“Uh, Mom, I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to cover the gas for us.” I knew from past discussions with him that Dad used his mind-reading abilities to help him make a fortune. I hadn’t had to worry about money since moving in with him last year.
She threw me a dark scowl. “Don’t think I don’t know how he gets his money. I didn’t like it back when we were together, and I don’t like it now. And I am not having my truck filled with gas paid for by his illegal activities. I work hard the legal way and make enough to pay for my own gas, thank you very much.”
I started to argue that Dad wasn’t exactly a mobster or getting his money from killing people as a paid hit man. He just read a few key minds to pick up insider trading secrets, then played the stock market accordingly.
Then I remembered how upset I used to be about Dad’s insider trading methods when I first found out about them. When had I gotten so used to the idea that it no longer bothered me?
It was just like Tristan and his need for revenge. It was a slippery slope. You started off not liking something, knowing it was wrong, but trying to either rationalize it or ignore it. And then the next thing you knew, you were almost ready to defend it to someone else, and maybe even do it yourself, in Tristan’s case.
Mom stepped out of the trailer while I was still following that particularly twisty line of thought. I didn’t realize she was gone until the trailer door banged shut.
I sighed and rubbed my pounding forehead. Tristan was probably still in the truck dealing with the blood memories from feeding last night. At least, I assumed he was the one who’d grabbed something from the fridge before leaving the trailer for the truck. I would have to wait awhile longer before speaking with him.
“Do not be ridiculous,” Dad said outside the trailer, its thin metal walls doing little to muff le his voice. “I will of course cover all costs.”
“Excuse me, but have you forgotten we’re divorced?” Mom said. “I’ve paid for my own gas and snacks for years now.”
“Joan, your pride is misplaced here. The Clann may be tracking your credit cards since I am sure they will assume you would want to come to your child’s rescue.”
“Oh, and yet they wouldn’t be watching your cards?”
“Not these. They are under several aliases I keep for emergencies.”
Silence as Mom absorbed that news. She sighed. “Why am I not surprised?”
A half minute later she came stomping back inside. “Unbelievable. Your father refuses to let me pay for anything!” She threw her hands up then looked around as if she didn’t know what to do with herself.
“I’m sure he’s just trying to play it safe.”
“He could have at least asked me if I minded, instead of telling me this is how it’s going to be. He treats me like an incompetent child.”
Oh, boy. I cleared my throat. “Well, he is a vamp, and he’s kind of used to making a decision and then following through on it. I’m not sure he’s used to having to deal with a team other than the council.”
Mom rolled her eyes and propped her hands on her hips. “Yeah, right. He can be diplomatic with his precious vamp council, but not with his wife?”
“Ex,” I muttered, wondering how to get out of this conversation.
Her eyes f lashed at me then narrowed. “Whatever. The point is, he obviously doesn’t have the same respect for me because I’m just a measly human.”
Okay, time to make a run for it. Nothing I said was going to help her cool off any quicker.
I stood up. “You know, I think I’m going to go walk around a little bit. Need anything from the gas station?”
Mom shook her head and returned to the sink, the dish in her hand banging against the sides of the metal sink with a swishy bong sound that vibrated right down into my teeth.
I tried not to run for the door. But once safely outside with the trailer door shut, I couldn’t stop a sigh of relief.
Good grief. Now I knew where I got my temper.
“Hey,” Tristan murmured, surprising me.
I spun to face him. “Oh! Hi. Um, I thought…” I waved a hand at the truck. “You know, that you’d still be out for the count from the blood memories.”
He leaned against the side of the truck, his green eyes watching my every move. “I was for a few hours. But I didn’t feed much. Wasn’t hungry for some reason.” One side of his mouth tightened in the semblance of a half smile. “So I thought I’d come man the gas pump while your dad checks the oil and tires.”
I cleared my throat. “Listen, about last night. I’m sorry I got so mad.”
He nodded, still watching me.
Okay, this was awkward. There was too much distance between us, both literally and figuratively.
I walked closer to him, stopping a couple of feet away to sit on the top of a cement cylinder in the island meant to keep vehicles from hitting the gas pumps. “Everybody says stuff they don’t mean when they’re upset. I know you didn’t mean what you said last night.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you said I was dumb.”
“No, I didn’t mean that.”
I nodded. Then I frowned. “Wait. So you did mean it when you said you plan to kill Mr. Williams?”
Too late, I remembered to look around us. Thankfully we didn’t have an audience.
Not that Tristan seemed to care. He shrugged. “Yeah, that part I meant.”
Oh, great. I’d hoped he’d had time to cool off and come to his senses. “Tristan, you can’t go after him.”
His eyebrows shot up as if to say oh, yeah?
“How is getting revenge going to make anything better?”
“It’ll sure make me feel better.”
I shook my head. “But it won’t bring your mom back any more than Emily’s killing Gowin brought your dad back.”
“I don’t care. He has to pay for what he did.”
I stared up at Tristan, and it was like looking at a stranger. Gone was the boy with the soft smile and even softer green eyes I’d first fallen in love with. He’d been replaced by someone so filled with hatred and anger that he couldn’t even think straight, or see what killing yet another person might do to him.
