At the last second, I managed to swallow the gasp and whisper, "Sorry, didn't see you there."
Ron looked up from the book he'd been reading. "Oh, hey, Savannah." He was alarmingly loud.
Then I remembered how deaf I'd seemed in English. "Shh. I'm not deaf anymore. I can hear you now."
Smiling, he held out a hand toward the table. "Have a seat if you want."
I opened my mouth to say no thanks.
It'd be nice not to have to eat alone for once, he thought.
Well, he did have the only table out of view of the front desk.
And maybe if I sat here and listened to his thoughts long enough, I'd hear the truth about his breakup with Anne.
I took the creaky wooden chair opposite him and sat down.
"So what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" he whispered with a lopsided grin. But underneath that, I heard him think, Anne's best friend. Maybe she can tell me how to fix things with Anne. It's been months. This is getting ridiculous.
"I could ask you the same thing," I whispered back. "I didn't realize jocks read."
He shrugged, his smile fading. "It's better than being in that jungle you call a cafeteria."
"That's for sure," I agreed without thinking. At his surprised look, I added, "It gets pretty noisy in there. It's much quieter in here."
"I thought you were deaf last period."
It was my turn to shrug. "Temporary hearing loss. It came back with a vengeance. So what's the deal with you and Anne?"
He froze. "Why? What did she tell you?"
"Nothing. That's what makes me wonder. All she said was that she's not the right girl for you. And that maybe you aren't what you seem." Or had Anne only thought that last part?
"Nobody's what they seem around here. Take you and Tristan, for instance. What's the story there? No one knew you two were even dating for months."
I so didn't want to talk about that. "Why don't you focus on telling me what's really going on between you and my best friend. Did you hurt Anne? Because if you did-"
"No way!" He grabbed the edge of the table. "I would never hurt her."
I searched his thoughts. He was too upset for me to pick out a single thought, his emotions swirling into a big tangle. But he was telling the truth. "You really cared about her."
He blinked once, twice, gave a short, sharp nod. "But now she won't see me, won't talk to me. I don't know what to do. I've tried to be patient, but she's driving me nuts here."
I crossed my arms over my chest. "Maybe she has a good reason."
"Or maybe she's just being pigheaded."
"Maybe. It is Anne we're talking about." We smiled at each other in understanding. "You'll just have to let her come around when she's ready. If she does. Or you could always move on, date somebody else."
He was cute in a boy-next-door kind of way. With that quick grin and those blue eyes under a flop of straight, light blond hair, he could easily find someone new. Last year before Anne snapped him up, he'd briefly dated Vanessa Faulkner, and she was notoriously picky about her arm candy.
He stared at me. "You act like moving on after getting dumped is no big deal."
"You moved on fast enough after Vanessa."
He rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "I wouldn't count dating her as a real relationship. More like pretending to be a giant Ken doll for her to endlessly make over. Besides, I broke up with her, not the other way around." Seeing my eyebrows shoot up, he added, "Anne told me what you overheard her saying to her sister in history class. Did you guys think I'd just sit back and wait for Vanessa to dump me first?"
Interesting. My respect for him went up several notches.
"Speaking of getting dumped," he continued, "I heard what you did to Tristan. Rumor has it the event was brutal, even by high school standards. Did you really dump him in front of his entire family?"
I winced. No telling what version of the real story he'd heard.
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. "I didn't dump Tristan."
"Really? Because that's not what I heard. Guess I should consider myself lucky Anne wasn't that harsh. All I got was a Dear John text."
"My breakup with Tristan isn't anything like your breakup with Anne. Trust me." Why was he even comparing the two events?
"Oh yeah? How do you know?"
I snorted. Unless he was half Clann and half vamp and Anne had suddenly joined the Clann without telling me, there was no way their breakup was even remotely similar to mine. "Look, you don't know anything about us or what really happened-"
"And you don't know anything about me and Anne."
Only because she wouldn't tell me what happened. I gritted my teeth, searching for a retort.
The bell rang. He jumped up. "See you in English lit." He walked off, shoulders hunched, hands buried deep in his jeans pockets, his notebook and textbook somehow staying tucked between his left forearm and his body. Maybe from all that practice carrying the ball for a touchdown as our varsity Indians' best receiver.
I bent down to gather my things and noticed the book he'd left open on the table, cover side up. Legends and Monsters of East Texas, it proclaimed. What in the world? I flipped it over. A snarling black cat, almost as large as a tiger, took up half the left page, its claws reaching out as if to attack the villager in front of it.
