Hang in there, Sav. Tristan squeezed my hand, his eyes soft with understanding. I know this is hard. But it really is the right thing to do. Your mom will see that, too, eventually.
Before or after she cries buckets of tears from losing her dog and her job and her home to our invasion? I stared at a spot of spilled coffee that was quickly turning into a stain on the tan countertop where Mom must have set her spoon earlier.
“Good,” Dad said, leaning a hip against the edge of the kitchen counter. “This will give me a chance to restock our blood supply.”
All of us looked at him with frowns of surprise and confusion.
His eyebrows shot up. “Surely you have noticed the rapidly dwindling supply?”
I hadn’t really. I’d been too caught up in trying to play peacemaker between Emily and Mom and upset about Tristan and the distance between us.
Dad sighed. “At any rate, we are nearly out of blood and must restock very soon. So a return trip to East Texas will allow me to meet with my supplier there and pick up a large enough quantity to hold us over for a while longer.”
Mom’s frown deepened into an all-out scowl. “Why can’t you get blood from somebody around here? Don’t you have suppliers all over the U.S.?”
“I used to. But I have already attempted to contact them without success. They may have gone into hiding now that war has broken out. My East Texas supplier is the only one whose number is even still working.”
“Okay, so then why don’t you have him ship the stuff to us here?”
“Because,” Dad said in a tone that showed he was struggling for patience. “The mere fact that my East Texas supplier is the only one still willing to speak to me makes me question whether he has been compromised by the Clann. If he has been, then I have no desire for him to know where we are currently hiding, in case he tips them off.”
“Then have him do a blind drop instead.”
“If he has been compromised, that will not afford any additional protection for us. The Clann could still be there waiting for us to pick up the supplies. Plus, meeting with my supplier face-to-face will allow me to directly and immediately ascertain whether he has been compromised. Since he is human, he is particularly vulnerable. However, a quick read of his mind when we meet will either reassure me or inform me that I need to find a new supplier should we ever desire to permanently take up residence in East Texas again someday.”
Oh, of course. He needed to meet with his supplier in person because none of us could read minds, human or otherwise, over the phone.
I wondered if all blood suppliers for the vamps were human. Maybe that made it easier for them to work around lots of donated blood in health care jobs without losing control and going on a bender like a vamp might?
Mom’s eyes f lared wide then narrowed. “That is really dumb, Michael. If your supplier has been compromised, then meeting with him in person is the worst thing you could do!”
At the angry tone of her owner’s voice, Lucy began to bark in earnest, her entire body jerking with the effort.
Dad glanced at me then cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should discuss this further outside without an audience. Or the dog present.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Like Savannah hasn’t heard us argue before? She’s a big girl and she knows we don’t get along. She can handle the truth.”
“Actually, I really don’t mind being left out of this,” I said, rubbing my forehead, which was starting to pound. I couldn’t tell if the growing headache was coming from having to sit in on yet another argument or the dog’s barking.
Mom huffed. “Fine!” She threw open her bedroom door, shut Lucy into the room, then whirled around to face Dad. “Please, by all means, lead the way.” She threw an arm out wide toward the trailer door.
Dad’s face darkened into a scowl. Silently he exited the trailer with Mom hot on his heels.
The door had barely banged back into its frame before Mom started yelling.
“Would you at least attempt to keep your voice down?” Dad hissed, his voice carrying right through the trailer’s thin metal walls and windows. “We do have neighbors who might not want to have to endure this discussion with us.”
I slouched down on the dinette seat until the back of my head met the top of the seat back. I used to be so lucky that my parents were divorced and never saw each other. I really missed those days.
“Do I look like I care?” Mom said, but at least her voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “Look, all I’m saying is we need to stick together and avoid any kind of traps the Clann might have set up for us. You have no idea what they’re capable of. Did you know Mr. Williams has buddies in the CIA? They have access to all kinds of technology now…satellites, drones, you name it! They could easily be listening for any mention of you anywhere in East Texas right now!”
“Or even listening to us right here right now,” Dad muttered.
Mom must have missed his attempt at humor, because her voice dropped to a whisper. “In a state park in South Dakota? You must be joking.”
“Actually I was—”
Mom railroaded right over him. “My point is, what if you call your supplier and their satellites or whatever overhear your conversation? They don’t even have to mess with your supplier directly in order to compromise him. They could just listen to you two plan to meet and then lie right there in wait for you to show up. And then where would I—I mean, our daughter be? She needs her father, now more than ever. None of us can afford to be stupid and risk getting caught.”
“I know that, Joan. Please do give me some credit. My supplier and I always speak in code. The conversation would not contain any words likely to alert any eavesdroppers as to our real identities or intentions.”
Mom growled under her breath, clearly not mollified in the least.
So Dad dropped the ultimate bomb of reason on her. “I understand this is frightening for you. But do try to remember the blood is not just for me and Tristan. Our daughter also needs this to survive.”
“Oh, he’s good,” Tristan muttered.
I f lashed him a tired smile. “He learned from the best in the guilt-trip business. He lived with my mother for three years.”