I fought to find the right words to explain. “I know you’re angry right now and that makes it hard to think clearly. But if you could find a way to push it aside, you’d see that wanting to kill Mr. Williams is only going to hurt you in the end. It’s like that hunter in Arkansas. Remember how that felt so right at the moment, too? But if you’d killed him, how would you feel right now? And what about killing Dylan? Don’t try to tell me there isn’t a part of you deep down inside that’s wrecked over his death.”
Tristan stopped breathing, the muscles in his jaw forming knots along his jawline.
“Wanting revenge is a slippery slope.” At his raised eyebrows, I tried to explain better. “You know, you take one wrong step that leads to another and then another, until suddenly you find yourself in a really dark place and you can’t even figure out how you got there.”
He stared at me. “So you’re saying if I kill Mr. Williams, I’m going to turn into a serial killer?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I mean…it’s like a disease. Wanting to get revenge will eat away at your insides and take over your whole life if you let it. Look at how many hours you’ve already wasted obsessing over ways to kill Mr. Williams.”
“You call it obsessing, I call it planning ahead.”
“Does it really make you happy to spend all that time plotting ways to torture and kill him?”
“Yeah, it really does.”
“Liar.”
“What do you know about wanting revenge anyway?”
I stepped up to him. “You think I’ve never had a reason to want revenge? After dealing with Dylan and the Brat Twins calling me names in school for years? Should I have killed them for that? Or how about when your dad had Nanna kidnapped and tortured for information she didn’t even have until she died? Should I
have killed your father for that?”
Heat f lared out of him. “Your grandma’s abduction and death were a misunderstanding and an accident and you know it.”
“Sure. And your mother’s death could have been every bit as much an accident, too, for all we know.”
I leaned against the side of the truck, all the will to fight draining out of me. “My point is that I’ve been wronged and dealt with loss, too. But I’m not letting it eat me up inside anymore because I can’t afford to. Every time I let the anger take over, I’m not myself anymore. I lose control, and I prove they’re right and I’m nothing more than a monster. And then they win. I don’t want to live like that. So I chose to let it go a long time ago, to not let them have that power over me. Just because I’m a vampire doesn’t mean I have to act like a monster. That’s my choice, not theirs.”
His eyes narrowed. “But that’s what we really are, Savannah. Like it or not, we’re supposed to be killers.”
“You know perfectly well that we don’t have to kill anyone to survive anymore. Nothing makes any of us monsters except the decisions we make and the actions we take.”
Tristan’s eyes blazed at me as he leaned forward and hissed, “He helped kill my mother. You think I’m supposed to just let that go?”
“I know, it hurts. But Nanna and your mom and dad, they’re all gone, and nothing you or I or anyone else can do can bring them back. And I know for a fact that they wouldn’t want us to destroy ourselves to try to avenge their deaths.” I took a deep breath, pushing the ever-present anger back down inside. “I’ve been to the other side, Tristan. I’ve talked with Nanna. We’re not supposed to waste our lives seeking justice. We’re supposed to move on and let them go.”
He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
I looked deep into his eyes as my own burned and threatened to tear up again. I’d waited five long months for the Tristan I’d grown up with and loved to come back to me. And now I was losing him all over again. “Then they’ve already won.”
“Jim Williams has to die, Savannah. There’s no gray area here.”
His jaw was set, his eyes and mouth hard. Even his feet were spread wide as if ready to take any physical blow. He was the perfect definition of the term mulish. There was nothing I could say to change his mind.
Still, I had to try one last time. “He’s the Clann leader now. That means he’ll have hundreds of descendants, not to mention the Keepers, protecting and helping him. If you try to go after him, he’ll use that army to kill you. Is it worth that much to you? Are you willing to die to get your revenge?”
Tristan barked out a humorless laugh. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. But you’re forgetting one thing. I’m their worst nightmare, remember? There’s nothing they can do to stop me from getting to him.”
It was like talking to an arrogant brick wall.
“How are we doing?” Dad asked as he returned from the gas station with a bright yellow plastic bottle of oil in his hand.
At first I thought he was asking about Tristan’s and my relationship, and I nearly answered, Lousy. But then I realized he was talking about the truck’s fuel tank.
“Nearly there,” Tristan said. “This thing takes forever to f ill up.”
Dad nodded. “Yes, it does. I am going to add a bit more oil to the engine. Would you mind cleaning the windshield for us?”
“Sure.” Tristan turned toward the island, reaching for a black squeegee sticking out of a matching colored plastic tub that hung from one of the awning’s support poles.
“Hey, Dad?” I called out.
He stuck his head out from beneath the truck’s open hood, black eyebrows raised in question.
“Mind if I go for a short walk over there?” I jerked my chin in the general direction behind me. I didn’t even know what was off to the side of the station. All I knew was that I needed to get away for a few minutes, sort through my thoughts without anyone around me, and get some fresh air that didn’t smell like gas fumes, human food or my mother’s perfume.