Boys. They were into the weirdest stuff.
The next day, I discovered Ron and I shared second period chemistry class, too.
"Hey, want to be lab partners?" he leaned over and muttered after Mr. Knouse told everyone to partner up and choose lab tables.
I started to agree then hesitated, remembering yesterday's conversation in the library. Did I really want the added drama in my life?
Sighing, I went with my first instinct. "Sure, why not? Fair warning, though, I suck big-time at anything having to do with numbers. Science included."
One corner of his mouth slanted upward. "Then you're in luck. Science is my one area of expertise. Well, that and football."
I grinned as I followed him to a table. "That remains to be seen at this week's game. Isn't Texas High our biggest rival? If I remember correctly, they really stomped your butts last year."
"Please. That was just bad luck. Trust me, this year those Tigers will be nothing but kittens in need of a nap by the time we get done with them."
I dropped my bags to the floor and sat on one of the two stools at our table. When I rested my forearms on it, the contrast with the table's black surface made my forearms and hands blindingly white.
I hastily dropped my hands to my lap. "You know, if you're as good as you say you are, about chemistry I mean, I might be willing to do a trade. Help with our homework in here in exchange for tutoring in English lit? You're not the only one who picks up on the gossip every now and then, and rumor has it that English is definitely not one of your areas of expertise."
"Did Anne say that?" The poor boy actually looked hopeful, projecting shards of longing over my nerve endings, and a sympathetic ache welled up in my chest.
I tried to laugh it away. "She might have mentioned helping you a little last year. Which is really saying something, because it was my constant help that turned her C- into a B+."
Ron grinned. "That figures. I thought some of her explanations didn't sound right coming from her. English class was the only time I ever heard her use a four-syllable word."
"Yep, that's our girl."
While the teacher explained how to do our first lab experiment, I snuck a couple of glances at Ron's profile. Like Anne, his eyes, once shiny, now had a certain dullness to them, the skin tight around them as if ready to wince at any second.
As if he were in physical pain.
I thought about Anne's reactions yesterday at lunch, and that flash of longing that had escaped her for a second. Whatever her reasons for breaking up with him, she still deeply cared about him.
They were being so stupid! How could two people so in love refuse to be together? At least I had a solid reason not to be with Tristan. Anne and Ron, on the other hand, couldn't possibly have anything that bad keeping them apart. It might even be a simple misunderstanding. Maybe Anne had figured it out already, and that was the real reason she refused to talk about it. She knew she'd made a mistake, but her pride wouldn't let her admit it to anyone. Better to be in misery than for everyone to know she was wrong.
Well, I wasn't going to let her screw up her love life anymore.
I couldn't fix Tristan and me. But I could help Anne.
Ron had always been so quiet at our lunch table last year, so I didn't know him all that well. If I got to know him better this year, especially with the ESP, I ought to be able to figure out a way to help them fix their issues. They might not get back together. After all, Anne was the single most stubborn person I'd ever known, and I wasn't a miracle worker. But if I could at least get them to be friends again, it would be better than seeing them stuck in all this endless misery. Then, if they decided not to get romantically involved again, that would be their choice and I would at least have the satisfaction of knowing I had done everything I could to help.
Happy with my new goal, I focused on the teacher as Mr. Knouse finished going over the lab instructions. Then Ron and I got started on our first lab experiment.
I watched Ron measure out blue liquid from one beaker into another using a giant dropper, eager to hear his thoughts and hopefully pick up a few clues.
Too bad there was nothing but science stuff in his head at the moment.
He noticed my stare. "What? Am I doing it wrong?"
"You tell me. You're supposed to be the science expert here." I smiled. "Actually, I was just trying to figure out why Anne broke up with you."
He frowned, possibly in concentration, and added another measure of blue liquid to the beaker. "I told her...something. Something about my family." Something about black cats running around in the woods, according to his thoughts. "She said she didn't care, that she was okay with it. But then she got really quiet, and the next thing I knew, every time I called her cell phone she wouldn't pick up, and every time I called her at home her mom answered and said she either wasn't home or was in the shower. And then she sent me a text message the following Monday saying she didn't want to see me anymore and that it just wasn't working out. And ever since, she won't talk to me about it."
That didn't sound like Anne at all. She had always been the blunt, take-no-prisoners type. "What the heck did you tell her that freaked her out so badly?"
