"Over the next year as your vampire side continues to develop, you are going to need me nearby to teach you how to recognize and control each new ability," Dad said.
"Why can't I just call you for advice?"
"This is not just your mother's and my wishes. The council has also...requested that I stay near you during this crucial time." Which wasn't a surprise, considering they'd threatened before to require me to live with my father in order to balance out the "effects" of living with former Clann descendants all my life. "If the bloodlust increases in strength, a phone chat is not going to do much to help control you."
"Control me? You really think I could become that big a threat to others?"
"It is possible, unless we are proactive in recognizing the signs leading up to such a situation and act quickly."
I tried to imagine living with him, but it was hard. Until this weekend, I'd seen him only twice a year for an hour-long dinner, during which we'd both pretended to eat and care about each others' lives. So I didn't have much personal experience to support my imagination.
"And this is what you want, too?" I asked Mom, desperate for her to say no, that she wanted me to keep living with her. All my life, my family had consisted of Mom and Nanna and myself. Now Nanna was gone and they were talking about taking me away from Mom, too.
"Hon, this is the best choice possible. For everyone," she said.
"I will of course be purchasing a home for us here in your hometown," Dad added. "So you need not be concerned about relocating to a new school or leaving your friends and dance team."
"Why would you do that?" I blurted out in confusion. If he was trying to reassure me, he'd just failed big-time. While descendants were spread out worldwide, Jacksonville was the Clann's home base and therefore had the highest concentration in any one area. The temptation of being surrounded by hundreds of descendants and their powerful, magic-laced blood would make his existence here unbearable. The only upside to moving in with my father should have been getting away from the Jacksonville Clann.
And avoiding the temptation of getting back together with Tristan.
"The council wishes it," was all he said.
Maybe the council wanted to continue to test me by making me stay here another two years?
"Well, at least I can still come visit you here on weekends, right?" I asked Mom.
"Hon, please try to understand, Nanna's social security checks barely helped us make ends meet. Now that she's gone, there's no way I can continue to make the payments on this place."
Dad scowled, and she rolled her eyes. "Yes, Michael, I know you've offered to help with that. But it wouldn't be right now that we're no longer married. I'm not your responsibility anymore, remember?"
She turned to face me again. "Besides, this place is too big for me to live in alone. I'd have to get fifty million cats just to keep me company."
A reluctant smile bunched my cheeks and pushed the tears out of my eyes. I sniffed and wiped my cheeks with the back of my hands. "That'd be attractive."
She smiled. "Exactly." She took a deep breath, then dropped the biggest bombshell of all. "But the main reason is, now that your grandma is gone, her magic has begun to fade. Within days it will be gone completely, depending on how strong each spell was and how recently she strengthened it. That includes the dampening wards here." She didn't quite meet my eyes as she said that last part.
Oh. She was talking about the bloodlust-dampening spells only Nanna had known how to make, because she was the only descendant with magic abilities who had ever wanted to dampen a vampire's bloodlust-mine, in this case-without actually repelling the vampire completely.
As a teenager Mom had chosen to let her abilities atrophy like an unused muscle. But that decision couldn't erase her lineage. She was still a descendant with the Clann's powerful blood running through her veins, the kind of blood that was almost irresistible to vampires.
Without the dampening wards on my home, I might begin to feel the bloodlust for my own mother. And now those wards were beginning to fade.
I shuddered. As much as I hated it, there was only one thing to do. "I guess we'd better start packing."
CHAPTER 4
I should have tried to enjoy my last week in my childhood home. I also probably should have called my friends and mentioned that I would be moving in with my dad soon. But Mom had already called their parents to let them know about Nanna's funeral, and the rest they would find out about once I was back at school next week.
Right now, I had zero desire to talk to anyone. Talking to my friends would mean lying about how Nanna really died and why I was moving in with my dad, and I was already crawling around under enough guilt as it was. While my best friend, Anne Albright, knew a little bit about the Clann's abilities from helping Tristan ward off the algebra classmates I'd accidentally gaze dazed last year, she had no idea I was a dhampir, or even that vampires existed in the first place. My friends wouldn't see it that way, but I knew without a doubt that the less they knew about the vampires and the Clann, the safer they would be.
As a result, the week passed quietly and much too quickly. Mom and I stayed busy packing up the house and putting it on the market. Mom had decided to sell the house and use the money for my college fund and to buy herself an RV so she could expand her sales territory. We'd thought, due to the lingering effects of the recession, that the house would take at least a few months to sell. But it found a new owner within days, to the surprise of Mom, me and the real estate agent. Apparently two companies had seen it on the internet the day the agent posted it and entered into a bidding war, driving the price up way higher than we'd set it. The winning bidder had also paid cash in full and skipped the usual house inspection so they could close within days instead of a month. Their only stipulation was that we vacate the premises as quickly as possible, apparently because they intended to put it on the rental market immediately.
All too soon, a stranger became the owner of our childhood home.
Later that week, we went to Tyler in Mom's truck to do some serious RV shopping. Dad had tried to talk me out of going with Mom. But she'd insisted if I could be trusted to go to school with the Clann, then I could be trusted to go shopping with my own mother for the day. Dad had argued that going to school with descendants only put me in large classrooms with them, not tiny truck cabs. But Mom said that was ridiculous and she wasn't discussing it any further with him.