He nodded, adding, “Do not go too far,” then disappeared beneath the truck hood again.
I stuffed my hands in my jacket pockets as I walked off to the right of the station, unsure where I was going, desperate to shake the tightness that was now setting up camp in my chest.
The gas station was at the base of a tall hill covered in drought-yellowed weeds with a wooden fence line running along its ridge. Without really making a clear decision to, I headed up that hillside toward the fence through the weird predawn light.
Once at the fence, I stopped, gripped the weathered wood and looked down. On this side, the hill ran down about a hundred yards toward a tiny valley nestled between two more steep hillsides. On instinct, I climbed over the fence and walked down the slope toward that valley, welcoming the way the hillside’s decline forced my thigh muscles to work to control my descent.
In the valley itself, I stood and looked around. How could wave after wave of weeds look so pretty and golden?
I dug the toe of my sneaker into the dirt, watching a tiny cloud of dust rise up as the fingers of my right hand played with the earbuds in my pocket. Finally I gave in to temptation, stuck them in my ears and turned on my MP3 player, ignoring its now red battery icon.
But even the music couldn’t turn off the questions tormenting my mind.
How could I make Tristan see that his need to go after Mr. Williams was dangerous? That he was risking everything for his need for revenge?
The song changed from a fast one to a slow duet by Rihanna and Mikky Ekko. The pulsing piano notes coaxed me to close my eyes. I was pretty sure it was supposed to be a love song, but it had always hit me as more of a breakup song. Part of me yearned to dance to it, but I didn’t.
Other than on that Paris stage with the vampire dance troupe, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d danced. I’d been too busy, too focused on Tristan…saving him from death, saving him and every human around him from his vampire instincts, trying so hard to show him that just because we were vampires didn’t mean we had to be monsters. I’d tried to show him a better way, a way to save the goodness inside us so our need for blood didn’t erase who we were.
Now it all seemed like wasted effort, because he was determined to risk his life yet again for revenge.
How did you save someone who didn’t want to be saved?
Should you even try?
Or was I being selfish, holding on to something that wasn’t meant to be, to someone who I seemed to need far more than he needed me?
CHAPTER 14
TRISTAN
“Has Savannah returned yet?” Mr. Coleman asked as he got behind the wheel of the truck.
“No. I’ll go look for her.” As long as Savannah wasn’t inside a building, she would be easy enough to find. All I had to do was follow her thoughts.
Savannah? I thought, looking around and waiting for her reply.
No answer, but I thought I picked up something that felt like the warmth I always associated with her mind. It was in the direction of the nearby hillside. She must have taken a walk that way.
I headed up the hillside then stopped at the fence. It was like standing on the top row of seats in one of those ancient open-air amphitheaters. And there below in a tiny space just big enough for a stage was the star.
Except this one only stood around with her hands in her pockets and her head dropped forward.
The sun had finally risen enough to peek over the tops of the hills, but not enough to shred the shadows in the valley. Savannah stood within that darkness, her mind every bit as shadowed.
Because she was afraid for me.
Her lack of confidence was a real ego booster.
Why couldn’t she understand my need to hunt Mr. Williams down and make him pay for what he’d done to my mother? She acted like I was about to commit some crime of my own. But I wasn’t the bad guy here—Mr. Williams was. Seeking revenge wasn’t wrong. It was a basic need to set things rig
ht, and the best way to do that was to make sure Mr. Williams could never hurt or kill anyone else ever again. Even the Bible had talked about an eye for an eye. So why couldn’t Savannah see that? Why couldn’t she understand that I would never be free of this fury burning me up inside until he was dead and buried in the cold, hard ground just like my mother soon would be?
Savannah and I had argued before. All couples did. But this time felt different, more dangerous somehow. Maybe because this time, instead of outside forces coming between us, it was our own beliefs and needs.
Savannah would come around, though. Eventually she had to. There was no way she could stay this blindly idealistic, especially now that Mr. Williams had declared war on the vamps. Couldn’t she understand that he wouldn’t stop until every last vampire was wiped off the face of this planet? Including Savannah, her father and myself.
It’s different this time, she thought, her back still turned my direction. That’s why it hurts so much. Because it’s different.
Had she heard my thoughts in spite of the music still pumping into her ears from her MP3 player?
But she never turned to look up at me or showed any knowledge that I was there in the distance watching her.
It’s up to him this time, isn’t it? I can’t save him from making this mistake. There’s nothing more I can say or do… It’s up to him to choose.
My hands gripped the top rail of the fence hard enough to make the wood creak in warning.
Her shoulders stopped moving as she held her breath. I can’t change his mind. And if he chooses revenge, I can’t follow him down that road, either. If I do, we’ll both be lost.
I froze, forgetting to breathe, too. Had it really just come down to that? Choose between her or killing Mr. Williams?
She didn’t know I was listening to her thoughts, hadn’t consciously decided to put that choice before me. But the ultimatum was there all the same. She was really that hardheaded, that convinced that she was right and I was wrong, that I might die if I went after Mr. Williams, that even avenging my mother’s death wasn’t worth it.
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