Crave (Harlequin Teen)

thought of never seeing him again. If the council made me go live with my father now, I’d have to move to another state. I wasn’t even sure which state my father was in at the moment; he moved around so much, living for months and occasionally years at a time wherever his latest historical-home restoration project took him. But I could guarantee that he would never live anywhere near Jacksonville, not with so many descendants concentrated here. Which meant living with my father would definitely force me to switch schools.
    No more history or Charmers with Tristan. No more glimpses of him in the halls…
    I shuddered.
    I fell asleep remembering how it had felt to dance with Tristan. So I wasn’t surprised when I immediately began to dream about him.
    “Hi, Savannah.” Tristan stood at the edge of a forest turned gray with moonlight. “Want to take a walk with me?”
    “Okay.” I walked over to him, my bare feet making a whispering sound with every step across the cool grass. When he held my hand, the warmth and strength I felt from his touch seemed every bit as real as if I’d been awake.
    He smiled down at me, his eyes like mysterious emeralds in the silver light. He led me deeper into the forest, and I realized neither of us seemed to feel any pain, despite the fact that we were both barefoot. Shouldn’t we have stepped on sticker burrs or pinecones by now? I looked down. A thick bed of soft moss covered the entire forest floor and halfway up the trees like a green snowbank. It felt spongy beneath my feet, like walking on a cool, thick towel.
    We continued in silence for a while until we came to a clearing with a waterfall and a stream. On the bank, someone had spread a blanket and left a picnic basket. The moonlight shone in slanting rays through the trees here, making me yearn to dance and spin among them like a little kid. It all felt so familiar, too, as if I’d been here before.
    “Come sit with me,” he said, and I was only too happy to follow him to the blanket.
    “This is where I wish I could have taken you for our first date. Somewhere as beautiful as you.”
    “Me, beautiful? Now I know this is a dream.”
    “What if I told you this wasn’t a normal dream? That our minds really are connected right now?”
    “Uh-huh. So you’re saying you’re not just a figment of my imagination?”
    “Basically, yeah.” He traced a finger over the back of my hand, then he looked at me, and I loved the fact that I could safely stare directly into his eyes.
    “So then you’ve done this a lot before? Connected with other people’s minds while they’re asleep?”
    “No, just yours. You’re the only descendant I’ve ever wanted to dream connect with. It takes two descendants to dream connect. Otherwise I could see you but you wouldn’t be able to see or hear me.”
    “Weird.”
    He grinned. “But fun, too. We used to dream connect all the time when we were kids. Do you remember?”
    And in a rush, all those dreams came back to me. I had been here before…in our dreams. This was our place, our clearing where I’d dreamed that we’d played together count less times. “You ate all my pretend cupcakes when I asked you to, and you helped me decorate our tree house. Oh, and you also showed me how to dig really good tunnels for toy cars! Though I preferred Barbie cars and scooters instead.” I laughed. “My mom used to ask me why I kept chewing off my nails. I told her it was to keep the mud from getting under them. She never understood, since I didn’t play in the dirt in real life.”
    He chuckled.
    “But why did we stop?”
    He frowned, thinking about it for a moment. “Well, it hasn’t been for my lack of trying lately. I thought at first that it was because my parents stuck some charms or a spell on my room. But I managed to get around that. Connecting has still been hit or miss, though.” He tilted his head, studying me. “Something’s different about you tonight.” He kept staring at me for a long moment, then snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Your necklace. You always wear that gold locket.”
    I instinctively reached for my necklace, then remembered. “Oh, yeah, I had to take it off tonight. It was tangled in my hair. And then I couldn’t get it back on, so I just left it off.”
    “When did you get it? Did someone in your family give it to you?”
    I nodded. “My grandmother gave it to me…in the fourth grade.”
    We stared at each other in understanding.
    “That’s