Eyebrows pinched with concern, Tristan flipped his hand under mine and laced our fingers together. Grateful for something strong and solid to hold on to, I squeezed his hand.
“Sav, they took Nanna! They called me, and—”
“Wait a minute. Who took her?” What little warmth my body had drawn from Tristan’s drained away. Had the vamp council gone after my grandmother now?
“The Clann. They called me, asking about that Coleman boy as if I would know where he is. For some reason, they think you two are involved. I tried to tell them it was a mistake, that you’d never break the rules like that. But they didn’t believe me.”
Oh God. The Clann knew. Dylan must have told them he’d caught Tristan and me kissing after dance team practice Friday night.
I eased my hand away from Tristan’s and back into my own lap. Frowning, Tristan sat forward on the edge of the couch, resting his elbows on his knees as he watched me.
“They insisted he was with you,” Mom continued. “I told them he couldn’t be, that you were on a trip with your father, and they went crazy! They said they have your Nanna, and they won’t release her until we bring the Coleman boy back. I tried calling her, but she’s not answering.”
Holy crap. “Mom, hang on. Let me get Dad.”
Dad must have been listening at the front end of the cabin, because he immediately joined us and took the phone. While Mom filled him in, I returned Tristan’s stare and tried to absorb my mother’s words.
“The Clann…they’ve kidnapped my grandmother,” I whispered, hardly able to believe the words coming out of my mouth even as I said them.
“They wouldn’t do that,” Tristan insisted. “There’s been a mistake.”
I told him word for word what my mother had said. By the time I finished, his face had turned pale and his left knee was bouncing out a rhythm only a hummingbird could appreciate.
“I’ll fix this,” he promised. “Let me use the phone and I’ll call my parents.”
“Joan, we are half an hour from the Rusk landing strip now,” Dad told my mother. “I will straighten this out and call you back when I have news.” He ended the call then handed the phone to Tristan.
Tristan tried reaching his father first, then his mother and even his sister, Emily. Scowling, he tried a few other descendants’ home and cell phones. No one was answering.
“I don’t understand. Wouldn’t they be waiting for your call?” I said.
“Yeah, they should be. Unless…” Tristan looked away for a moment, then his gaze snapped back to mine, his jaw clenching. “Unless they’re already meeting at the Circle and using power. If they’ve raised enough power together, sometimes it blocks incoming radio and cell phone signals.”
“Why would they be raising a lot of power?” I asked, hopeful the Clann did this at all their meetings for ceremonial purposes or something.
Tristan stared at me in silent answer, and my stomach twisted.
This wasn’t the norm for the Clann. Which meant they were doing something to Nanna…
Bile burned the back of my throat, and I couldn’t look at him anymore. If anything happened to Nanna, if Tristan’s fellow descendants did something to her to try and find Tristan, the fault would be ours. We’d broken the rules to be together. I’d thought the vampire council was our only real worry, that the Clann couldn’t do anything more to my family since we’d already been cast out due to my Clann mother marrying my vamp father before my birth.
I was wrong. And now Nanna was paying for it.
“Take your seats and put on your seat belts,” Dad muttered, breaking the long silence. “We are landing.”
I avoided making eye contact with both him and Tristan as we moved to the recliners and belted in, then gripped the armrests as my heartbeat hammered in my chest.
Please don’t let it be too late, I prayed.
As soon as the jet touched ground and finished a short taxi, I unbuckled my seat belt and jumped up. Dad was faster, though, reaching the door before I could even blink. He got it open and the stairs unfolded so we could run down them to the rental car he’d called ahead and had delivered. The sky, which should have been a bright spring blue, was an ominous shade of dark gray, the storm clouds blackening out the sunlight so much it appeared to be almost dusk. Wind whipped my curly hair into an untamable red cloud, using the strands to slap first one side of my face then the other.
I got into the rental car’s backseat, Tristan right behind me. Automatically I reached for his hand then froze. We were six miles outside of Jacksonville now. I’d promised the council I would break up with Tristan once we were home.
Not yet. Not till we sorted out this situation with Nanna and the Clann.
At my hesitation, Tristan glanced at me and frowned. “We’re going to fix this, Sav.” He squeezed my hand.
Forcing a nod, I swallowed hard against the knot tightening in my throat and looked out the window as Dad took off north on Highway 69 for Jacksonville, going fast enough to make the pine-tree-covered hills feel like a roller-coaster ride through the woods.
I spent the trip into town silently wrestling with the guilt crawling over my skin and clawing at my insides.
What had I done?
I never should have let Tristan talk me into breaking the rules with him. If I hadn’t, Nanna would be safe right now.
And yet I couldn’t even begin to imagine going through life without having felt Tristan’s love. What we’d shared was a part of me now. It had changed everything…how I looked at the world and the future, how I felt about myself and others. When I was with Tristan, I felt solid and real and grounded and…good. Like being half vamp and half Clann was just circumstance, not who I really was. Like I could become anything I chose, not what others chose for me.
Except that wasn’t true, because I couldn’t change or choose what I was. Believing otherwise was every bit as much a lie as the ones I’d told my family for the last six months in order to be with Tristan. Which meant, no matter how much Tristan and I loved each other, this relationship was wrong. It was a selfish love that had nearly killed Tristan and might be hurting Nanna even now.
How had I gotten here?
I used to think of myself as a good person. But the truth was I was a monster inside and out, and not just because my vamp side was starting to take over. How many people had I hurt? Maybe I could excuse accidentally gaze dazing those boys from my algebra class last year, and even gaze dazing my first boyfriend, Greg Stanwick. I hadn’t understood what I was then. But I had always known dating Tristan was wrong, and still I had made that choice over and over for months. There was no excuse for it, no matter how wonderful it had felt.
I just prayed I had the strength and enough time left to fix what I had done.
Once we reached the center of Jacksonville, Tristan directed Dad to turn right on Canada Street and stay on it all the way out of town past our high school and still farther to the Coleman house, where apparently the Circle was located. Today was the first time I’d even heard of the Clann’s secret meeting place.
I knew when we reached the edge of the Coleman property, because all the houses on the right side of the road ended. Five minutes later, Dad slowed the car and turned onto a gravel driveway barred by a huge wrought-iron gate. Tristan rolled down his window, leaned out and punched in a code on a pad housed on a gunmetal-gray pole near the driver’s side window. The gate slowly rolled open.
I wanted to jump out and shove it open faster.
The driveway was long and curving, lined with some type of hardwood trees I couldn’t recognize in the gloom, their branches lashing in the wind.