Melissa Darnell - Covet

“Watch your mouth, missy!” Carrie’s mother yelled from the living room where all three sets of their parents waited, no doubt armed with cameras and video recorders.

My mother was on the road somewhere in Arkansas tonight, unaware I was even going to the dance. I hadn’t mentioned it to her, and apparently neither had Dad. And of course the idea of being here to record the night in a scrapbook had probably never even occurred to my dad.

Did vampires scrapbook?

Probably not. They wouldn’t want a visual record of just how long they had lived.

“But Mom—” Carrie began.

“Carrie Lynn, you watch that mouth or you’ll go to that dance with a mouthful of soap.”

That made me crack my first sincere smile of the evening.

Michelle giggled, then dropped to her knees beside me on the thick carpet. “It’s good to see you smiling again.”

I blinked at her, unsure how to respond. “Sorry. Guess I’ve been a bit of a downer lately.”

She shrugged. “I would be too if I lost a guy that hot and then he turned around and started dating Bethany Brookes like it was no big deal.” Scowling, she sat back on her bare feet. “I thought you two were going to get back together! Especially after he called me the night of the Charmers Spring Show.”

Wait, what? It felt like my eyes were about to pop out of my head as I struggled to choose which question to ask first. And how did she even know I’d been dating him? I hadn’t told anyone but Anne. Someone else must have blabbed. Maybe someone in the Clann, like one of the Brat Twins? Or maybe a Charmer…one of the dancers or managers might have put two and two together after noticing Tristan and I were both gone from school and Spring Show practice at the same time and then he quit volunteering to help the team.

That answered how Michelle might have heard about us, but not the rest of it.

I took a breath and started with one question at a time. “He’s dating Bethany?”

She nodded, her hazel eyes big and solemn. “Rumor has it they’re going to the dance together.”

Wow, he sure waited a long time to get over me and move on.

Once again, I found myself trapped in a battle between my head and my heart. Logically I knew I should be happy for him. Bethany would make him laugh, go to parties with him, eat lunch in the cafeteria with him and the descendants. His parents would probably adore her, too. If I really loved him, I should want nothing but the best for him, right?

My heart said it infinitely preferred for him to be as miserable as I was for the rest of his life.

I sighed and moved on to the next question. “Why did he call you the night of the Spring Show?”

“He wanted to know where you had moved to. He needed to talk to your dad, I think. He made it sound like he wanted to get your dad’s permission to date you publicly or something.”

My breath caught in my lungs and refused to budge. There was only one possible reason that he would want to talk to my dad. And it wasn’t to get permission to date me publicly. Dad didn’t have that kind of clout with the vamp council. But he could turn a human into a vampire.

Why was I surprised that Tristan would have asked my dad to turn him? Of course Tristan would have tried everything he could think of to get us back together.

Michelle glanced over her shoulder then shot to her feet. “Anne, you stop that right now! You’re going to ruin my creation.”

Still in shock, I barely had time to move my feet out of her path before she took off across the room to grab Anne’s wrist and wrench a brush away.

“But you left all this down,” Anne complained from where she was leaning down in front of her vanity trying to pin up the hair at the nape of her neck.

“Those curls are supposed to be down,” Michelle argued, batting Anne’s hands away. “It adds to the cascade effect.”

“More like the sloppy effect,” Anne muttered back. “It looks like I didn’t use enough hairspray or something.”

I clutched the sides of the chair by my legs, staring down at the black satin shimmering over my knees. Tristan had gone to ask my dad to turn him.

And yet now he was dating someone else.

What had Dad said to convince Tristan so completely to give up on us?

The doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of Carrie’s and Michelle’s dates. I went through the motions of posing for group shots in the living room while their parents buzzed around us, their camera flashes blinding me as my mind circled in confusion. Tristan’s actions didn’t make sense. First he made me think I would never get him to see the reality of our situation. Then he apparently went on a suicide mission to my dad to ask to be turned even though he knew the turning process could only result in his death and the start of a brand-new war between the vamps and the witches. And now just a few weeks later…he was dating Bethany Brookes.

The camera flashes stopped, but my thoughts didn’t. Nor did the lump in my throat go away.

Michelle and Carrie rode with their dates in Carrie’s car, and Anne and I followed in Anne’s truck to the JHS campus where the dance was being held in the cafeteria. I was momentarily distracted by the process of trying to exit the truck without revealing my underwear to everyone in the parking lot. Slits in dresses were both a blessing and a curse, allowing us to walk but making the climb out of a truck a real problem. Then we were all together again and stumbling on our heels across the parking lot and into the cafeteria.

The inside of the circular room had been transformed for the night. The dance committee, headed by the senior cheerleaders, had chosen Night at the Movies for the theme. We navigated our group around twelve-foot-high cardboard reels of movie film and equally giant buckets filled with yellow and white balloons tied in bunches to look like enormous popcorn, as a white fog from an unseen fog machine swirled around our ankles. Most of the tables and chairs had been removed to allow room for dancing, so we cut straight across the room toward the back.

Anne led us all up a set of carpeted stairs I’d never paid attention to before. They ended at a loft space above the kitchens and serving area. Tonight the second floor was decorated with a shimmering silver curtain backdrop and several movie reels as props for professional photos, which Anne insisted we had to have taken of our group right away in order to beat the line she was sure would develop soon.

Wait a second. Photographs. Now that I was definitely turning into a full vamp, were photos a problem? I’d had plenty taken before, of course. And earlier at Anne’s house, I’d been too in shock about Tristan to think about all the pictures the parents were taking of us.

But now I had time to think. And freak out. Wasn’t there some rule about how vampires couldn’t show up in photos? What if that was true? I’d never asked Dad about it. We’d covered everything else…the bloodlust, draining with a kiss, stakes, decapitation, holy water, garlic, crosses and churches and Bibles and holy ground and fire, even how our hybrid race of vamps was supposedly the creation of the demoness Lilith, who according to Jewish myths was once the true first wife of Adam. But vamps and photos? Nope, we’d missed that one. Was my vamp side developed enough that this would apply to me too now? Would I simply not show up in the photos and freak everyone out later?

A quick call to Dad would clear the question right up. I fumbled in my handbag for my cell phone.

“Sav, it’s our turn.” Anne tugged at my wrist.

“Wait, I just need to make a quick—”

“Later,” she said, pulling me ever closer to the silver tinsel-draped backdrop where the others were already being posed by the photographer.