everyone hurried to class or the cafeteria. But I couldn’t seem to move.
    “Okay, why don’t you go wash up in the bathroom while I get something to clean this up?” Ron said, firmly grabbing my shoulders and steering me to the door of the nearest girl’s restroom.
    I stumbled into the bathroom and over to the sink. My arms and legs didn’t want to respond to my brain, their movements slow and jerky. I turned the water on with my clean hand, started to stick my other hand under the faucet, then hesitated.
    The blood…I could smell it. Blood used to smell sharp and metallic to me. But that was before I’d first felt the bloodlust.
    Now, it was different.
    I lifted those red fingers to my nose and inhaled deeply, closing my eyes as a hundred different scents filled my head.
    Something about the blood was familiar. As a whole, it was new, unique. But underneath ran this thread of…
    Temptation. Perfection. Like chocolate, edible and completely divine.
    Déjà vu swamped me, and I knew where I’d smelled that underlying scent before.
    This