One side of Tristan’s mouth tilted up in a half smile, making my heart lurch.
Mom must have conceded defeat during Tristan’s and my short exchange, because the trailer door opened and my parents came back in.
“Kids, buckle up. We’re headed to Texas,” Mom muttered. “Sav, honey, you’ll need to call Anne and get her to arrange a meeting for you with Michelle. Have your dad figure out what time we’ll arrive and a good meeting place.”
From the couch with her eyebrows raised, Emily silently handed me my phone, which showed one of her new pregnancy ebooks on the screen. I closed the ebook reader program then searched through my contacts list for Anne.
“For safety, I believe we should split into two groups once we arrive in East Texas,” Dad said.
I looked up in surprise.
“If there is any risk of the Clann showing up at my meeting with my supplier, then it would be foolish to hand every member of our group over to them at once.”
“If they do show up, you’re going to need help,” I said.
“Which is why Tristan will come with me and you ladies will continue on to do the dog exchange,” Dad said.
Now my heart was really racing. I opened my mouth to argue, but Tristan was faster.
“He’s right, Sav,” Tristan said. “Like you said, your dad shouldn’t go alone. And it’s too high-risk for all of us to be there together.”
“Whoa, hang on a second,” Emily protested. “I don’t want you there either, little brother. Remember, they want you even more than him.”
“Yeah, but he’s got to have some kind of magical backup,” Tristan said. “We have no idea what kind of spells they could try to use on him.”
My stomach twisted and rolled. I didn’t like this at all.
Tristan
stared at me. “It’s the safest way.”
“Why don’t we get blood from somewhere else?” I said. “There’s got to be all kinds of blood banks around. Couldn’t we just break into one and—”
“And risk tipping off the Clann as to our whereabouts?” Dad said.
I let out a long, slow breath through my nose. I saw their logic. But it didn’t make me like the plan any more.
“We need this, Sav,” Tristan murmured. “You, me, your dad. We all need this.”
Suddenly I sort of understood my mother’s less-thanmature reaction of a few minutes ago, because part of me really wanted to stomp and yell and argue at the top of my lungs.
Instead I pressed my lips together hard, letting the small bit of pain distract me, and nodded.
Logically I could see that this was probably the only good plan we could come up with right now. But that didn’t mean I had to like it.
CHAPTER 19
It took a few hours to figure out what time we needed to leave at as well as schedule a meeting place and time with my friends. The guys handled the breakdown of all the hoses and lines that tethered the trailer to the park’s RV pad hookup, while we females worked within the trailer to clean up the last of the dirty dishes, finish the laundry and secure everything in the cabinets and fridge.
By ten o’clock that night, we were on our way. As usual, Dad insisted on driving the truck. Once again, Mom was annoyed by his seemingly chauvinistic attitude, and I braced myself for yet another of her venting sessions about it. But this time she surprised me by staying quiet and holed up in her room with her dog, probably to eke out every last moment she could spend with Lucy. Emily was pretty unsteady on her feet while we were on the move, so she tried to sleep through most of the trip. Tristan and I opted to watch movies together in the living room.
And though we still couldn’t agree on Tristan’s need to go after Mr. Williams, when Tristan reached out and covered my hand on the seat between us with one of his hands, I couldn’t help but turn my hand over and lace our fingers together.
Thanks to the terrible gas mileage that Mom’s truck got while hauling the heavy trailer, plus Emily’s desperation for drive-through food once she woke up—which she hadn’t gotten to have in two months—the fourteen-plus-hour trip took closer to eighteen. Even without using the GPS app on my phone, I could tell we were close to Texas the next afternoon when the f lat landscape turned into open rolling hills, many of them now dotted with black and brown cows. The southern states also showed their recent sufferings from drought with pastures covered in mostly dead brown grass, which made a sharply contrasting background for the green pine trees that began to show up the closer we got to East Texas.
Then the sporadic pines turned into long stretches of woods, and I was reminded again of why East Texas was called the Pine Belt. While up north, I’d gotten used to seeing mostly hardwoods and only a few evergreens here and there. The sight of all those pines both welcomed me with their familiarity and surprised me with the realization of just how much I had missed them.
I was home again.
Except that feeling didn’t make any sense to me. I’d always planned to leave East Texas and the Clann’s stranglehold over that area as soon as I graduated from high school, and once gone, I had never expected to look back. Yet here I was, feeling a strange pain of what could only be called homesickness. Shouldn’t I be horrified to be back and anxious to leave as soon as possible?
Ignoring the current movie on TV, I stared out the window behind the couch at the familiar landscape zooming by and tried to make some sense of my mixed emotions. But it wasn’t easy like it should have been. Because, while I was afraid of the Clann and being back within the heart of their territory, there was also this undeniable excitement buzzing in my stomach and tingling in my hands and feet, as if my body had a mind of its own and yearned to jump out of this trailer and run through the woods on either side of the highway.
The roller coaster of emotions only grew worse when we stopped in Mineola at the car rental place to drop off Dad and Tristan.
“Can I just go on record one more time and say how much I hate this plan?” I muttered while standing in the parking lot with Tristan. Dad had gone inside the agency to pick up the car.
