Michelle opened her mouth, then bit her lower lip. “Um, actually, all the hottest gossip has been about Tristan and…you.”
Oh no, we were not going there. “Okay, then I’ve got some news. I moved in with my dad last week.”
“What the heck?” Anne gasped. “But how…I mean, I thought he lived in another state. Will you have to transfer?”
“Nope,” I told her. “He bought that old Victorian place across the railroad tracks. You know, the one you can see from the Tomato Bowl? He’s fixing it up as a local showcase house for his renovation company.”
All three pairs of eyes widened.
“Oh, Sav, that’s terrible,” Michelle whispered, as if I’d just stated that I had some incurable disease. “Everyone knows that house is haunted.”
“And extremely unsafe,” Carrie added. “No one’s lived in it for decades. It must be in terrible condition. Probably filled with lead plumbing and asbestos, too.”
“Well, it does need a lot of work,” I replied, making a mental note to get some bottled water to keep at the house. “But that’s my dad’s specialty. His business’s whole focus is on renovating historical homes and restoring them to their former glory. So he’ll probably have it all fixed up in no time.” I hoped.
“Have you seen any ghosts yet?” Anne asked before taking a long chug of her soda.
“No.” I laughed. “It is a little spooky though. Dad says it gets so noisy at night because all the wood and plumbing expands or contracts or something with the change in temperature from day to night. My room has a great view, though, and it’s about four times the size of my old one. So everyone will finally have plenty of room for our sleepovers.”
I smiled and looked around, expecting them to at least get excited about that. Instead, everyone was suddenly very busy eating or gathering up their trash.
They were freaked out by my new home, and they hadn’t even seen the inside yet.
I thought about the houses they all lived in…Carrie’s brick lakeside home, Anne’s pristine modern brick home in town by Buckner Park. Even Michelle’s house, while not always the tidiest because of all her little brothers and sisters, was fairly new.
And now they thought they’d get lead poisoning if they came over to my house.
I snagged a chip from my lap and chomped on it in silence. Then I felt it…the hairs at the back of my neck stood on end, like someone was staring at me.
Slowly I looked over my shoulder.
Tristan.
My lungs tightened, refusing to expand. Would he come over, insist on arguing with me again about things I had no power to change, make another scene in front of the Clann kids?
But he only sat there staring, his jaw set, his eyes that shade of dark emerald they always turned when he was angry or upset.
Maybe he’d finally started to see the reality of our situation.
My head said I should be relieved.
But all I felt was the aching need to cry.
TRISTAN
I tried to find that old confidence inside me that I was right and somehow I’d find a way to change the minds of the vamp council and my parents. But my parents refused to talk to me about it, my mother even going so far as to threaten to take away my truck keys and ground me if I said Savannah’s name one more time in her presence. And I had no way to directly contact the vamp council.
By Friday night, as I sat in the high school theater while the Charmers performed their Spring Show onstage, I knew there was only one solution to all of this.
I had to become a vampire.
I had no way to convince the Clann or the council to change their rules. But if I became a vamp, then there wouldn’t be any danger in being with Savannah. They’d have to leave us alone.
Savannah would never turn me herself, even if I tried to make her lose control of the bloodlust. She believed the myth that vampire blood killed descendants. I’d have to convince another vamp to do the deed. But who? I knew only one vampire. Her dad. And I had no idea how to convince Mr. Colbert to turn me, or even where they lived.
I knew someone who might know their new address, though. And she was in the phone book. I slipped out of the theater to make the call. Thankfully she answered.
“Hey, Michelle, it’s Tristan Coleman. From first period office aide—”
A loud squeak made me hold the phone away from my ear. What the heck?
“Michelle? Are you still there?” I asked, wondering if her phone had died.
“Yep! I’m here,” she breathed.
Okay. “I know it’s weird for me to call you like this, but I was hoping you could do me a huge favor. Do you know Savannah’s new address? I need to talk to her father.”
“Say no more,” she said, her voice rising with each word. “I always thought you two would make the perfect couple.”
That made two of us.
“They bought that old haunted house across the tracks from the Tomato Bowl. You know, the green-and-white Victorian?”
“Yeah, I know the one you’re talking about.” I was already headed down the ramp to my truck in the back parking lot. “Thanks, Michelle.”
“You know, Savannah’s been really sad this week. Everyone says it’s because you two were secretly dating and then broke up, but she won’t talk about it at all. Did you dump her?”
“No. It was the other way around actually.”
Silence. Finally she said, “Well, I hope you get back together.”
“I’m sure trying.”
“Good luck!”
I thanked her, then ended the call, got in my truck and headed across town, trying to plan what in the world I could possibly say to convince her dad to turn me when I couldn’t even convince his daughter.
At the house, I parked by the curb, turned off the engine, then sat for a few minutes listening to the ticking of my truck’s engine as it cooled down.
Was I doing the right thing? Or should I do what everyone else wanted and let her go?
I closed my eyes, and as always Savannah’s face was right there in my mind waiting for me. I had a thousand memories of her…as a sweet little girl with flowers in her hair giving me the softest of kisses on the playground in the fourth grade… dressed as a breathtaking angel dancing barefoot with me in the leaves outside this year’s masq ball.... She feared she would lose control and kill me, but all I knew was the innocent, loving side of her. Everyone wanted me to see her as some kind of monster. But I didn’t know how to do that.
I couldn’t give up on her. Not yet. Not if there was one last shot at making everything right again.
I got out of my truck and walked across the front yard, still clueless as to what the heck I would say to her dad. The front porch creaked as I stepped onto it. I paused, my pulse pounding. Was I nervous about the creepy house, or talking to her dad?
Both, I decided, but kept going anyway. The loud whine of a saw started somewhere deep inside the house, and I froze at the front door. A chain saw? Oh man, this was like every horror movie I’d ever seen come straight to life. Still, I went ahead and knocked. A vampire would hear me even over the saw.
The noise stopped, and too soon, the door opened.
The only time I’d seen Savannah’s father was on the return trip from the vamp council’s headquarters in Paris. Mr. Colbert