Crave. Melissa Darnell

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СКАЧАТЬ shoulders rose up as soon as I saw her … I could almost swear she knew I was watching her. Not for the first time, I wondered if she could somehow sense the focus of my attention. But that was impossible. She wasn’t a descendant, and the Clann would know about any outsiders with special abilities like that.

      Except … no normal girl had ever stuck in my mind like she did.

      Then again, no girl, normal or otherwise, seemed to mess with my thoughts quite like Savannah did. So maybe I was just desperate to find any reason besides my own weakness to blame for the crazy hold she had on me.

      At least she made algebra interesting.

       Savannah

      “You look like crap,” Anne whispered halfway through class, distracting me from the foggy circle my mind kept whirling around in.

      I couldn’t even force a smile to reassure her. Nanna’s special tea hadn’t made a dent in the pain this time. It was all I could do not to bawl like a baby. This was way beyond simple soreness from dancing. Though I’d never been sick before, I was pretty sure I’d finally caught the flu, or something close to it. I had all the symptoms those flu-medicine commercials listed. When I wasn’t freezing, I was burning up. I couldn’t stop shaking. My skin felt like I had another of my annual summer sunburns everywhere my clothes touched. And my head was pounding so loud I’d missed hearing most of Mr. Chandler’s lecture. We were supposed to be working on our homework assignment now. Right, like that was going to happen. Just the idea of grabbing my book from under my desk made the bones in my arms throb. And I sucked at math even on a good day.

      I shifted in my desk, and my legs bumped into Tristan’s feet. Crap. I’d forgotten. As usual, the spoiled prince of Jacksonville needed more legroom and had stretched his long legs out at either side of my desk. Turning my seat into a virtual prison, unless I didn’t mind our legs and feet touching every time I moved. Which I really did mind.

      Honestly, I could shoot whoever had come up with the evil idea of alphabetical seating. It was alphabetical seating that had first forced Tristan and me to sit beside each other in the fourth grade. And placed him right behind me here in algebra this year.

      I was tempted to slump down in my seat and rest my head on the back of my chair. But then my ponytail would land on Tristan’s desk. And then he might start messing with the ends of my hair again, like Anne had caught him doing a few weeks ago. He’d probably been trying to stick gum in it. His best friend from the Clann, Dylan Williams, loved to do that to girls with long hair.

      Forcing myself to stay upright, I bit back a groan, propped my spinning head between my hands and checked the clock on the wall again. If I could just make it through this last class of the day …

      “Are you okay?” Anne whispered, leaning forward past Tristan. “I’m serious, Sav. You really look—”

      “Anne, focus on your work,” Mr. Chandler said from his desk. “Savannah, come see me please.”

      I almost whimpered. He wanted me to move?

      Gritting my teeth, I pulled myself to my feet, circled around the front of my desk to avoid Tristan’s legs and trudged across the room to the teacher’s desk, praying I wouldn’t barf all over the round little man.

      “Anne’s right, you do look sick,” Mr. Chandler murmured. “Would you like to go visit the nurse?”

      Great. So everyone thought I looked like crap today. “Um, no, thank you.” I tried not to breathe on him. Wasn’t the flu supposed to be highly contagious? “It’s the last class of the day. I can make it a little longer. Do you mind if I lay my head down on my desk, though?”

      “Sure, go ahead. Just be sure to take care of the assignment as soon as you’re feeling better.”

      On the way back to my desk, I wrapped my arms around myself as a sudden chill swept over my skin, making me shiver. Then I made the mistake of looking up at the clock again. And missed seeing Tristan’s outstretched leg.

      I tripped hard over his foot. My arms wouldn’t budge. No way could I catch myself in time. All I could do was close my eyes and brace for a face-plant on my desk. He’d have a real good time laughing about this later with his precious Clann friends.

      Instead, strong hands stopped my fall.

      I pried my eyelids open, knowing even before I did who had caught me.

      Tristan had half risen from his desk and grabbed my shoulders. Too tired and sick to stop myself, I got lost in emerald-green eyes that used to be as familiar as my own. Heat from his hands seeped through my shirt, melting my bones.

      “Sav, are you all right?” he whispered, his eyebrows drawn together.

      The nickname distracted me. He used his old nickname for me so easily, as if we were still in the fourth grade and best friends. As if he hadn’t just spent the past five years pretending he didn’t know me.

      His normally full lips were thin, grim lines today. He looked … furious. For having to catch me? Or because I’d had the nerve to trip over his foot?

      “Sor-ry,” I muttered, a hint of anger giving me the strength to regain my balance.

      Once safely in my seat again, I laid down my head on the desk’s cold wood surface, shivering and wishing I could just die already. As if having a monster case of the flu for the first time wasn’t bad enough, now Tristan had decided to be mad at me because I’d tripped over him. Like I could help it that he was a total Sasquatch.

      But I was too tired to get properly mad about it at the moment. All I wanted was to go home.

       Tristan

      Savannah Colbert had to be the most stubborn girl I’d ever known. I’d watched her shiver, her breathing getting faster and more out of rhythm, for over an hour now. Anyone else would’ve gone home early. But not Savannah.

      I checked out her red cheeks, the way she never stopped frowning, how her body tried to curl into a ball.

      If she were still my friend, I would’ve hauled her stubborn butt off to my sister’s car and driven her home myself. Never mind that I wouldn’t have a driver’s license until next year. Or that she was off-limits to everyone in the Clann, and Jacksonville was filled with gossips who watched my every freaking move and reported back to the elders within minutes of anything happening.

      I silently cursed the Clann with every swearword I knew. Bunch of controlling witches. Just because my family had led those power addicts for the past four generations didn’t mean I wanted anything to do with their magic or their stupid rules. Every waking minute of the day, I had to focus on keeping my energy levels in check so I didn’t accidentally set fire to stuff. It got exhausting sometimes, constantly having to keep the power under control, when all I really wanted was to be normal and play football, hopefully for the NFL someday. But even there, magic was both a help and a pain. It helped me run faster and hit guys harder. But it also meant I had to be careful not to break necks or send guys flying too far when I slammed into them. Anybody not in the Clann would be able to just relax and enjoy the game.

      Unfortunately, my parents had other plans for me that had nothing to do with football at all. They expected me to follow in my dad’s footsteps and become the next Clann leader. Because of that, I’d had to practically beg СКАЧАТЬ