“I know. I don’t like it either, but—”
“Yeah, I know. We need this.” I looked up at him. “I know I don’t have to say it but…please promise me you’ll be careful.”
Tristan smiled. “I will. I’ll look after your old man, too, while I’m at it.”
I sighed.
Then Tristan kissed me. After two months of suffering through the distance between us, the shock of that kiss slammed every one of my senses almost to the point of overwhelming me. I’d nearly forgotten just how right it felt to kiss him, like coming home and discovering my biggest purpose in life all in one blinding f lash of joy. I wound my arms around his neck, desperate to be closer to him, wishing I never had to let him go. We’d had only a couple of days back together. And now this.
“It’ll only be a few hours,” he murmured against my lips.
“Didn’t Tom Hanks say something like that to his fiancée right before getting on a plane that crashed and left him missing on an island for five years?”
Tristan chuckled. “Yeah, well, he wasn’t half vamp and half Clann either, now was he?” He sighed, his strong arms looped around my waist. “I would do a spell to give myself wings and f ly back to you if I had to.”
I let my face show my doubt on that one. “I thought we couldn’t do magic like that.”
He shrugged and grinned. “Where there’s a will, there’s always some way.”
Yeah, that was exactly what I was most worried about… Mr. Williams’s will to kill Tristan if he ever got the chance.
“Sav, honey, we’ve gotta go,” Mom called from behind the wheel of the truck.
I rose up on tiptoe to kiss Tristan one last time, our lips pressing together hard enough to bruise. Then I stepped away from him and walked around the front end of the truck, refusing to look back as I got into the passenger-side seat. This wasn’t a Kodak moment. I would see him again in just a few hours. Their plan was potentially dangerous, but between Tristan and my dad’s combined skills and experience, they would be fine. I would see both of them again before the sun even had time to set.
“Lie to yourself some more, Savannah,” I muttered, pressing a shaking hand to my knotted stomach.
Still, try as I might I couldn’t help but stare at Tristan’s shrinking ref lection in the side mirror as we pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the highway, or stop the lump from forming in my throat.
Anne had warned me that the perimeter of Jacksonville was too heavily guarded with Keepers both night and day for us to risk going there. But meeting in Tyler meant the girls wouldn’t have to travel very far, since it was only a halfhour’s drive from Jacksonville. So I had arranged with Anne to meet them in the Barnes & Noble parking lot. The lot had the added advantage of being right across from the mall where we all used to shop together, so it wouldn’t be hard for any of us to find. Plus it was plenty big enough to admit Mom’s truck and trailer.
The only concern was maintaining the invisibility spell on both the truck and trailer during the meet-up to keep us hidden from any Clann who might pass by. Because Emily’s advanced pregnancy was sapping most of her strength, it had been up to Tristan and me to create the spell. And it would be all on me to maintain that spell for two hours, which was the minimum amount of time Dad said he would need to travel to his meeting with his supplier.
It was hard not to constantly check my phone for messages or calls from Dad during the half-hour drive between Mineola and Tyler. The silence in the truck’s cab didn’t offer any distraction, either. I had thought Mom would at least be happy about finally getting to drive her own truck again. Instead, all she could think about was the impending loss of her dog, whom we had resorted to giving the doggy equivalent of a Valium from a
vet Mom had visited up in South Dakota before the start of this trip. She was so worried Lucy would remember being left with strangers and blame her for it later that she wanted to keep her sedated for the handoff.
Emily cleared her throat from the backseat, where she had stretched out. “So, um, I’m reading this ebook about what to expect when you’re pregnant, and it says I should be seeing an ob-gyn every month and taking folic acid and stuff. Do…you guys think maybe we could find me a doctor to see up north once we get back?”
Mom’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I’m sorry. I thought your mother might have already explained this to you. You can’t see a normal doctor. Not for this baby. Any human doctor will do an ultrasound on your baby and say it’s stillborn. Damphirs don’t have a heartbeat till well after they’re born, at least from what I experienced with Savannah.”
I forgot to breathe for several seconds. Wow. It was one thing to know I was different, and another to picture myself as a newborn without a heartbeat. “How’d you know I was still alive?”
“Because you moved around and blinked your eyes and stuff.”
Huh.
“Is there anything else I should know about this baby before I pop it out?”
This started a long question-and-answer session between them that continued right up until the moment we pulled into the bookstore parking lot and found my friends already waiting for us there.
I shoved my phone into my jeans pocket, then jumped out of the truck as soon as Mom had finished parking, surprised yet again by my reaction as my eyes welled up with tears. I hadn’t realized just how much I missed seeing my friends.
Michelle leaped out of her car with a loud squeal and ran over to give me a big hug, making me laugh. Good thing we’d planned on talking inside the trailer instead of the bookstore, or we definitely would have attracted a lot of attention.
“Wow, I didn’t realize anyone would actually miss me,” I said with a grin as I returned her hug, concentrating not to squeeze her too hard and crack her ribs.
“Of course we miss you!” She glanced around. “Didn’t Tristan come with you?”