I caught only one thought from his mind. Keepers. But Mom said Savannah doesn't know, so... He shook his head. "I really can't talk about that. It's private family stuff. But it's nothing that would hurt Anne or anything like that."
Silently he started humming a song in his head, blocking me from picking up any other thoughts.
He said the Keepers, whatever they were, weren't dangerous to Anne. If that was true, then why would she break up with him over it?
And why had he discussed these Keepers and me with his mom?
Should I know what Keepers were for some reason?
By the end of second period, Ron had silently hummed that same darn song over and over so many times I had it stuck in my head too now. And I still didn't have any possible answers about his breakup with Anne.
What could he possibly be hiding about his family that would freak Anne out? She was one of the toughest, bravest people I knew. Look how well she'd reacted to the news that I was half vamp and half witch. She hadn't acted scared at all until the night of her birthday when the bloodlust had started messing with me and made me all vampy. What could be worse than that?
Maybe it had something to do with the black cats he'd been thinking and reading about in the library yesterday.
Were Ron's family cat wranglers or something? Maybe they bred exotic cats and sold them on the internet?
Or maybe it was some weird religious belief or something, like the Abernathys worshipped black cats?
Nah, that couldn't be it. There had to be some other reason, something big for Anne to run away from the relationship like that. But try as I might, I couldn't come up with anything.
When the dismissal bell rang, we gathered our books and headed out the door, Ron directly behind me. When the chaotic noise of the main hall slammed over me and I stopped in surprise, he stepped on my heels.
I hadn't realized till now just how peaceful chemistry class had been.
"Sorry. Headed to the jungle?" Ron asked, nearly having to shout to be heard over the stampede.
"Um, I don't know." There didn't seem much point in going to the cafeteria when I no longer ate human food, other than getting to see my friends since we didn't have any classes together this year.
On the other hand, considering what a mess of things the stupid ESP had helped me make yesterday, maybe Carrie and Anne would be happier if I wasn't there today.
"You headed to the library again?" I asked him.
He nodded. "Figured I could get a head start on my homework. I'm pretty tired after football practice, and my mom likes to do supper early every evening. By the time we get done eating, all I want to do is crash."
I could empathize with that. I was trying to drink as little blood each week as I could get away with in an effort to reduce the flood of the donor's memories. Which meant I was exhausted almost all the time lately.
And then there was the near nightly issue of having nightmares about Tristan and Nanna.
As if my thoughts had conjured him up, I felt my chest and stomach ache, as well as pinpricks race along my neck and down my arms. Two signs that Tristan was nearby and ticked off. I looked to my left down the main hall, and there he was.
Tristan crossed to the other side of the hall before passing by, not looking my way in the process.
Gritting my teeth, I headed for my locker a few yards away. Ron walked with me, his mouth moving as he talked about something, but I couldn't hear him with everyone's thoughts screaming inside my head. At my locker, I nodded like I could hear every word he said while I spun through my locker's combination lock then yanked the metal latch to open it.
Something sticky coated the latch, and now my hand, too.
"Oh ew!" Nose wrinkled, I glanced at my hand, then stopped breathing. It was dark red and looked an awful lot like...
Blood.
"Hey, are you okay?" Ron grabbed my hand. "You're bleeding!"
"No, it's not me. It was on my locker." I couldn't seem to look away from my hand. My mouth watered, and I had to swallow a few times.
Ron studied my locker's latch. "Aw, now that's just nasty. Who would..." He looked at me, confusion turning into annoyance on his face. "The Clann."
The hall was starting to clear out as everyone hurried to class or the cafeteria. But I couldn't seem to move.
"Okay, why don't you go wash up in the bathroom while I get something to clean this up?" Ron said, firmly grabbing my shoulders and steering me to the door of the nearest girl's restroom.
I stumbled into the bathroom and over to the sink. My arms and legs didn't want to respond to my brain, their movements slow and jerky. I turned the water on with my clean hand, started to stick my other hand under the faucet, then hesitated.
The blood...I could smell it. Blood used to smell sharp and metallic to me. But that was before I'd first felt the bloodlust.
Now, it was different.
I lifted those red fingers to my nose and inhaled deeply, closing my eyes as a hundred different scents filled my head.
Something about the blood was familiar. As a whole, it was new, unique. But underneath ran this thread of...
Temptation. Perfection. Like chocolate, edible and completely divine.
Deja vu swamped me, and I knew where I'd smelled that underlying scent before.
This was Clann blood.
